Test of English Proficiency (South Korea)

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The Test of English Proficiency developed by Seoul National University or TEPS is an English proficiency test created by the Language Education Institute to evaluate Korean test takers' English language skills. TEPS has been administered nationwide since January 1999 and has received approval from leading scholars of linguistics and testing such as Professor Bachman of UCLA and Professor Oller of the University of New Mexico.. TEPS consists of 200 questions which are divided into four sections: Listening (60 Questions), Grammar (50 Questions), Vocabulary (50 Questions) and Reading (40 Questions).. TEPS is designed to test communicative English skills and to minimize the test takers' reliance on such strategies as rote memorization.. In addition, since it is produced by language and testing specialists who have an expert knowledge of the English Koreans use, it is allegedly the most suitable test for Korea.. In the evaluation process, the Item Response Theory (IRT) provides an effective measure of language ability and a guideline for further studies.. The test procedure is said to be much simpler and more cost-effective than other English proficiency tests because the entire testing process takes place in Korea..

Criticism of TEPS

One of the major drawbacks of TEPS is actually the fact that it is created by language and testing specialists who have expert knowledge of the English that Koreans use. This has the effect of making the test not a test of English, but rather a test of Konglish--a hybridization of English and Korean. Furthermore, it allows the South Korean students a false sense of ability since it does not truly test English knowledge and the skills needed to master the language, but the South Korean perception of English.

Another objection is that the South Korean education system has utilized tests like the TOEFL iBT and TOEIC as a hierarchical method for disseminating students into various levels of high schools based on these test scores, which is a practice that the iBT and TOEIC were never designed for. This problem is illustrated in the article Koreans need to change the English testing situation which states,

Demand for the TOEFL continues to grow in Korea. More and more people are going to study overseas, and an increasing number of Korean "special purpose" high schools and even universities are asking for TOEFL scores. Subsequently, it has become common for middle school students to take the test, and they say there are even elementary students taking it, too. It is getting to the point where TOEFL scores are treated like the only measure of English ability.

Compared to Korean demand, however, the TOEFL testing service, provided by the U.S. company Educational Testing Service (ETS), falls way behind. In this most recent incident, a lot of young people were stuck on the Internet for days trying to register for the July test, only to later find out the company was not yet accepting registrations from Korea. In the face of criticism, ETS is said to have begun taking Korean registration some time yesterday. It is an infuriating situation for those who want to be tested, but not all the blame lies with the ETS. Recently, there were suspicions raised about cheating by Koreans in Korea taking the American SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) and GRE (Graduate Record Examination). The fact that Korean test takers are being treated so coldly probably has something to do with this.

Nonetheless, even though TOEFL and TOEIC were never created for elemetary or middle school aged children, every South Korean student is expected to take these tests in order to enter high school. This has had the effect of creating a billion dollar private tutoring industry (i.e. hakwons) that siphons a great deal of money out of the Korean economy(approximately 14 trillion won annually or $14,852,535,600.00). Also, the fact that the test is only regulated by the South Korean government adds to the problems involved with the administration of this test, since it is also utilized as a tool to prevent money from being siphoned out of the South Korean economy via well designed tests like the iBT. Moreover, since the iBT is designed for the abilities of a college level freshman entering a U.S. university, and not for a South Korean high school freshman, which is the one redeeming quality of TEPS—the fact that it is supposed to be designed for the needs of Korean High School students. In this respect TEPS is a good idea since the goals of the iBT and TOEIC do not match the goals of education in South Korea.

Unfortunately though, TEPS seems to want to perpetuate the same problems in English education in South Korea that have occurred in the past—an over emphasis on sighting the parts of speech at the expense of literacy. This is mainly due to what Yung Suk Jung of Cheongju National University of Education points out in Effects of level and style-based EFL instruction from the perspectives of Korean elementary teachers. English Language Teaching, 18(2), 49-75. . (2006).

"The results of the study showed that 1) the teachers liked using level-based instruction more often than learning style-based instruction mainly because of the burden of class preparation and their unfamiliarity with learning style-based instruction; that 2) the most favored type of lessons by the teachers was level-based instruction and the least favored one was learning style-based instruction; that 3) teachers believed, however, that most of their students (85.7%) liked learning style-based instruction most and none liked basic instruction; and that 4) teachers believed that the most effective type was level-based instruction and the least effective type was basic instruction."

Similarly, TEPS continues to focus on level based learning through the acquisition of the parts of speech instead of the holistic necessities that are needed to learn a language.

Actually, TEPS does not even take into account all the parts of speech. It only tests listening, grammar, vocabulary, and reading, which conspicuously leaves out the two holistic areas of practical usage that a person learns a language for—communication through speaking and writing in the target language. As Aristotle so aptly put it in the Metaphysics, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” This is a point that the designers of TEPS did not take into account when they threw this test together. Indeed, TEPS simply continues to teach the students to merely sight meta-grammatical signifiers by using a grammar calculus to discern the answer on a multiple choice test, which is what tests in the past focused on and the ability of such a grammar calculus to discern the meaning of an utterance is hotly contended in the philosophy of language, Semantic holism, and confirmation holism. However, on the iBT students are actually expected to know how to use the language to communicate. This is something that TEPS most certainly does not do.

Furthermore, the argument that TEPS was supposed to be designed in order to combat rote learning methods in South Korean schools does not appear to be the case. Actually, it seems to be designed to play up to the strengths of South Korean teachers and teaching methodologies, which are actually based upon rote memorization. Indeed, in Beliefs about English learning and teaching:From teacher learners’ perspectives. English Language Teaching, 18(2), 1-24. (2006), which was a study of Teacher learners' by Jaeyoung Choi of Hongik University states,

"Through the procedure of multiple readings, multiple preliminary theme identifications, and checking subjects’ reactions, the themes emerged. The twenty teacher learners’ beliefs about English learning and teaching appeared to be strongly influenced by their past English learning experiences. At the same time, the beliefs seemed to reflect the subjects’ perception of the social context in which their English learning and teacher learning took place."

In a similar fashion, Choi's research implies that TEPS actually plays into this "subjects' perception of English" rather than as English qua English. This is again a situation that is the result of only studying the parts of English, rather than a holistic understanding of the English language. Furthermore, it is these subjective perceptions that continue to perpetuate the usage of rote learning, which is the very aspect of Korean methods that TEPS is supposedly trying to limit. In this way TEPS does not take into account the needs of the students who are trying to actually learn the English language instead of the Koreanized view of English.

Therefore, the call for TEPS seems to actually be due to the high level of language proficiency in English that is needed for a student to perform well on the TOEFL test, which is beyond the capabilities of the South Korean teachers’ to teach South Korean students. As a result, the expectations of the average South Korean student’s abilities to use English are lowered since they are not required to actually use the English language in their public schools English Language classes. This, very simply, is because TEPS is a laughably inferior tool for accessing their English usage abilities. Rather, it is tailored to the needs of the South Korean teachers’ abilities to teach English to South Korean students. This seems to be one of the major reasons for the institution of TEPS—to deal with the fact that according to the Korea Times more than 66% of the South Korean teachers teaching English cannot use the language that they are teaching due to frequent grammar and pronunciation errors. This is also similarly evidenced by the Korea Times which states that, “Only 16.1 percent of teachers had proficient command of English without any difficulties...” The iBT test simply causes a problem for the South Korean education system due to the fact that the vast majority of the South Korean teachers of English are not able to use English at a level of literacy proficiently high enough to pass the iBT in the speaking or writing sections of the test themselves. This creates a situation where the South Korean public school teachers are unable to compete with the native speaking English language teachers in the hakwons due to their ignorance of the English language beyond a finite grammar that is taught and treated like a mathematical algebra that is devoid of meaning to them.

Moreover, there is the assumption that TEPS, TOEIC, and TOEFL are all equivalent tests. This can be seen in the statement produced by the Korean Military Academy when they state on their website:

The goal of English education at KMA is to cultivate officers capable of performing joint military operations with UN forces. In order to train cadets with this type of capability, the English Department has established the goal of helping cadets attain 'Professional Linguistic Proficiency' which is also the standard of language ability proficiency and is currently used in Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. State Department. Professional language is defined as the ability to participate in formal and informal dialogues concerning substantial social and professional issues and effectively using correct English grammar structures with proper vocabulary.

The attainment of this goal is evaluated through English ability tests and interviews. Currently, junior and senior cadets are required to score 80 on ECL (English Comprehension Level Test) or 600 on TEPS (Test of English Proficiency by SNU), which equals 550 on the TOEFL and 700 on the TOEIC. Freshman cadets who have completed the English Intensive Course (EIC) for 5 weeks during the winter must make good progress toward fulfilling the testing requirements set down above by the end of their sophomore year. During the first semester, all freshman cadets receive basic English education that changes cadets' learning pattern from the reading-based education they received during high school to complementary speaking-based education.

Besides proving the fact that English education in South Korea not only follows basic and level-based teaching methods in high school rather than learning-based paradigms with the statement that there is a shift of focus to communincation in their program, this also brings up the question of the comparibility of these tests. One must ask how these tests can be considered equivalent when TEPS does not test speaking or writing in the manner that the iBT does? The simple fact is that they cannot be compared in an equivalent manner. The iBT tests communicative abilities, where TEPS, by its own admittance, is only: "200 questions which are divided into four sections: Listening (60 Questions), Grammar (50 Questions), Vocabulary (50 Questions) and Reading (40 Questions)." Therefore, TEPS does not, in any way, test either English speaking or writing abilities and can not be thought of as comparible to the iBT in the respect of testing "communicative abilites."

Also, since TEPS is based upon the Korean understanding of English, it consequently asks questions that often are absurd by native English literacy standards. That is, the TEPS test asks questions that are impossible to answer, even for a native speaker of English, because it will often ask multiple-choice questions that give a choice of five equally correct answers depending on the context that the statement that is used. However, the question sentence will be completely devoid of context, thus making the choice incommensurable. This is an example the problems pointed out by the theories of semantic holism and confirmation holism.A similar point can be seen in Hilary Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment. Putnam formulated the thesis of the natural externalism of mental states in his The Meaning of "Meaning". Putnam's thesis described his famous thought experiment that involved Twin Earths in which two individuals, Calvin and Carvin, live, respectively, on the real earth (E) of our everyday experience and on an exact copy (E') with the only difference being that on E "water" stands for the substance H2O while on E' it stands for some substance macroscopically identical to water but which is actually composed of XYZ. According to Putnam, only Calvin has genuine experiences which involve water and so only his term "water" really refers to water.

In the same manner, the English that TEPS is testing is not in fact English, but again, the Korean perception of English. This happens because the South Korean linguists who have created the test did not make the test due to an exhaustive understanding and distinct ability in the English language, but rather due to a limited grammatical understanding. By taking the statements that the questions use out of their surrounding context, they have effectually removed the finite meaning of the statements. Therefore, the TEPS test becomes a guessing game of what context the test writer has in mind, which is impossible to do based on the information given. This occurs because the Korean language is a high context language, which means that the interlocutors are expected to understand the context of a conversation without it being strictly established. This is a huge problem with the test since English is a low context language in which context must be first established in order for understanding of the interlocutors’ conversation. By trying to create an English proficiency test based upon a Korean linguistic understanding of English, the TEPS test creators have effectually tried placing a square peg into a round hole — it simply will not fit.

As a result, this has prompted the greater focus on teaching TEPS in the South Korean classroom as a solution to not only the difficulty that most South Korean students and teachers have with the areas of speaking and writing English on the iBT and in general, but it is also a way for the South Korean government to generate revenues for education by making the students pay to take a Konglish test produced and regulated in South Korea. This is designed more to keep money from leaving South Korea and finding its way to western countries than to check the English literacy of the students. As a result, they have created an exam that tests Konglish, not English, to try to stem the billions of dollars that leave Korea yearly due to the cost of taking test produced by other countries like the iBT.

--JCL9

See also

• TOEIC

External links

• Seoul National University, Language Education Institute
• Official Website (korean)