By Jung Min-ho
Some TOEFL instructors "steal" test questions and help their students cheat for higher scores.
An investigation by The Korea Times also found that the cheating is conducted with the knowledge or encouragement of language institutes, which are corporate in scale.
The Educational Testing Service (ETS), the U.S. organization that manages TOEFL is preparing legal action; already, some "hagwon" and their instructors have been prosecuted for helping students cheat on TOEIC and TEPS.
Instructors at Lee Ik-hoon Language Institute and Park Jung Language Institute are actively engaged in TOEFL cheating. A suspected instructor recently moved from Park Jung to Pagoda.
An ETS official, Yang Li, told The Korea Times the service is "taking the allegations about fraudulent tests and cheating seriously."
The ETS regulations stipulate that it will cancel the scores of any test taker who has pre-knowledge of test questions. Also any compiling of previous tests is barred. The ETS relies on a pool of questions that are repeated in a cycle.
"After you deposit 300,000 won ($280) to my bank account, I will send you the materials (for the test on Oct. 21)," TOEFL teacher Kim said when asked if it would be possible to get "leaked" questions. "The questions may not all be the same. But the questions on the speaking and writing sections on today's test (Oct. 12) are the same. So, think about it."
The Times uncovered selling of illegal materials is blatant in many institutes in Seoul, including major ones such as the Lee Ik-hoon and Park Jung institutes. There, lecturers even promote their classes with real test questions that they somehow retained from previous exams.
Lee, the teacher who recently moved to Pagoda, used test questions from last year to prepare her students for the test on Feb. 3. And her predictions on what would be in the test were right.
According to multiple students, the prompts, "The three causes of the extinction of X," "Three ways to restraint rootworms" and "It is more important to choose friends who have fun with you than to choose friends who can help you when you need them" all appeared on the test.
Another lecturer at the Lee Ik-hoon institute posted questions of the July 21 test on its homepage, noting that he was right about all the speaking questions, including "No.1 Describe what kind of group you would like to participate in."
In class, teachers use their own materials, which are often obtained illegally to create so-called "question banks," where previous test questions and model answers are stored for later use.
This material is not only what they teach but the core of what many students pay for.
"I decided to take the class because I urgently needed a high score. All the predicted questions were on the monitor. You have no idea how it feels," wrote a student at the Park Jung institute in a review.
According to the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, Korean students in the United States amount to almost 100,000 this year.
But given that a good TOEFL score is not only required for admission to many English-speaking colleges but is also needed for special admission to many Korean colleges, the failed test monitoring is a serious threat to standards and equal opportunities in education.
Evidence of cheating is rife; and the damage to the integrity of the test can be especially serious in the world's most wired nation, where such information spreads quickly online.
However, unless penalties imposed on teachers suspected of leaking test questions are greater than the profits made, cheating will likely remain rampant.
"If the evidence is clear, we can shut them down permanently, but there has never been such a case," said a Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education official. "Owners of English institutes are confident that ETS will not confirm that the questions are leaked because it will also be an admission of it being at fault."