Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Pyongshin Sangja]

Teaching the old TOEFL was bad enough but this one makes the students crap their pants. Right there in the classroom. No lie.

Allrighty, here it is: The Longman 2006 IBT manual. The ETS website is snazzier than ever. Multimedia spectacular. Students now record dialogues, take notes on long recordings, have to write two compositions yadda yadda yadda.

The dialogue now includes deliberate use of slang, stuttering, errors in speech, idioms you haven't heard in a million years (well, maybe that's the same.)

The structure section is now condensed into a 50 page appendix at the back. Makes me wonder why it had to be so long before hand.

The level of the languge is quite a bit higher. It's like FOX News compared to the Guardian. Words like "origin" have become "etiology."

Reading sections are um, five times as long. Five. Maybe ten.

Listening sections include discussions of Centripetal Force's role in the formation of storms according to the 19th century meteorological theorists Redfield and Essby and the freshwater content of Lake Baikal versus that of the Great Lakes.

I predict riots.

If I didn't sound smug explaining the last book to a group of totally unprepared Korean kids, this one will ensure that no student will ever like me again.

[eamo]

I've never been able to convince a students Mom that studying something above their childs level will actually hurt their English more than help.

They are convinced that the fastest progress can be achieved by putting a mid-beginner kid into a mid-intermediate class.

Their logic goes like this....

"He's not good at English so I want him to work more at a higher level".

When I taught TOEIC preparation books I was appalled at how little English they actually teach. Useless. Totally useless.

[Zyzyfer]

I guess they got sick of people passing the TOEFL and then heading to the U.S. and looking like a deer in headlights when the prof. calls on them.

I wonder if native speakers can even pass that shit.

[Corporal]

[jacl]

[Corporal]

[Wrench]

[some waygug-in]

Not a chance! Don't you see.........keep them from actually learning anything as long as possible......once they start figuring out that the game's rigged........change the rules and they're back at square one.

There are some very wealthy and powerful people who are making tons off of keeping real teaching from happening.

[ontheway]

jacl wrote:

"I'm proud that I don't know what 'obsequious' means."


Now that's funny!

(but I imagine your boss keeps putting that word on your vocabulary list.)

[vox]

I realize I'm running contrary to popular opinion here and some of you sound like you may be teaching kids, but I actually designed and taught a 12-week course on the new iBT TOEFL using some of the Longman with CDs and a hell of a lot of my own material and supplemental classes and with all due respect to the legit complaints expressed, I think the iBT is a hell of an improvement. I think it forces everybody to raise the bar in all performance aspects, particularly directness (efficiency, simplicity and elegance) in producing spoken and written English. Some old TOEFL modules are still useful too in context of the new iBT prep.

There was a big problem with students (I heard in particular Chinese students.. can't comment but okay so be it) acing the grammar section of the old TOEFL then showing up in western universities and inexplicably flunking out of lecture series classes. The new iBT changed all that. First of all, the examples come from real lectures really uttered in real universities (that should have been done long ago.) And there are different dialects to get used to. I heard some horror stories of teachers in Japan getting bombed by their teacher assistants in class because they weren't sounding like the recorded textbook samples. What rubbish. Comparative dialects will put that kind of 'Borg' mentality to rest. Also the fact that grammar correction is a part of all the sections and not its own section is a good idea.

The addition of a speaking section with time limits puts a much heavier emphasis on production, specifically strong, simple, elegant oral production.

The only issue I have with it is I don't think the resulting environment uses as much communicative (read: exploratory) approach, but my experience is the students move from strength to strength and tend to move away from meandering clauses with lots of mental pauses and verbal backpedalling. I have added (and tweaked) a debating class and that I find fosters a lot of the necessary skills to survive in the iBT.

Even while I say this I know there is a children's TOEFL industry out there and if you're teaching it, I sympathize. But in the adult student market, I've seen that teaching to the demands of the new iBT have created a really healthy process for the students.

By the way you know all the other flavours of TOEFL are getting phased out, right? I'm pretty sure this is the last year for any non-iBT versions.

[Pyongshin Sangja]

You're not going against the grain, in fact you are the only other person here who's seen it.

Of course it's the new way.

Of course it's better.

I know why they changed it.

But the first group of kids that have to do it are like deer in the headlights.

[vox]

I experienced that with my students but only for the first few days of the first week. By the end of the week they were totally committed and taking their prep class very seriously. It was actually quite enjoyable.

You'll be fine. Just keep winning your students' trust with measurable progress through the note-taking and time strategies. Do it right, you may even start your own cult.

[VanIslander]

[ontheway]

VanIslander,

I think you missed the humor. It's not that jacl doesn't actually "know the meaning" of the word obsequious in the literal sense. It's that he doesn't know the meaning of the word figuratively. That is, he is not obsequious toward his boss, as we all know from reading his posts. Hence, the humor.

[jacl]