Go Abroad with Standardized Test

Today’s world of education is full of standardized tests, varying from country to country. For example, in Thailand, high school students are required to take A-Net and O-Net examinations in order to compete for admissions to the prestigious, public universities. Upon graduation from their undergraduate schools, most students who see the importance of education will pursue further in higher education- the graduate schools. At this point, an international standardized test- TOEFL- for decades has come to play a significant role to those who want to study abroad. As a criterion used by many foreign institutions, especially in the United States, the TOEFL test has been developed to measure a variety of English-usage skills of applicants.

The old version of the TOEFL- CBT- consisted of four parts: listening, grammar, reading and writing. Most applicants contended that the listening was the hardest while some students argued that the reading was the toughest part on which to score. For the ineffective grammar part, there were so few questions with a short time that it was surely not enough to measure the critical understanding of English grammar usage. Like the grammar, the writing was incompetent to be used to measure the applicants’ writing skill as only a short period of time was available to give their responses to the question. However, the students could use a universal pattern for their writing response, and in most cases, they did; thus, this part was arranged in the manor that was not effective enough to reflect the tru potential of their writing skill.

Nowadays, the TOEFL has been developed to the IBT, which stands for Internet Based Test. A new part- the speaking- has been added to the test module in order to measure the essential skill of English proficiency. The test writers state that this is the better version of the test to be used as a criterion to select exceptional candidates to the renowned programs that use English as a teaching language and the programs that require critical English proficiency. Nonetheless, many people are still skeptical if the new TOEFL is culturally biased.