By Yun Suh-young
A new type of English test is expected to stir up English learners in Korea in the years to come.
PTE Academic, created 18 months ago by Pearson Education, is a test similar to existing English proficiency tests but with several unique features.
The test boasts of its strengths in speed of results, flexible test dates and fully automatic scoring process. It is an officially certified international English test by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) which manages the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT).
“Why do we need a new English test? Because it can shake up English learners who have become complacent with the existing tests,” said Mary Jane Hogan, master trainer of PTE Academic at Pearson, a global educational publisher.
Hogan was in Seoul last Tuesday to conduct a teacher training workshop at Pagoda Academy, a language institute in Korea which has several branches nationwide. The workshop was to train teachers in what the test is about. Since the test was new, teachers also had to be taught how to guide their students.
“PTE Academic takes a slightly different approach from the two big players in the English testing market ― TOEFL and IELTS. It differentiates itself from other tests where students can think about answers and go back and amend them. It’s very much a reflection of the way we really use English,” said Hogan.
She stressed that the new test is more likely to encourage the development of real language skills as it is unpredictable just as real life conversation is.
“If you put enough effort into some tests, you can work out how to get a good mark on that item. People eventually get very good at test taking skills but it doesn’t generalize into real English,” she said. “I think the risk of that with PTE Academic is less because all the test preparations that we put out are focused on developing skills, not just on doing the items well.”
The test is focused on real time processing, which means that students must respond spontaneously to answers and cannot go back to change them.
“We can’t go back and undo what we said when we’re speaking in real life,” said Hogan. “It’s just the same for this test, which is why it reflects the way we really speak.”
The test also differs from those of its competitors in that it uses fully automatic scoring methods. In speaking and writing, the sections in which other tests use human ratings along with automatic scoring, PTE Academic uses fully automatic scoring.
Why would this be a competitive advantage?
“The speed of results,” she said. “The automatic scoring allows students to receive the result within five days. At the quickest, they can receive it in one or two days. It takes longer for other computer-based tests because a human rater scores the speaking and writing sections. For this test, the computer does it all.”
When asked how accurate and reliable this system could be, the educator said “very credible.”
“The test is still in the development stage right now so the computers are being trained about automatic scoring. If it is not confident enough to grade a certain person, it sends it to a human rater who will grade it. This process will be repeated and in the end, we won’t need human raters at all because there are so many samples of performance,” she said.
The test will be especially challenging but at the same time rewarding for Korean students.
“When Korean students are preparing for this test, they should focus on being tested on communication. They’ve got to be prepared to just talk and not worry so much about errors,” Hogan said.
She added that making mistakes is a way to learn English more quickly. Asian students, however, tend to avoid speaking because of the fear of making mistakes.
“One thing I noticed in Australia, where we have students who come from all over the world to learn English, is that Western or European and especially South American students are very ready and willing to talk all the time. But Asian students are more reluctant to make mistakes so they don’t speak as much and don’t learn as much,” said the Australian trainer. “If you don’t produce the language, you don’t learn.”
The test will be welcomed by students worldwide as universities are already being attracted to it.
Test dates for PTE Academic are more or less on demand so that if a student needs to take a test, the center will offer a test date. This allows students who are in a hurry to apply to universities a chance to take the test. TOEFL and IELTS, on the other hand, have fixed dates.
The test also gives students the choice to send in their best scores.
“Students are notified by e-mail or SNS within five days. When they log on to their account, they can see all the results of the tests they have taken and they can choose the best one that they want to send to the college. They can send it to as many as seven institutions at a time,” she said.
The test has received approval from 1,800 university programs in schools such as Yale, Cornell, Harvard, Columbia and the London School of Economics, and has been adopted by the UK Border Agency as a required test for students seeking visas in the United Kingdom.