Philip Tabbiner, president of ETS Global, speaks during a press conference at the Shilla Hotel in Seoul, Thursday, to announce the launching of “TOEFL Junior.” The new exam has been developed by the U.S.-based Educational Testing Service to measure English proficiency of young students aged between 12 and 15. / Courtesy of ETS |
By Kang Shin-who
Staff reporter
An English proficiency test for children, developed by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the organizer of TOEFL, will make its global debut here.
The test is for those aged 12 - 15, who are studying English as a foreign language. It targets students seeking to go overseas for their studies and those who want to test their English abilities.
ETS announced Thursday that it will launch "TOEFL Junior" for middle-school students and Korea has been selected as the first country where the new English proficiency exam is to be conducted in the world.
The test developer will run the paper-based exam eight times a year across the country and the test fee is set at 39,600 won ($33). Profile 21, an education learning company, will be the Korean distributor of the test.
This year, the first exam will take place on Oct. 24 with another at the end of November. The date for the second one has yet to be fixed.
"Korea is the most important and No.1 country for our tests. ETS selects Korea to run the first and new product," said Philip Tabbiner, president of ETS Global during a press conference held in Seoul, Thursday.
"The test is a low-stakes assessment to measure the degree to which younger students have attained language proficiency representative of their English instructional environment," he said.
Potential market huge
The test consists of three parts; listening, reading comprehension and language form and meaning, but ETS plans to introduce a computer-based version including speaking and writing parts in the near future.
Asked how students could use the test and which schools or institutes are going to accept the test scores, Tabbiner explained that young students are able to better adjust how to improve their English skills based on the test results, adding that schools in countries where English is used or international schools here could accept the test scores when recruiting.
According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, 39,700 students aged between 13 and 15 applied for either TOEIC of TOEFL tests in 2007. There is no updated data, provided by ETS.
The test organizer will soon launch the exam in other countries including Japan, China, Vietnam, Brazil and other European countries.
Lim Ji-taek, CEO of Profile 21, operator of the test, said that students are beginning to learn English at an earlier age in Korea and about 7.2 trillion won is spent every year on English education here, but many children had to sit with adults to take either the TOEFL or TOEIC tests.
On the sideline of the media event, Lim said Korea has approximately 2.4 million students eligible to take the test and he expects about 700,000 of them are potential customers.
세계 최초 '주니어 토플' 시험 서울에 데뷔
TOEFL을 주관하는 미국 교육 평가원(ETS)이 개발한 아동 영어 능력 시험이 세계 최초로 서울에 데뷔를 할 예정이다.
시험은 현재 영어를 공부하는 만 12세-15세의 어린이들과 유학 갈 예정인 학생들을 대상으로 한다.
ETS는 한국에서 최초로 중학생을 대상한 '토플 주니어'를 개시한다고 15일에 밝혔다.
시험은 전국에서 매년 여덟 차례 치러질 예정이다. 응시료는 39,600원(33달러)이다.
"프로파일21사(社)는 한국에서 이 시험을 관장한다.
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yistory@koreatimes.co.kr
