TOEIC History
The Educational Testing Service (ETS) in the USA developed the TOEIC test based on its academic ETS counterpart, the TOEFL test, following a request from Japan's Keidanren (Japan Federation of Economic Organizations; 経団連) in conjunction with the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI; 通商産業省; 通産省), which is today's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI; 経済産業省; 経産省). The Asahi Shimbun national daily's evening edition [1] interviewed Yasuo Kitaoka (北岡靖男 Kitaoka Yasuo) who was the central figure of the Japanese team that conceived the basic idea of the TOEIC test. ETS's major competitor is Cambridge University, which administers the IELTS, FCE, and CAE.
A new version of the TOEIC was released in 2006. The changes can be summarized as follows:
* Overall, passages have become longer.
* Part 1 has fewer questions involving photo descriptions.
* The Listening Section hires not only North American English speakers but also British, Australian and New Zealand English speakers. The ratio is 25% each for American, Canadian, British and Australian-New Zealand pronunciation [2].
* Part 6 no longer contains the error spotting task, which has been criticized as unrealistic in a corporate environment. This part instead adopts the task wherein the test taker fills in the blanks in incomplete sentences.
* Part 7 contains not only single passage questions but also double passage questions wherein the test taker has to read and compare the two related passages such as e-mail correspondence.
According to a survey [3] conducted in 2006 by the Institute for International Business Communication (財団法人 国際ビジネスコミュニケーション協会, Zaidanhōjin Kokusai Bijinesu Komyunikēshon Kyōkai?), 56.8% of the respondents who took both the older and the renewed versions of the TOEIC test in Japan find the latter version more difficult. The lower score the test taker achieves, the more marked this tendency becomes. As many as 85.6% of those who earned scores ranging from 10 to 395 points find the renewed TOEIC test more difficult, while 69.9% of those who earned 400 to 495 points think this way, so do 59.3% of those who earned 500 to 595 points. Among those who achieved 600 to 695 points 58.9% find so, 700 to 795 points 48.6%, 800 to 895 points 47.9%, and 900 to 990 points 39.8%.
In 2007 added speaking and writing tests, and made some changes to the reading and listening test as well that de-emphasized knowledge of grammatical rules.