In the writing section a new read-listen-write task requires the student to write a summary of what is heard and relate this to what has been read. These tasks tap new constructs that are not just about "speaking" in the -traditional sense, but about the ability to integrate information from different sources, summarise that information, find a solution to a problem or explain how examples relate to arguments. In the speaking tasks, learners are asked to read-listen-speak in two tasks, and listen-speak in a further two. What is perhaps the most -radical feature of the Toefl iBT is the incorporation of the integrated tasks within the speaking and writing sections. These are tested in academic and academic related situations. Similarly in the listening section, items test basic comprehension, pragmatic understanding and connecting and synthesizing information. These new constructs have resulted in new item types: the category chart questions, where sentences have to be categorised to show how information is organised, and summary questions, where learners demonstrate their understanding of main ideas.
It is this latter construct, which is relatively new, that appears to account for the significantly longer texts in the new test. In the case of reading we are told that the items will test finding information, basic comprehension (understanding main ideas, making inferences), and reading to learn (recognising organisation, relationships between ideas, organisation of information). So what is new about the content of the Toefl iBT? The first thing to notice is that each section has an explicit claim about what it is measuring, and hence about what the score means. Through what ETS calls Evidence Centred Design (ECD) a validity argument was constructed while the test was being designed and developed. The process used is an attempt to introduce validity (understood as an argument that supports the meaning of the inference we make from a test score to test construct) into test design from the earliest stages, rather than treat validity as something that is considered after the event. It was then necessary to consider what observations would be needed to make these inferences, what situations or tasks would be required to generate the observations, and what argument could be developed to link task to observation to score to KSAs. Rather the focus was on describing the construct of the test, or the knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) that are needed in an academic environment, and to which we wish to make inferences from a score on a test.
#Toefl ibt practice test from ets how to#
At this stage there was little thought about how to test. This lead to the production of "Framework" documents that attempted to describe the abilities that learners of English needed to operate in an academic environment. The design process for the new test started with blue skies thinking about what it means to communicate effectively in an academic context. The second is that the Toefl has been criticised for many years for its limited conceptualisation of what it means to be able to communicate - most often expressed in an all too simple attack on the multiple choice format. The first reason is that the university admissions officers themselves have been asking for more information than the existing Toefl can provide in particular they want an indication of how well applicants can speak in an academic environment. So why have we seen such a major change to both the test and the score reporting in 2005? This threw admissions officers in North American universities into panic. Toefl was first introduced in 1964, and revised significantly only when the computer-based test (CBT) - which added a compulsory writing component and changed the scoring scale - was introduced in 1998. Toefl iBT represents a fundamental shift in how Educational Testing Service (ETS) sees the practice of educational assessment from test design to test use.
If teachers think the new Test of English as a Foreign Language internet-based test (Toefl iBT) is just a new test, they would be wrong.
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