English tests are everywhere.
Many of you listening to this episode will have spent (or currently are spending) months preparing for exams like IELTS, TOEFL, TOEIC, and the Cambridge English qualifications. Passing a proficiency test is often required if you want to study abroad, qualify for a new job, or move to another country.
But do proficiency tests actually help you in your goal to become fluent in English? For some people, English exams provide a clear goal to motivate your study and offer a fair way to measure language ability. Others believe tests encourage memorisation, reward good test-taking rather than good communication, and turn English into just another school subject.
In today’s episode, I want to explore the history of testing, why English has become one of the world’s most tested subjects, and whether English proficiency exams actually improve education!
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Vocabulary
- standardised (adj): made according to the same rules or system so that things can be compared fairly
- All students take the same standardised test under the same conditions.
- meritocracy (n): a system in which people succeed because of their abilities or achievements rather than their social background
- Ideally, a meritocracy gives everyone an equal chance to succeed.
- rote learning (n): learning something through repetition and memorisation rather than understanding it deeply
- Rote learning can help students remember facts, but it does not always help them understand the subject.
- efficient (adj): working well without wasting time, money, or effort
- Online tests are an efficient way to assess thousands of students.
- retrieval (n): the process of remembering or getting information from your memory
- Regular quizzes improve the retrieval of information from long-term memory.
- transfer (v): to use knowledge or skills learned in one situation in a different situation
- Students should be able to transfer the English skills they learn in class to real-life conversations.
- spontaneous (adj): happening naturally and without being planned or prepared in advance
- Speaking spontaneously in English can be difficult if you are used to preparing every sentence.
Why We Test So Much
If you think back to your own education, your own time at school, you’ve probably taken hundreds of tests and exams. There were likely spelling tests and [00:04:00] vocabulary quizzes when you were at school. Maybe end of term exams and high school entrance exams. University entrance exams. Even your driving test and professional qualifications you need for your job.
Testing, taking exams, is such a normal part of education. In fact, it’s so normal that we rarely think about the purpose of taking a test. It’s important we do think about the purpose, though, because not all tests are trying to do the same thing.
It’s helpful to think about two different types of assessment: assessment of learning and assessment for learning.
Assessment of learning happens after learning has taken place. The purpose of assessment of learning is to measure what someone knows or what someone can do. These are [00:05:00] tests like final exams or university entrance exams, and of course, English proficiency tests like IELTS, TOEFL, or the Cambridge English Qualifications.
These tests are designed to examine how well you have learned something. In the English proficiency test, it’s how well you have learned English.
Assessment for learning has a different purpose. Assessment for learning supports learning along the way. So this is when you take tests and quizzes as part of your studying.
These kinds of tests include a vocabulary quiz during a class, or a teacher correcting your writing or a tutor providing feedback after speaking in a conversation group. These types of assessments are designed to help you, to help learners, improve.
This [00:06:00] distinction, this difference, between assessment of learning and assessment for learning, is important because people often talk about testing as though every test has the same purpose.
But a weekly vocabulary quiz at the end of your school English class is very different to an IELTS exam, and in fact, these exams have very different goals.
Ancient Origins Of Exams
Testing has existed for longer than modern schools have existed. Taking tests is a very old thing.
One of the earliest and most famous examples of testing comes from China. More than 1,000 years ago, the Chinese Imperial Government was using civil service examinations to select officials, government officials.
To become a civil servant in China, you were expected to pass a series of difficult [00:07:00] exams. These exams were usually based on Confucian philosophy and literature.
These examinations were very innovative. It was an early example of a kind of meritocracy; the idea that a person’s ability and knowledge matters more than their family status or their wealth.
But if we were to be critical over the Chinese civil service exams a thousand years ago, the success in the exam depended on years of memorizing texts. The system rewarded rote learning, so memorization, rather than rewarding creativity or original thinking.
As education expanded around the world, but particularly in Europe, written examinations became more common in schools. The invention of the printing press made it so much easier to produce exam papers and textbooks.
Then there were more universities [00:08:00] being founded, and with more universities, there needed to be ways to assess students.
Standardized Testing Boom
Testing became even more important during the Industrial Revolution. Governments gradually introduced compulsory education. This meant that everyone had to go to school, and now schools had to teach millions of children around the world. They also had to assess their students’ abilities. How well were the students learning? What did they know?
Standardized tests, so the same test everywhere, is an efficient way to compare students’ performances and also compare the performance of schools.
When I was at school, I took exams in every single subject. Students are examined in mathematics, science, history, geography, English, other languages, even examined in art and drama and music.
English, outside of [00:09:00] schools, is probably the most tested subject of all, because it is the most popular foreign or second language to learn, and proficiency tests are very important.
In the past, learning a foreign language was a relatively specialized skill. People would perhaps learn religious languages like Latin or Arabic. Or maybe learn the language of countries they moved to or the language of their parents. Diplomats and merchants and scholars or travelers might study different languages.
But for most people, there was little reason to study a foreign language.
In the 20th century, English gradually became more important around the world. The British Empire initially took the language everywhere, and then the power and the influence of the United States has done similar things and spread English even further.
Today, English is used in business, [00:10:00] education, science, technology, aviation and tourism. Millions of people need English. They need English to communicate. And they need to prove they can communicate in English.
This need to prove your English ability has created a demand for standardized English proficiency tests. Some of the most well-known are the Cambridge English Qualifications, which assess your English ability at different CEFR levels, so A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, and C2.
The TOEFL exam or the Test of English as a Foreign Language was developed mainly for students applying for universities in English-speaking countries, especially the USA. The IELTS exam or the International English Language Testing System is also widely used for university admissions and [00:11:00] immigration in places like the UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
The TOEIC exam focuses on English in professional and workplace settings. There’s even the Duolingo English Test, which is an online English proficiency test that can be completed from home, and there’s many more that I have not mentioned. There’s Pearson, LanguageCert. There’s so many different proficiency tests out there.
What Proficiency Tests Do
These exams all share the same basic purpose. They provide a standard way of measuring English proficiency. A person can take IELTS in Bangladesh, Brazil, and Botswana, and their level can be compared. This is really important.
Someone working at the immigration agency of a country has to decide whether someone has the language skills to qualify for the visa they’re applying for. Interviewing every [00:12:00] single applicant individually would be a very inefficient way to test English ability.
So people trust standardized tests like IELTS or the Cambridge English qualifications. They trust these tests to fairly and accurately measure a person’s ability.
This is a good example of assessment of learning. These exams aren’t designed to improve your English. They’re designed to measure your English. They’re designed to measure the level of English that someone has already achieved.
Benefits Of Exam Prep
In my personal experience, preparing for a language proficiency test and exam can be a genuinely positive experience. I’ve taken quite a few Japanese language proficiency tests in the past, and I’ve always found it quite rewarding to study towards a target. Having a test gives you a clear target to work towards.
For example, you can aim [00:13:00] for an IELTS score of 7.0 or a Cambridge C1 certificate. That is a specific goal, a specific objective. You can put your full focus and dedicate yourself to one target: passing that test.
English tests also provide a common standard. If someone says they have a B2 or a C1 level of English, you can kind of understand their level. Universities and employers have a reasonable idea of what that means. Without a standardized assessment, without something like the CEFR scale, which grades people’s ability, it would be so much harder to compare qualifications.
Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of taking tests isn’t actually about those high-stakes proficiency tests like IELTS or TOEFL. [00:14:00] Educational research has consistently found something called the “testing effect“. The testing effect is also known as “retrieval practice“.
The basic idea of the testing effect is that trying to remember information strengthens your memory. In fact, it strengthens your memory more than reading or reviewing information Trying to remember vocabulary usually leads to a much better long-term understanding. This is why regular quizzes and regular practice tests are a really effective learning tool. They are actively helping you remember what you have learned.
A short vocabulary quiz at the end of your English lesson is going to help you move new words into your long-term memory.
Teaching To The Test
Despite these benefits, testing, and English testing in particular, has plenty of critics. The most common [00:15:00] criticism is something known as “teaching to the test“.
This goes back to the main purpose of studying English. Are you studying English to become a confident English speaker and a confident English user? Or are you passing an exam in English just to graduate from high school, or just to get admitted to university, or just to qualify for a visa or get a new job?
Formal English classes at school tend towards teaching to the test. Teachers get judged on their students’ test results. They don’t get judged on students’ real-life English ability. This leads to pressure to focus on specific question types and specific exam conditions.
The skills you need to pass an exam, like writing an IELTS-style answer, probably doesn’t transfer [00:16:00] to real-life communication.
And students, especially at high school, are often more focused on what comes after high school than studying English for the benefits of English itself.
When I studied French at high school, I was not particularly interested in becoming a French speaker. I am not a French speaker at all, but I was interested in the qualification I would get for studying French. The GCSE as it’s called in England, and that would help me get admitted to college, so after high school, and then eventually into university as well.
You’ve probably seen things like this yourselves in your language learning journeys. I definitely have in my Japanese learning journey. In fact, I have quite a few Japanese learning textbooks that focus or give tips on exam technique.
If you learn how the listening part of the exam usually [00:17:00] goes, how it usually works, what the format is, you can sometimes predict answers or prepare yourself for answers. Or you can learn to speed read or skim read. This is where you read through a text quickly just looking for the important and relevant information or the answers to your questions. Or maybe you remember essay structures, you remember phrases, you remember a system of writing specifically for a test.
These are all strategies that will help you pass an exam. But these strategies will not make you better at English overall.
If you want to sit down and read a classic English novel like Pride and Prejudice, and enjoy the experience of reading this great work of literature, the ability to speed read and skim read texts looking for important information isn’t really helpful. [00:18:00] You want to sit there and enjoy the writing. You don’t want to look quickly through the page and pick out the information that’s relevant to a question.
Another criticism of exams is that these kinds of tests only measure part of a language. They only measure part of what it means to know a language.
A good English speaker knows how to keep a conversation going, knows how to tell a story in an engaging way, how to understand humor and make jokes, how to adjust the language for different situations.
These skills are really difficult to measure in an exam. How can you test someone’s comprehension of a joke or their ability to detect sarcasm?
Testing also creates a lot of pressure and a lot of stress.
You need to spend months preparing for that exam and probably spend a lot of money to take the exam. When I take my Japanese proficiency tests, I need to [00:19:00] travel to a different city ’cause there’s no testing center where I live. I need to book a hotel for the night before and pay for my transport there. I need to pay the fee for taking the exam. And then there’s a lot of pressure.
In fact, your condition on that specific day, the specific day you take the test, is going to affect your performance. You might have caught influenza and then take the exam and fail badly.
That’s not a reflection on your actual ability. That is a reflection on your condition of the day. It’s a reflection of how you were. You might have been really tired. You might have had a headache. There might have been someone coughing behind you throughout the listening test.
Doesn’t mean that you are a bad English speaker or have a bad understanding of English, if you perform badly in a test.
I had a friend at high school who was really intelligent in class and did really well in all of the practice tests, but he got so [00:20:00] nervous in exams that he kept fainting during high school. And he kept falling off his chair during our official standardized tests at the end of the year.
The test of course did not reflect his actual ability, and eventually he was allowed to take exams in a room by himself just with a teacher present, and his performance was so much better because he didn’t have as much stress or pressure. He was allowed to be a bit more relaxed.
Cost is another issue. English proficiency tests are expensive, and if you don’t get the score you need, then you’re going to have to take the test again. If you can afford to have a private tutor, or you can afford to take an exam multiple times, you will have an advantage over people with less money.
The exam system, the way that English is measured, changes the style of teaching. The style of teaching moves towards activities that improve test scores.
If you take classes with an IELTS specialty teacher, [00:21:00] you will spend a lot of time working on exam preparation. That’s probably what you want if you’re taking classes with an IELTS teacher.
But you will lose out on all of the other parts of language learning. You won’t have as much opportunity for creativity. You won’t have as much opportunity for spontaneous conversation. You might not even enjoy the class, and enjoyment is a really important part of learning.
Many of the problems I’ve been mentioning appear when assessment of learning, instead of assessment for learning, dominates the education system.โ
Final Thought
Do English tests improve education?
English tests definitely have an important purpose. A university needs a way to compare applicants from different countries, and an employer, [00:22:00] a company, needs evidence that someone has language skills.
In these kinds of situations, assessment of learning is practical and necessary. We need some method, some way, of comparing people’s English abilities.
But the ultimate goal of learning a language is to communicate. Teaching to the test can sometimes forget this purpose. When you guys were at school, did your school teach to the test, or did your school teach you English? These are different things.
I used to work in Japanese junior high schools and elementary schools, and I can confidently say that none of the classes I worked in were learning English for the ability to use English in real life. They were learning English so at the end of the year they could pass the junior high school exams and get into high school. This meant the students were getting really good at taking the tests, but could not have a [00:23:00] conversation.
Research suggests that taking regular quizzes and practice tests can improve memory and can help students and teachers learn how to improve. So there needs to be a balance between different types of test.
Using tests like vocabulary tests or quizzes, practice tests in class is a great way to improve your ability. It’s a great way to study. It should be a way to improve your memory
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take exams like IELTS or TOEFL. Of course not. You should take them if you want to, if you need to.
IELTS and TOEFL are milestones. They’re useful qualifications, but they’re not the purpose of learning the language. The purpose of learning English, for most of you, hopefully, is to improve your ability to communicate with other speakers of English. To improve your ability to read English, to improve your ability to listen and speak and write. That’s the purpose of [00:24:00] learning English. It’s not to take an IELTS exam.
But what do you think? Have you ever taken a proficiency test? What was English teaching like when you were younger at school? Did your teachers teach to the test? Does your country’s education system teach to the test rather than teaching English?
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