'TOEIC unsuitable for civil service exam applicants'

Jeon Gyeong-bok, president of the Korea International Language Promotion Association

By Chung Hyun-chae

An English exam expert has called on the government to develop a better test to evaluate English proficiency of civil service exam applicants instead of relying on such tests as TOEIC and TOEFL.

“The civil service exams through which public servants are recruited should be in line with the regular school curriculum,” said Jeon Gyeong-bok, president of the Korea International Language Promotion Association.

He opposes the Ministry of Personnel Management’s plan to replace the current English test in the civil service exam for grade 7 officials with TOEIC, TOEFL and other widely used English tests starting 2017.

According to the plan, anyone can apply for the grade 7 civil service exam as long as he or she has a score of 700 or higher on TOEIC, or 71 or higher on TOEFL. Applicants have three years to use their scores.

The civil service exam for grade 9 officials is also likely to follow suit as early as 2018.

Jeon stressed that the English examination for recruiting competent civil servants should be designed to test applicants’ practical English skills and capacity for language acquisition, rather than their knowledge of English.

“The purpose of taking TOEIC is to test business English ability so that the test-takers can communicate better with foreign business partners,” Jeon said, adding that this is far different from the purpose of the civil service exam.

“People study TOEIC books, not English books, to get high scores on the test, which means they could not improve general English-language skills through TOEIC.”

He pointed out that one cannot prepare for the English test in a short period of time.

“The test should properly evaluate test-takers’ English proficiency in reading, listening, writing and speaking,” Jeon said.

He took an example of a test question asking for the right accent and intonation of words and sentences.

“This is a very simple example but this kind of question can test if a test-taker really can use English in a real situation,” Jeon said.

Replacing the English test in the civil service exam with TOEIC has invited criticism from those preparing for the exam because of the test fees.

“If the government wants to change the English test, it should also consider the fees test-takers have to pay,” said a 26-year-old university graduate who has been preparing for the grade 9 civil service exam since April.

“The test fees are burdensome for applicants. They also lead to the outflow of money to the foreign administrator of the test. This is ridiculous,” Jeon said. “I believe some domestic English tests would be more competitive to replace the civil service test than TOEIC.”