• International Journal of Contents
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.33-40
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• 2010

This study aims at investigating the linguistic and educational factors affecting TOEFL scores, focusing on three OECD countries, Korea, Japan, and Finland. The data comprise document analysis on curriculums, websites, and literature. The findings reveal that the number of Korean test-takers and their TOEFL scores gradually increased year by year. Finnish test-takers consistently gained greatly high scores, and Japanese examinees showed the lowest scores. The languages Korean, Japanese, and Finnish are all far distant from English and receive little support on historical grounds from the Indo-European family tree. In Finland, however, Swedish which belongs to Indo-European languages is still used as an official language with Finnish. Korea and Finland adopt English education from Year 3 in primary school, whereas English is not an official subject in primary school at present in Japan. Finnish students are taught a foreign language in addition to English from primary school. These seem to support the result of the high TOEFL scores of Finnish test-takers. This study concludes that social context which includes linguistic and educational environments are the main factors which affect TOEFL scores.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.153-171
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• 2003

The scores of TOEFL, TOEIC, and TEPS have been increasingly used for many purposes in Korea. In particular, these test scores are being used as a predictor for determining readiness for and success in college work, or as a measure of the testees' overall English proficiency. Nonetheless, studies have rarely proposed that the validity of the test scores is used for either purpose. As a preliminary step to explore the predictive validity of the test scores, we collected the scores of TOEFL, TOEIC, and TEPS from thirty students of a university as well as their cumulative grade point averages (GPAs). The correlations between the test scores and GPAs show that TOEFL will be most likely to have the highest validity coefficient as a predictor for determining success in college work as well as a measure of overall English proficiency. Although this study has a few limitations such as the small number of participants, their homogeneousness as a group, etc., it provides some insight into the use of the three tests for college admissions and measurement of overall English proficiency and suggests need for conducting further validation studies in these areas.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.191-210
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• 2004

The scores of TOEFL, TOEIC and TEPS have been increasingly used for many purposes in Korea In particular, these test scores are being used as a measure of the test-takers' overall communicative competence. Nonetheless, few studies have been conducted that investigate the validity of the test scores used for this purpose. As a preliminary step to explore the validity of the test scores, we conducted a small scale study by comparing 30 university students' scores in TOEFL, TOElC and TEPS with their class performances in English conversation and composition courses. The correlations between the test scores and the grade point averages of the courses show that the test scores are much harder to use as a valid measure of test-takers' overall communicative competence than usually thought to be and that the score in TOEFL is, nonetheless, a more reliable measure than the ones in the other tests. Although tins study has a few limitations such as the small number of participants, the homogeneity of the sample as a group, etc, it provides some insight into the use of the three tests for measurement of overall communicative proficiency and suggests need for conducting further validation studies in these areas.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.157-175
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• 2000

The aim of this paper was to diagnose Korean college students' listening skills on the TOEFL. The researchers identified which section, among the TOEFL listening Part A, B, and C, is most easily teachable/ improvable during the period of a semester. First, the result of this research shows that Korean students tend to have lower scores in Part A than Part B or Part C. The results indicate that the short informal conversation doesn't give sufficient clues to students, and they don't have enough time to infer the answer. Second, the results revealed that. students showed the lowest progress in Part B after they studied TOEFL listening items and essential idioms for the listening section for 13 weeks. Because students didn't have much experience learning the informal conversation as opposed to the formal one in English, it is harder to achieve an improved grade in Part B, which consists of the informal conversation. But after a semester-long listening course, the average score on TOEFL listening sections increased.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.57-69
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• 2005

There have been changes throughout the past 100 years of English education in Korea. The Ministry of Education revised the English curriculum numerous times. From the 6th national curriculum, communicative competence became an essential objective in English learning. The study is to see if E University students' TOEIC results show any significant difference between the two groups under the 5th and 6th national curriculum. Another objective of this research is to see if recruiting medical students with high scores of the standardized English tests is suitable to select the best candidates who can fulfill medical studies. For these two purposes, sophomore students' TOEIC results in 2000 & 2004 and non-resident-status students' cumulative GPA were analyzed. The study shows that there is no significant difference in the two groups. Moreover, the current recruiting policy to select the best fit medical candidates based on their high TOEIC or TOEFL scores does not seem to be an appropriate measure since such students' GPA reveals poor academic performance amid their high scores in English.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.88-95
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• 2000

This paper attempts to investigate characteristic features of Japanese EFL learners' English intonation and how their Japanese accents are affecting their English intonation, focusing on a comparison between the accent patterns of Japanese compounds and the stress patterns of English compounds. It is based on research dedicated to helping to improve the teaching and learning of English intonation (prosody) for Japanese EFL learners. It examines the Fundamental Frequency (henceforth Fx) contours of two EFL college students, one specializing in English and the other in Japanese. Both of them may be considered upper intermediate EFL students with their TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores ranging between 500 and 550.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.187-209
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• 2001

This study attempts to supplement what is known about the influence of prior knowledge on second language listening comprehension. To do so, the study examines the effect of prior knowledge and language proficiency on the ability of L2 listeners to understand texts. The purpose of an experiment was to determine the effect of topic familiarity on the L2 listening comprehension ability of subjects who varied in L2 listening proficiency level. The subjects (N=117) were selected from a population of college students enrolled in the Departments of English and Business in Korea. English listening proficiency levels were designated on the basis of TOEFL listening scores. Subjects listened twice each to texts (more familiar and less familiar). After listening to each text, a ten-item objective test was administered to test the subjects' comprehension of the information presented in the text. Objective tests were analyzed. using repeated measures analysis. A post hoc test was conducted to identify the means that were significantly different. This study yielded the following results: (1) subjects with high prior knowledge comprehended texts significantly better than did subjects with low prior knowledge; (2) the level of L2 listening proficiency had a significant effect on the L2 listening comprehension of texts, but there was no interaction between prior knowledge and the level of L2 listening proficiency.