Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

ETS launched the new version of TOEFL this summer and the first online TOEFL test took place at the end of September. So far the test has been taken place at the Thomson Prometric testing centres across the United States. According to ETS, the online testing environment will be launched in China by May, 2006. This means millions of Chinese scholars will be able to take the test online within China by then.

Web based TOEFL is the first Internet based English qualification and certification process. What's worth to mention is ETS has nicely incorporated the oral testing components into the online testing environment. This is aimed to increase the participants' communication and expression skills. ETS does not differentiate the oral tests from the rest of the exam. Instead, all four (reading, writ in, listening and speaking) topics are evenly balanced together. For example, participants are asked to read an essay and listen to a recording, then to answer the question via voice recording or writing an essay. A standard online TOEFL will take approximately 4 hours.

For the new TOEFL voice testing, instead of a face to face interview, ETS requires participants to record their vocal answers and the voice recordings will be scored by 3 to 6 qualified markers. I am curious to find out the recording technology they are using and how are the file compression effecting the quality of the recording thus may effect the participants' final TOEFL score.

"HungryForWords.com" provides a free vocabulary learning service for English, Chinese and Japanese languages. One can subscribe an email address to this free service by going to the web site and choose the category of vocabulary that he/she is interested in. The categories cover Business and Financial, American Slan, Inernet and Technology areas. Then he/she will receive one email every day where a "easy definition card" being attached to the email. The card contains one word in different languages plus the sound of the word. The receiver can then repeatedly memorize and practice the word. Over time, the users will benefit from this free service and build a large vocabulary database of their own in their own interests.

I remember a few months back, there was a news about BBC collaborating with Sina to create a "one word a day to cell phones" service where the millions of cell phone users in China will receive a free English word on their mobile devices and then have the option of further exploration from the web. Great ideas, good initiative, hope they won't attach advertisements with the services.

Today is the New Year's eve, bye to the monkey year and hi to the year of Rooster! Here is my hand writing of the word "Rooster" in Chinese, check it out. It is using the learning tools created here at Arts ISIT, UBC for JSK language learnings. The tool will record the calligraphy and play it out as a flash movie. Check it out: