Here’s my score report from the new TOEFL. The new design is pretty nice. Scroll down for a few comments.
- I must take a moment to repeat my recommendation that ETS remove the test taker’s home address from the score report. People want to share these sorts of things online, but the inclusion of that kind of personal information makes them less likely to do so. Some may convert the PDF to a PNG file and then open it up in MS PAINT to draw some boxes like I did… but others may decide to just not share it. This could be costing ETS some free publicity on social media. I’ve got a bunch of score reports from other tests in front of me right now; none of them include a home address.
- It probably isn’t necessary to state the test taker’s gender in the score report. In fact, it might be better to remove it. Again, I can’t find any other score reports that include this information.
- There are a few typos (punctuation errors) in the score report. That’s unfortunate. But who am I to talk about typos?
- It isn’t indicated in my score report, but I have learned that section scores from the old TOEFL are converted to the 6.0 scale and added to the “MyBest Scores” section.
- After studying a whole bunch of score reports, I’ve learned that there are fixed conversions between overall old and new scores which are not impacted by specific section scores. This is worth noting. Consider how a score line of 6.0, 6.0, 6.0 and 6.0 converts to an overall score of 6.0. And that, due to rounding, a score line of 5.5, 6.0, 6.0 and 6.0 also converts to an overall score of 6.0. And, due to the same rounding rules, a score line of 5.5, 5.5, 6.0 and 6.0 also converts to an overall score of 6.0. But all three of those overall 6.0 scores convert to an overall score on the old scale of 118, despite representing somewhat differing levels of fluency. Do you get what I mean? I’ll include a conversion chart in a future post.
- In the comments I’ll post the second page, which is the same for everyone. It contains a table comparing TOEFL scores to CEFR levels and some notes about institutional codes used by score recipients.
- Apparently I’ll get a paper copy sent to me by mail. I thought paper score reports would be eliminated… but they seem to live on. Hallelujah!