I stayed up real late to watch a webinar about the new TOEIC Link Test. I learned a few things that are worth passing along:
- The full 4-skills version of the test takes about 81 minutes to complete. Compare that to the 200 minutes it takes to complete the 4-skill version of the regular TOEIC.
- The test is currently available in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. It will be available in other countries at some other time.
- Registration must be completed via an EPN. It is not done directly with ETS.
- I’m not a TOEIC expert, but it looks like the TOEIC link has the same reading and listening item types as the regular TOEIC. But the speaking and writing tasks are quite different.
- It appears that scoring is done mostly by AI, but with “human review.” Scores are available in 48 hours.
- This is an at-home product. Proctoring can be either wholly AI or AI+human. I guess it depends on the EPN. Or something.
- The reading and listening sections are adaptive – after a routing module, test takers will get sent to a “hard” module or an “easy” module.
ETS sees the world of higher-ed as a potential source of clients for this test.
