Month: April 2026

International Students in Korea and the Tests They Take

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I read today that there are now 238,905 international students in Korea (plus 75,033 people studying the Korean language).  That’s kind of interesting.

The top sending countries are China and Vietnam (76k and 63k students, respectively).

(raw data is here)

Some students are on a Korean-language track and might submit a TOPIK score during the admissions process.  Others are on an English-language track and might submit some kind of English test score during the process.

I bet that most of the Vietnamese students on the English track submit an IELTS score, while the Chinese students make use of either TOEFL or IELTS scores, depending on their preference (and I think they are more likely to be on the Korean-language track).

Most of the schools here seem to favor TOEFL and IELTS (and, god bless ‘em, TEPS). There may be an opportunity for smaller tests to make inroads in Korea if they engage with the universities a little more.

If anyone from Duolingo English Test is reading this, you could add Sungkyunkwan University to the tracker on your site.  People say that it’s a pretty good school.  Many years ago I lived near their Suwon campus – I never went inside, but would use it as a starting point for runs along the Suwon Dulle Gil.

Scotibank and Pearson Team Up!

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I saw that Scotiabank is handing out PTE discount codes (for the Academic and Core tests) to anyone who fills in a survey.

As a general rule I always try to avoid Toronto, but whenever I fly into Pearson Airport I spot bank advertisements targeting newcomers right inside the jetway. I imagine that one can open an account even before leaving the terminal.

This seems like a smart way to snag even more new arrivals. Pearson might even get a handful of additional test takers.

FYI: Pearson operates 32 test centers in Canada. That’s not a particularly large amount, as the IELTS  social media team suggests they have 150+ centers in the country (the IELTS website lists a whopping 264 Canadian centers, but that probably includes duplicates and closed centers). CELPIP claims to have 60+ centers in Canada.

Notes on NABP’s TOEFL Changes

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The Pharmacy Times has published a two-part interview with Jasmina Bjegovic which explores the recommendations of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy task force on the continued use of the TOEFL as a requirement in the certification of foreign trained pharmacists.

There are a couple of interesting things here:

  1. The NABP will implement the task force’s recommendations. Perhaps this isn’t a surprise, but it wasn’t necessarily a given. This is confirmed by a note on the NABP website. So at some point in the near future, pharmacists will have the option of taking the OET instead of the TOEFL… and will be able to make use of the TOEFL’s “MyBest Scores” system.
  2. In 2020, the NABP introduced a requirement that foreign trained pharmacists complete the TOEFL before taking the FPGEC (that is, the certification exam itself). I remember when that happened, but didn’t think too hard about it. Apparently, that change reduced the number of FPGEC test candidates by 50%… but the FPGEC pass rate increased from 74% to 91%.

Anyway. My question is whether the task force – which met in November – explored the changes to the TOEFL which were set to be implemented three months later. As the changes transformed the TOEFL into something wholly new, they could have impacted the test’s usefulness for this purpose.

Oxford Test of English and Rethinking Assessment

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I watched this long webinar from Times Higher Education and Oxford University Press about “rethinking language assessment for a changing world.”  It includes a wonderful exchange at around 23:00 about the use of “proxy tasks” to predict success in academic programs.  Around that point, Hannah Jones talks about the need for clear and accessible peer-reviewed research into the predictive validity of these sorts of tasks.

To me, that’s a really fair point, as we sort of take it for granted that certain tasks are more predictive than others.  But are they really?  I’ve written here about how tasks on certain tests sort of LOOK better for various reasons (perhaps because they are quite long)… but a closer examination suggests that surface-level observations aren’t particularly useful.

Tony Green, meanwhile, talked about how all English tests don’t have very much predictive validity at all and that “looking to predictive validity isn’t a very productive route to go down.”  He mentioned that other measures, like A-Levels, have even less predictive power than these tests.

Again, this makes a lot of sense because success in university depends on a whole lot of things which are not measured on an English test.  And, of course, these things are often acquired and honed sometime after our admission.  I, for one, earned my highest GPA only in my final year of studies. Needless to say, it took me some time to get the hang of university-level work and, for that matter, the academic register.

I also liked this bit from Tony:

“…a 250-word essay is not actually what people have to write when they get to university.  And I think we could do a good deal more in helping [them] to understand that it’s not what they need to do when they get to university.  And there’s a big gap between those things.”

That’s a welcome perspective from someone working on a test.  I say this because in recent years some traditional test makers have, perhaps, been overselling their products in response to competition from newer providers.

So what does this all mean when it comes to the development and use of tests?  That’s the “rethinking” part and you should probably watch the webinar to learn more about it.

More Details on ETS Campus Redevelopment

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The published version of the Lawrence Township housing plan isn’t exactly clear, so while out for a run on Tuesday I listened to the whole frigging public hearing about the redevelopment of (parts of) the ETS campus.  As I understand it, all 800 homes will be built in the space between ETS Drive and Research Road.  The space currently contains a bunch of older buildings (but not as many as before).  As I understand it, Conant Hall, Anrig Hall and “B Building” came down a few years ago, Wood Hall was emptied of most staff just recently, and McBride Hall is currently being rented out to Princeton University as a temporary replacement for a certain library.  The unfortunately named Brigham Library doesn’t show up on Google Earth anymore, so I guess it stopped existing at some point in the past decade.  Maybe it was the “B Building” referred to on the site I linked to above.

South of ETS drive one finds all of the more modern ETS buildings, plus the ETS hotel and conference center. It is sort of interesting that basically a small town will be moving in right across from where ETS does its business.

Apparently, no development is currently planned for the property fronting Rosedale Road and Carter Road.

My PIE Live 26 Word Cloud

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Here’s the final word cloud from my presentation at PIE Live 26 in London. This was generated by a room full of people who mostly work in assessment. Some folks asked for my slides, but I don’t have their contact information… so just send an email if you want ’em.

 

Thoughts from PIE Live Europe 26

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I made it home from London! I had a lovely time at I do recommend the PIE events to anyone seeking to expand their knowledge of the international education sector and to connect with some fairly interesting folks. And if you are just interested in tests? Good lord, do the test companies have a presence. There will be an event in Australia in July… or you can wait ‘till April of ’27 for the next London gathering.

A few stray thoughts:

  1. I gave a talk about testing in 2026, and I think it went pretty well. There was a big crowd, I said everything I wanted to say, and got a decent amount of participation from the audience. I signed up for this in part to get out of my comfort zone, so I’m happy to have done a good job. Regular readers might argue that talking about English tests is precisely my comfort zone, but you know what I mean…
  2. I can’t mention all the excellent presentations, but I will highlight “Kathmandu or Kathmandon’t? Is Nepal a viable recruitment market?” That’s a market I should know more about. I’m always happy to learn about the scene in specific countries. There were a few interesting comments and questions about proof of language proficiency.
  3. Walking around and around the exhibition space I was able to chat with kind folks from just about every testing company.  And a handful of off-site meetings took me all over London (and beyond). I learned an incredible amount about these assessments, and collected enough literature to keep me learning for some time to come.
  4. I learned a bunch about the new ISE Digital Test from Trinity College London (a blind spot because of its newness), about the new PTE Express, about the new TOEFL… about all the tests.
  5. Notwithstanding recent changes to the TOEFL, I’m starting to get the impression that integrated questions are on the rise.
  6. I went to Oxford to gain a bit of knowledge about the Oxford Test of English. That’s been a real blind spot for me since it is only taken on-site and they don’t have any test centers in Korea. And, as a somewhat new-ish member of the “long tail” of upstart tests, it hasn’t been covered in the press as much as other products. But it is backed by an impressive depth of talent that few testing companies could ever hope to match. That may set it apart from the pack. We should all keep an eye on it.
  7. Oxford is a pretty town. The realization that I would not be able to remain there for the remainder of my days filled me with some wistfulness.
  8. I actually recommended a couple of test centers in Korea that the Oxford test might make use of. But a later meeting with some folks who are actually in that business showed me that there is a lot more to the industry than I am aware of.
  9. If you go to the British Library you can peer at the handwritten manuscript for Mrs. Dalloway. How about that?

 

IELTS Publishes Research on Listening

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The IELTS partners have published an excellent article by Nicola Latimer, Chihiro Inoue, Samantha Chan and Daniel MK Lam about how learners process lectures that involve both auditory and textual content… and how that sort of stuff could be included in assessments.

The authors note in their introduction that:

“Currently, the listening component in most major international language tests used for university admissions (e.g. IELTS, TOEFL iBT, PTE Academic, CAE) involves the presentation of audio material as the primary/sole source of information for comprehension.”

And in the conclusion:

“We argue that tests of lecture listening should present audio and slide text simultaneously as input, as real-life academic lectures would. The input would then need to cover a range of degrees of integration between slide text and the lecturer’s speech.”

On stage at PIE Live 26, I spoke about how English tests should iterate and evolve to keep up with research and with the test taker journey. I spoke even more about it on the convention floor.  I mentioned how test companies themselves often produce research that seems to wither on the vine, never managing to influence the assessments themselves.

One hopes that the research at hand eventually has an influence on the IELTS test.

That said, I’m reminded of an earlier IELTS report about the usefulness of integrated writing assessment which ended with:

“The question is not whether an integrated writing task can be implemented in an official IELTS test, but rather, the question is when and how it can be best implemented.”

Those words were written several years ago. We don’t seem to be any closer to seeing an integrated writing task in the IELTS.