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TOEIC4Success

  • Hello from the new TOEIC USA rep

    Posted by TOEIC4Success | Thursday, 25 August 2011 - 7:14am |

    Hello TOEIC4Success readers! I'm Cary Bohlin, AMIDEAST's new primary sales and support person for the TOEIC family of tests and English language learning products. (Lia and other staff here will also be available to provide other information and help to you.)

    With over ten years of experience in English language instruction in the United States as well as in Japan, Europe, and other overseas locations, I can offer you solid and truly consultative support.

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    Tagged under: TOEIC tests

  • Is English Easier than Other Languages?

    Posted by TOEIC4Success | Monday, 22 August 2011 - 4:21pm | 2 Comments

    The article “English: the Inescapable Language,” which appears in the latest issue of The American, a journal published by the American Enterprise Institute, has a somewhat different focus than you would expect from its title.

    The article indeed does discuss how English has becomes the world’s common language of the workplace, including some interesting “did you know?” material such as the following—

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    Tagged under: English language learning | Tagged under: English language teaching | Tagged under: Research and statistics: language learning

  • Speaking Tests via Computer: Are Cost Savings the Reason?

    Posted by TOEIC4Success | Tuesday, 16 August 2011 - 9:35am |

    For those of you who like a quick answer—not necessarily. The reasons that ETS provides TOEIC Speaking tests by computer as well as the cost-intensive methods that they've chosen for scoring the test go beyond a business decision and are both fascinating and commonly misunderstood.

    For a long time, there was no TOEIC Speaking test. While other agencies offered speaking tests via interviewer, ETS was concerned not only about the time- and labor-intensive nature of such testing for large groups, but also about interviewer subjectivity. No matter how well-trained interviewers are (and for many tests...

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    Tagged under: Research and statistics: English language testing | Tagged under: Speaking skills | Tagged under: TOEIC tests

  • Global English: Teaching to the Need

    Posted by TOEIC4Success | Monday, 8 August 2011 - 8:07am |

    As summarized in my last post, the numbers compiled in the recent “English Proficiency Index" from EF Education First provide overwhelming evidence of how the spread of  English as a common tongue worldwide has made the language a "basic," vital for individual and national success.
     
    An unchanging reality, however, is that full fluency in a second language is not easy to achieve. In the best of all cases—when...

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    Tagged under: English language learning | Tagged under: English language teaching | Tagged under: Research and statistics: language learning

  • Global English: By the Numbers

    Posted by TOEIC4Success | Monday, 1 August 2011 - 8:32am | 2 Comments

    A recent “English Proficiency Index" from EF Education First, focusing on a cross-national comparison of English language capability, is as interesting to me for its survey of statistical studies from the past few years and its thoughtful discussion of changes in how English is learned and used worldwide as for its own original research. (That research, based on over two million adults completing four different, free online tests each covering grammar, vocabulary, reading, and listening skills, found that Norway had the highest average proficiency of the forty-four countries...

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    Tagged under: Research and statistics: language learning