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| TOEIC | |
|---|---|
| Name | TOEIC |
| Caption | Test of English for International Communication |
| Administered by | Educational Testing Service |
| Introduced | 1979 |
| Skills | Listening, Reading, Speaking, Writing |
| Score range | 10–990 (Listening & Reading); 0–200 (Speaking); 0–200 (Writing) |
TOEIC The Test of English for International Communication is an English-language proficiency examination used for workplace contexts and professional placement, developed to assess practical listening, reading, speaking, and writing skills relevant to international business. It is administered worldwide by Educational Testing Service and is employed by corporations, ministries, universities, and recruitment agencies for personnel selection, promotion, and benchmarking.
The exam evaluates communicative competence through standardized items derived from workplace scenarios associated with multinational corporations, airline operations, hotel management, and international trade organizations; comparison institutions include British Council, Cambridge Assessment English, IELTS, Pearson PLC, and ACT, Inc.. Test centers operate alongside institutions such as University of Tokyo, Seoul National University, University of São Paulo, National University of Singapore, and University of Oxford where proficiency benchmarks align with frameworks like the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and credentialing bodies such as Council of Europe and European Commission. Employers including Toyota Motor Corporation, Samsung Electronics, Sony, Airbus, and Deloitte often reference scores when recruiting, similar to credential use by Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Siemens, Unilever, and Procter & Gamble.
The assessment was introduced in 1979 by a nonprofit organization linked to testing research, reflecting trends in second-language assessment that involved institutions such as Yale University, Princeton University, Harvard University, Stanford University, and Columbia University. Research and piloting phases engaged linguists associated with University of California, Los Angeles, University of Michigan, University of Edinburgh, University of Cambridge, and McGill University, and reflected influences from standardized tests like SAT, GRE, TOEFL, and GMAT. Its expansion through the 1980s and 1990s saw partnerships with ministries and agencies including Ministry of Education (Japan), Ministry of Education (South Korea), Singapore Ministry of Education, French Ministry of National Education, and German Academic Exchange Service, and collaborations with publishers such as Pearson Education, McGraw-Hill Education, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Cengage Learning.
Current administrations include Listening and Reading modules and separate Speaking and Writing modules, with item types informed by corpus studies from projects associated with Lancaster University, British National Corpus, Corpus of Contemporary American English, Oxford English Corpus, and Cambridge English Corpus. Sections draw on task designs used in workplace simulations similar to role-plays in International Air Transport Association procedures, customer service dialogues in hospitality contexts like Hilton Worldwide and Marriott International, and written correspondence formats aligned with templates used by United Nations agencies and World Bank reports. Delivery modes encompass paper-and-pencil administrations and computer-based testing platforms comparable to systems used by Prometric, Pearson VUE, ETS PowerPrep, Kryterion, and IELTS Online.
Scores for the combined Listening and Reading section range from 10 to 990, reporting scale scores that correspond to proficiency bands often mapped to Common European Framework of Reference for Languages levels by institutions such as European Centre for Modern Languages and Council of Europe. Speaking and Writing modules use separate 0–200 scales with rubrics influenced by descriptors from American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and assessment practices seen in Cambridge English Scale. Employers and academic institutions like Kyoto University, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of Melbourne often set cutoffs or equivalencies for hiring and admission.
Preparation resources include official practice tests, preparation books, and courses produced by publishers and educational providers such as ETS, Kaplan, Inc., Barron's Educational Series, Longman, Routledge, and McGraw-Hill. Commercial test-preparation companies and language schools—examples include EF Education First, Wall Street English, Berlitz Corporation, Inlingua, and Kumon—offer classroom and online modules, while digital platforms and apps developed by firms like Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, Babbel, Coursera, and Udemy provide supplementary practice through simulated items and automated scoring analytics.
The examination is administered in hundreds of countries with test centers coordinated through regional offices and partners such as ETS Global, national ministries, private testing centers, language institutes, and university testing services; comparable global networks include those used by TOEFL, IELTS, GMAT, GRE, and SAT. National employment agencies and corporations in countries including Japan, South Korea, France, Germany, Brazil, China, India, Thailand, and Vietnam use the score for recruitment, internal promotion, and language training needs, similar to practices by organizations like United Nations Development Programme, World Health Organization, International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank, and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Critiques have focused on construct validity, washback effects, and cultural bias, issues debated in scholarship from journals like TESOL Quarterly, Language Testing, Applied Linguistics, Modern Language Journal, and Journal of English for Academic Purposes and raised by researchers at institutions such as University of Toronto, University of Hong Kong, University of California, Berkeley, University of Sydney, and Monash University. Policy controversies have involved corporate reliance on single-test thresholds and their socioeconomic implications, echoing debates involving standardized testing controversies seen with SAT, ACT, GRE, GMAT, and national examinations administered by ministries and testing authorities.
Category:Language tests