A number of years ago Educational Testing Services (ETS), thepeople responsible for the TOEFL test, brought the test into thecomputer age by transitioning it from a paper-based test to acomputer-based test. This allowed them to stop the practice ofpreviewing questions and answers while listening to material,and it allowed them to add some unique testing questions, suchas matching up items and placing a sentence within a paragraph.It also allowed them to individualize the listening and grammarsections of the test by catering items to the ability of thestudent. A student's score was no longer dependent on the numberof correct answer he or she gave but the degree of difficulty ofquestions he or she was able to answer correctly. However, thecomputer-based TOEFL was an assembly of separate skills -reading, listening, grammar, and writing. In this format it waspossible for students to learn tricks to increase theirperformance in each of these areas, a practice that did notreflect their true ability to handle the language. Studentscould demonstrate their reading skills separate from theirlistening skills and writing skills, but true language is seldomso fragmented. This weakness in the test was made worse by theabsence of a speaking component. If a student wanted todemonstrate a competency in this skill, he or she had to take aseparate speaking test such as the TSE, the Test of SpokenEnglish, also produced by ETS. It became obvious that a changein the TOEFL was necessary to reflect the true nature of Englishto see whether a testtaker could handle the language in moretrue-to-life situations. Enter the Internet, the ultimate medium.

With the Next Generation iBT TOEFL, students go on-line and takethe test directly from ETS at test centers throughout the world.There are roughly forty-five sessions a year, all on Fridays orSaturdays. Details can be found on the ETS web site athttp://www.ets.org. The iBT, Internet-based test, is anintegration of all four language skills - reading, listening,speaking, and writing - in which grammar plays a more minor butstill a necessary component. In other words, there is no longera grammar section on the TOEFL, but grammar is taken intoconsideration in the evaluation of both the speaking and writingsections. Another change is in the scoring. Whereas thecomputer-based TOEFL was scored out of 300, the iBT is scoredout of 120, 30 in each of the four skills. To succeed in thisnew format, students need to be good note takers as they will berequired to read passages and then listen to lectures or longconversations in order to respond either orally or by writing toquestions, usually about how the written material relates to thelistening material. The language skills of gist, details,inferences, vocabulary, reference, and insertion are stilltested along with the new skills of paraphrasing and determiningoverall organization and purpose. The addition of these newskills, along with the integration of the sections, makes theNext Generation iBT TOEFL a more valid evaluation of a student'sreal-life language skills and his or her ability to succeed in areal academic setting.

Since preparing for the Next Generation iBT TOEFL ischallenging, a student is well advised to take a class or join astudy group to develop the necessary skills to pass. Also, it isessential that a student get a good preparation textbook, butthere are only a few that have kept up with the changes in thetest, such as Longman Preparation Course for the TOEFL Test ,Next Generation iBT and Delta's Key to the Next Generation TOEFLTest. Many private and community colleges offer one- or two-termpreparation courses, but there may be prerequisites a studentmust satisfy before being admitted to these classes. There is analternative, however, for people who want to bypassprerequisites or are unable to invest three to six monthspreparation time. The TEST PREP Team offers a 45-hour intensiveTOEFL Preparation Course over ten Saturdays. This course isavailable only in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia,Canada. Information on this course, as well as a number oflearning tools to help students prepare by themselves, isavailable at http://study4toefl.com, but hurry - the next classstarts on October 8th.

Ambien Malecot, BA, MA Instructor / ProgramDeveloper The TEST PREP Team TOEFL Course

#206 - 3280 West Broadway Vancouver, British Columbia

V6K 2H4 CANADA Telephone: 604-738-0077 Fax:604-739-3777 E-mail: info@study4toefl.com Web Address:http://www.study4toefl.com When one teaches, twolearn - Robert Half