When an EFL Teacher Takes the TOEFL
Mandana Arfa Kaboodvand, Iran
Mandana Arfa Kaboodvand has been teaching English to both young learners and young adults for almost 20 years. Since 1994 she has been a lecturer the English Language Department at Azad University, Tehran, Iran. Her main areas of interest are teaching English to YLs, multiple intelligence, culture related issues in language teaching, and globalization. E-mail: m_arfa@yahoo.com
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Background information
The components of the test
The teacher’s experience as the test taker
Comments and questions
What I have learned as a teacher
The result
Reference
The teacher has a master’s degree in TEFL and has been teaching English for almost 20 years. In addition to being a lecturer at the language department of a university, she teaches general English to adolescent and young adults. Having recently decided to pursue her studies in the UK, she needs to provide her chosen university with a language score. Assuming that she is competent enough and has the language competency, she immediately registers for the earliest possible date to sit the TOEFL and in order to be on the safe side studies the ETS site and familiarizes herself with the components and arrangements of the test. The iBT sounds very exciting and very innovative to her then.
Anyway, there comes the day for taking the test. The test is supposed to start at 5 p.m., but due to some justifiable problems it starts at around 7:30 p.m. and by the time she is done it is almost midnight. (However, the plan is not to criticize what happened in the test center which can be of course a separate story for itself.). What will be done here is mainly to raise some questions related to the content of the test and then discuss how experiences such as this can prove useful for the EFL teachers.
First let’s have a very brief revision of the content of the test. This test has four components, reading, listening, speaking and writing. The reading test according to the information provided by the site has between 3 to 5 passages taking from 60-100 minutes with 36 to 70 questions. The listening section has 6 to 9 tasks with 34 to 51 questions and takes between 60 to 90 minutes. Then there is a 10-minute break and after that there is the 20-minute speaking. As for the speaking, there are 2 general questions probably used as ice breakers, and then there are 2 reading passages along with 2 listening tasks related to them and for each set there is a question to be answered by the candidate. For the last phase of the speaking, there are 2 listening passages based on which questions will be asked and the candidate should be answering them. As for one of the writings, the candidate should be writing a passage in 20 minutes commenting on the content of a listening he/she has heard and a reading which is about the same topic. The second writing is a on an argumentative topic. There are more than 160 topics provided in the ETS book and one of them selected for the test.
According to the information provided in the site, “The TOEFL iBT emphasizes integrated skills and provides better information to institutions about students' ability to communicate in an academic setting and their readiness for academic coursework. With Internet-based testing, ETS can capture speech and score responses in a standardized manner.”
As can be easily calculated then, there are between 7_9 reading passages on different topics of course all related to university subjects. There also between 11_14 listening passages for the listening, speaking and writing sections together, which again are from lectures on different subjects which as claimed do not require prior information, and also dialogues expecting to be taking place in the university campus. (Since the reading and listening tasks are quite long note taking is also allowed.) In other words the test taker is exposed to something between 18 to 23 different spoken and written passages, besides needing to answer the questions and not to forget the writing tasks.
That teacher happens to be me. To put it bluntly, during the test I was fed up. Firstly, staring at the monitor for such a long time proved very difficult for me. Secondly, the speaking part was a disaster. No matter how hard I tried my voice was too loud I suppose, because the exam invigilators reminded me twice to keep my voice down, while I thought that I was whispering. (Their warnings made me lose time of course!!!) Some of the reading passages were really uninteresting and I was bored to death reading them. There were obviously too many of them and when I left the test center I could hardly recall any of them. I did not even take my break, because I honestly wanted to get rid of the test. You are not allowed to eat or drink during the test; therefore, I was hungry, thirsty and very tired. Added to all this, I was having my students in mind thinking how embarrassed I would be if I do not do a good job!
The insertion of the integrated part in the test is an innovative and effective technique. To my understanding its aim is to put emphasis on communicative competence and to make sure that the would-be students could handle the university requirements effectively in all aspects, so the reason reading and listening are still assessed in separate and unintegrated sections is not clear. I assume one of the intentions of the new version of TOEFL is to create a situation as close as possible to the real life of a university student, but I do not again see how it is achieved through such a long test. In no real situation that at least I can think of, is a student required to deal with so many different reading and listening passages on different subjects in one go.
Speaking
- To me the speaking is a very unnatural circumstance. In a real interaction you are dealing with real people. You are actually interacting with them, so in case for one reason or another, I do not hear their question, I can ask them to repeat it. However, in the iBT if say, one sneezes when a question is being asked, he/she will miss his/her chances of answering the question. Can’t it be arranged that provided for one reason or another the test taker misses the question it can be repeated once?
- While talking to people, your intention is understanding them and making yourself understood and if you are over- talking then at least their body language will tell you that you have to stop or wrap up the information you are providing quickly, however, in the iBT all the time you should have an eye on the meter making sure that you will finish in the 45 or 60 seconds you have and for me that was a nerve taking experience. Can’t it again be arranged that at least an imaginary interviewer be filmed and shown on the monitor in the hope of making the situation look more natural and less stressful?
- The reason for giving such a short time for answering the speaking questions is unclear to me. Who would only talk for 45 seconds about a topic of general interest?
Reading
- The reading passages were too many and too varied. Can’t fewer number of passages be used to make the assessments? It is understandable that test takers have different interests so variety s not bad to satisfy the interest of a wide range of people, but like I said, after the test I could not remember much and I doubt if other even want to recall the passages.
- Is there a possibility for giving alternative topics for the reading part, so that the candidates will at least be able to make their own choices concerning the topics they would prefer to be reading?
Listening
- The same thing mentioned about reading applies to the listening. There were so many tasks and after having done the readings you really were not in the mood for so many listening passages, some of which were quite long. Why are there so many of them?
Right in the test session, I honestly started to sympathize with all my students who have/would be taking the test. I had always told them that if they knew good English then tests of language proficiency would pose no problem. And also I had told them to learn the language in the class and train for those tests such as TOEFL or IELTS on their own and ask for help if required. Now I think besides briefing them and giving them some general guidelines and test techniques, which I thought were important, there are some other specific points, that I should definitely be practicing with them and having the knowledge is not necessarily enough.
I will not encourage the students to take the test unless I am almost certain they can obtain the required score. Retaking the test will not be a pleasant experience.
The teacher received her score some time ago. Phew! Gee! She has gained a very good score, but she knows that she could have done it without any mistakes had she not got so exhausted! She will not tell her students about it anyway!
Her advice to the TOEFL candidates is to take the whole test in one go at home at least once so that they would roughly know how they would feel in the actual session.
www.ets.org/toefl
For more ideas look at How to pass the TOEFL
The Humanising Testing course can be viewed here
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