Below are photos of the endcap displays of TOEFL and IELTS books at the big Kyobo Books location near Seoul City Hall. Even more books of both types are found on the store’s shelves. Eagle-eyed readers will spot a mixture of both official and third party publications.
When trying to account for why certain tests are popular in the East Asian market, it is really important to pay attention to the amount of prep materials on the market, especially (but not only) collections of practice tests.
To some extent, here in Korea TOEFL and IELTS have avoided the headwinds they face in other markets because there is such a healthy ecosystem of prep materials available. The PTE is doing okay here, but it isn’t challenging IELTS to the same extent that it is in India. Likewise, while the DET has a lot of fans here, it hasn’t supplanted the TOEFL as a test for America-bound students like it has in Europe.
People here want to take tests that they can prepare for on their own. Young people in Korea spend a lot of time studying for tests, and are pretty good at breaking them down to their component parts and mastering them bit by bit. But that can only be done when they have access to a ton of super accurate study materials. Reputable third party publishers here are trusted to produce practice tests that are 99% similar to the real thing. That’s one reason why some people here are sticking with the legacy tests.
In markets with less of this sort of stuff, there is less reason to stick with the legacy tests.
In part this explains the high volumes (in Korea) of somewhat older English tests like the G-TELP, TOEIC and OPIc, all of which remain extremely popular in the region. Surprisingly so.
Test makers should keep this in mind. They should also remember that the legacy tests can count on third party publishers to crank out a steady stream of materials on their own, but upstarts might have to shoulder some of the burden themselves.
(For the record, I didn’t spot any PTE books and I’m not sure any are available from Korea publishers at all. I didn’t spot any DET books either, though the influential “Siwon School” company does have a line on the market.)
The Chinese market deserves a post all of its own. So… I think I’ll save my thoughts on that one for a later date.
