Anti-TOEFL


Do you know what TOEFL is? It means Test of English as a Foreign Language. It was made in 1964 by Educational Testing Service for non-native people who want to study in America, Canada, and England. It is used not only for standards for admission, but also for scholarship programs and various institutions of governments. The author states, “Today, eight hundred thousand students take TOEFL in more than 90 countries every year around the world.” (“What is TOEFL”, (n.d.), para 1). Although a lot of people take TOEFL today, the PBT TOEFL should not be used to decide if non-native students can be accepted to an American university because of unfair questions, strange techniques, and uncertain scores.
First, PBT TOEFL is a not English test that measures students’ true English skills. It can not measure speaking skills. For example, it is said that Saudi Arabians are better at speaking English than they are at grammar or reading. However, there are listening, grammar, and reading sections in TOEFL. For them, TOEFL is not fair because they can not exercise their conversational ability. As a result, learners may ignore speaking and then students’ speaking ability loses. We can say the same opinion like that in writing. For university class, writing is very important. Students are required to write a lot of papers for exams or thesises for graduation. But students do not have to study it for TOEFL. TOEFL can not measure all abilities. Therefore, we should not say that PBT TOEFL is a perfect test.
Next, students have some strange techniques to get scores of PBT TOEFL. They can guess answers because there are four alternative answers. It means there is 25% probability that students can get a point without understanding. Moreover, they can cram for TOEFL. Book stores sell a lot of textbooks for TOEFL. You can prepare yourself just for TOEFL by learning a lot of information very quickly and check the tendency what part you should study. You can focus to study listening, grammar, and reading. If you study these sections for 10 days, your score will be better. Therefore, it is possible for students to consider their plans for TOEFL in advance. Some cunning students can get high score on the PBT TOEFL with special techniques.
Third, students’ score are unstable. It depends on their physical and mental condition. For example, if a student catches a cold, his/her score will not be good because he/her could not concentrate on TOEFL. Another example, if a student was turned down by his girlfriend before TOEFL, his score would be terrible. In addition, students are lucky to even comprehend the TOEFL. The level of difficulty changes every time. For instance, if there are many questions about history, some students who know well about it can get points. It depends on students’ background information. Therefore, PBT TOEFL score likely to change suddnely.
My opponents say that TOEFL is easy to use score. However, even students got high scores in TOEFL; it is not useful standard except for study in United States. TOEIC, Test of English for International Communication is more important than TOEFL for getting a job. In addition, TOEFL has the term of validity, of 2 years. For example, even if a student who has economic problem could get high score, he can not study abroad because of the life. On the other hand, people can use some English tests such as Test in Practical English Proficiency as qualifications through the whole life. Like this, a lot of people say PBT TOEFL is not good test.
In conclusion, TOEFL is a harmful test in several reasons. Through PBT TOEFL, students cannot come into their own ability. Good English tests should evaluate all abilities equally. Moreover, some students study just for TOEFL not for improvements of English with special techniques. Even if they get high score, actually they can not understand English and follow college classes. In addition, the difficulty of TOEFL varies widely every time. In the future, more and more people will be interested in foreign culture and study abroad will become usual. They need to take English tests like TOEFL for getting admissions from universities. The organization need reform this formation to produce many international people.

Reference
What is TOEFL? (n.d.). CIEE ETS Products Official Page. Retrieved January 28, 2007, from http://www.cieej.or.com/toefl/index.html