• LTRG Home
• Membership
• Programme
• Projects
• PhD Students' Research
• Language Testing Update
• Resources in Language Testing
• LAEL Home

The TOEFL Impact Study: Central and Eastern Europe

Researchers: Dianne Wall (Principal investigator) and Tania Horák (Research Associate)

This project is funded by Educational Testing Service (ETS), the producers of the Test Of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). The TOEFL taken by non-native speakers of English who need to submit evidence of their language proficiency when they apply to study in English-medium colleges and universities. The TOEFL can be described as a ‘high stakes test’, as its results are extremely important to the students who take it, and it is commonly asserted that its content and format encourage a prescriptive and conservative approach to language teaching.

A new version of the TOEFL has recently been introduced, which is meant to reflect modern views of language and to affect language teaching and learning in a positive way. ETS have commissioned two studies to look at the ‘washback’ of this test (its influence on teaching and learning) in various locations around the world. Our study looks at countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

In Phase One (January 2003 to June 2004) we produced a baseline study documenting the then-current practices in TOEFL test preparation courses. This investigation involved observations of classes and interviews with TOEFL teachers, students and Directors of Study. The report is available from the ETS website (www.ETS.org) - search under TOEFL, TOEFL Research, then Monographs.

Phase Two (October 2004 to March 2006) monitored six of the Phase 1 teachers during the period in which the old TOEFL was being phased out and the new test was being introduced in their countries . We investigated their understanding of and attitudes toward the changes in the test, and their views on whether they would need to change their way of teaching in future. We used computer-mediated communication to maintain regular contact with the teachers and to record their responses to a series of tasks designed to probe their awareness of and reactions to the changes. The report is available from the ETS website (www.ETS.org) - search under TOEFL, TOEFL Research, then TOEFL iBT Research Series.

In Phase 3 (April 2006 - March 2007) we focussed on the way in which commercially produced TOEFL preparation coursebooks influence teachers' understanding of the test and their ideas about what constitutes 'good TOEFL teaching'. We maintained contact with a subset of our original study participants, again using computer-mediated communication. The report from this phase will be available from the ETS website shortly.

We returned to the original teaching sites in Phase 4 , where we repeated the procedures we carried out in the Baseline Study. This enabled us to see whether there have been any changes in classroom practices. The final report has been submitted to ETS and should be available in the near future.

For further information about the TOEFL Impact Study please contact:

Dianne Wall, Project Coordinator

or

Tania Horák, Research Associate