 Capstone English Mastery Center Portland, Oregon Since 1929 |
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Capstone English Mastery Center PO Box 8795 Portland, OR 97207 United States of America Suite 350 1411 SW Morrison Street in Downtown Portland Oregon (503) 228-6346 (503) 228-3961 FAX 0900-1700 Pacific Time (GMT -8 -- In Summer: GMT -7) info@capstone.org |
The purpose of TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) is to assess the English skill of people whose native language is not English. TOEFL scores are required for admission to thousands of colleges in the United States and many in other countries as well where instruction is primarily in English. Many other institutions in the United States and abroad also use TOEFL scores as one component of their evaluation processes.
TOEFL is administered by Educational Testing Service (ETS), of Princeton, New Jersey, under the general direction of a policy council established by the College Board and the Graduate Record Examinations Board. According to the 1999-2000 TOEFL Information Bulletin, 930,000 people registered to take official TOEFLs in 1997-98.
All "official" TOEFLs (test scores which will be recognized by all institutions) in the United States are administered by computer at centers maintained by Sylvan Learning Systems Inc. Many individual schools, nevertheless, give their own TOEFLs in the traditional paper form. These are often called "institutional" TOEFLs because only the institution at which they are given will normally recognize the scores of those tests.
The computer-based TOEFL was introduced in July 1998. It is given in testing stations containing a computer and headphones. The test consists of 4 sections:
Listening measures the ability to understand English as it is spoken in North America. This section tests comprehension of main ideas, supporting ideas, important details, and inferences. You will both see and hear the questions before answer choices appear.
Structure measures the ability to recognize language that is appropriate for standard written English. The language tested is formal, rather than conversational. When topics have a national context, they refer to United States or Canadian history, culture, art, or literature. However, knowledge of these contexts is not needed to answer the questions.
Reading measures the ability to understand short passages similar in topic and style to academic texts used in North American colleges and universities. You will read a variety of short passages on academic subjects and answer several questions about each passage.
Writing measures the ability to write in English on an assigned topic. You must compose an essay.
The computer-based TOEFL combines many of the same questions types that can be offered only on the computer, but the most significant difference between the computer-based test and the paper-based test is that the Listening and Structure sections of the computer-based test are "computer-adaptive". In the paper-based test everyone sees a fixed number of question in a test booklet; in the adaptive sections of the computer-based test questions are chosen from a large pool of questions that are categorized by content and ranked by difficulty. The first question is randomly chosen from among those of average difficulty, but the next question will be chosen from among those of greater or lesser difficulty based upon whether you answered the first one correctly. This way, although the scores of all test-takers are based on the same number of questions, no two test-takers will receive the same questions in the same order.
On these sections, you cannot skip questions and go back to answer them later. The computer-based TOEFL can have scores ranging from 40 to 300, while the paper-based test can have scores ranging from 310 to 677.
Every college and university sets its own required TOEFL score. Capstone believes that students should have a score of well over 500 if they are to be successful in college. Most colleges seem to agree, as the required score for most undergraduate programs is approximately 525, and the score for graduate programs from 550 to 600. An approximate equivalence between paper-based and computer-based scores will be found here).The Reading section is not adaptive, and you are allowed to skip and return to earlier questions. In the Writing section you will be assigned a topic selected by the computer from a list of topics. You may either type or hand write your essay.