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Background Click here to watch the ETS introductory demo. The TOEFL exam - developed and marketed by Educational Testing Service™ of Princeton, New Jersey - is an "exam" in the sense that it has questions that must be answered. However, it is actually a "proficiency test", rather than an exam that you "pass" or "fail". It was, essentially, designed to be used by American universities to see whether the English proficiency level of a foreign applicant was "good enough" for that particular school. That means, for example, that - based on your TOEFL score - your English might be good enough to study at the State University of New York at Buffalo, but not at the University of Michigan. Since its inception, not only American universities, but also those in Canada and other English-speaking countries have come to accept the TOEFL as a measurement of a would-be student's level of English. More recently, companies too have adopted the TOEFL score as an indicator of whether a job applicant's English is "good enough" for her/him to be hired. Finally, some organizations that grant scholarships for study in the U.S., Canada, etc., use the TEOFL score as part of their overall evaluation of the candidates. With the changeover to a computerized test, ETS - and the Universities that require the TOEFL - are making an important "statement": they're saying, more or less, that they want students who know English well, and who feel comfortable working for a long period of time in front of a computer. In a way, the TOEFL is no longer just a test that measures your English proficiency. It also confronts you with having to sit for a long period of time (about 4 hours) in front of a computer, and concentrating on the information the computer is asking you for. |