ETS’s Korea Country Manager
Lee Yong-tak |
TOEFL, TOEIC Organizer Offers Scholarships for Plugging Tests
By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
The Educational Testing Service (ETS), a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that administers TOEFL and TOEIC tests, is promoting its tests to secondary school students.
This is triggering worries among students and at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, that the organization is competing with private language institutes, adding fuel to what is negatively called, "English-learning fever."
ETS' promotional efforts come at a time when Korea is introducing homegrownEnglish proficiency tests and foreign language high schools have dropped the two popular tests, replacing them with admission tests they give to prospective students.
The ETS recently selected eight high school students as "ETS ambassadors" along with 30 collegians under its scholarship program.
Among those selected, college students will receive $4,000 and high school students $1,000.
Some high school students who were selected for the scholarship expressed bewilderment over what they have to do in return ― promoting the tests to others.
"Do I need to promote this exam?" asked one of the scholarship recipients at Hanyoung Foreign Language High School.
"Their suggestion (that I should promote the test) surprised me," said another scholarship beneficiary, a senior attending Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies.
ETS's promotional efforts are coming at a time when foreign language high schools no longer use TOEFL and TOEIC scores in selecting students. Most of the scholarship recipients are from foreign language schools.
The schools' 2007 decision to drop the two most-common English proficiency tests for non-English native speakers stemmed from problems over a shortage of TOEFL test centers and errors in administrating the test in 2006.
Hanyoung Foreign Language High School and Ewha Girls' Foreign Language High School have made it clear that they will never encourage their students to take the exams. It was not immediately clear whether Hanyoung will ask the recipient students to give up their roles as ETS ambassadors.
ETS introduced the scholarship program last year for the state purpose of honoring Korea as its largest customer by selecting 12 college students.
This year, it expanded the program to high school students. But Communications Korea, the PR agency for the English test-making group, said ETS Korea never meant to advocate its tests to high school students.
"If there is some misunderstanding about our scholarship, ETS is willing to exclude high school students from the program," said Wally Yi, director of the PR agency.
ETS' promotional efforts also come as the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology plans to introduce an internet-based English proficiency test from 2012 to replace ETS' tests.
A ministry official, responsible for English education, stressed that those tests are apparently for adults. "We need to develop our own test so that we can provide a proper level of English testing for young students and relax the burden on parents for their children's English education," he said.
Some 2,700,000 Koreans took TOEFL and TOEIC tests last year. Since Korea has the highest number of applicants, ETS opened an office here in 2007. The Korea country manager is Lee Yong-tak.
kswho@koreatimes.co.kr
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