New TOEFL Exam Quick Battle Quick Resolution ()

Author: Beijing New Oriental School TOEFL Research Center
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: The purpose of the TOEFL test is to assess the examinee's adaptability to life and study in North American campuses, making it a comprehensive test that covers Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. It evaluates true English proficiency. In the past, TOEFL had also included individual tests, such as TWE (Test of Written English) for writing and TSE (Test of Spoken English) for speaking. These individual tests were not conducted holistically and lacked unified standards, making it difficult to accurately and comprehensively reflect the examinee's language abilities. The redesigned TOEFL, however, encompasses all four skills, emphasizing their integrated application, which holds significant historical importance. The TOEFL exam will be conducted globally through the Internet at designated test centers. Facing such a novel test like iBT, examinees not only need to communicate in English but also need to work in harmony with computers: Listening requires wearing headphones; Speaking requires speaking into a microphone; Reading requires staring at the screen; Writing requires typing on the keyboard. Among these, the integrated tasks for Speaking and Writing also require examinees to engage in Listening, Reading, Speaking (or Writing) simultaneously, with their brains rapidly processing information and their hands and eyes working in coordination. In this form of Communication with computers, achieving "human-computer unity and seamless collaboration" indeed poses challenges to examinees' four language skills, as well as their logical thinking and computer operation abilities.