Native Cries Over Filipino TOEIC
A group of around twenty students in the same department at a university in the Busan region went to the Philippines to take the TOEIC examination. They attained certification of English graduation with the test results. The majority of those who took the exam in Korea have lower scores than the minimum for graduation (600), but this group received scores topping the graduation standard and succeeded in getting jobs after taking a short period of ‘Away TOEIC’ in the Philippines.
In any national examination, the Philippine TOEIC has not been approved, but the ‘Away TOEIC’ is still carried on. Especially, the point is made that some companies take the Philippine TOEIC to employ people because certain people in between jobs cannot make it to get away TOEIC due to high expenses. This causes some stir against equilibrium.
The Philippine TOEIC is different from the domestic one and questions arise as to the type of item pools that existing questions are continuously drawn from, and the level of questions is lower than in Korea. The Philippine TOEIC is conducted two times a day while for Korea it is restricted to once a month. However, is no authority that oversees studying institutes in the country that lets examinees take tests two to three times a week.
In the case of some institutes in the Busan region, the private institutes keep sending thirty to forty people to Away TOEIC because the demand for the Philippine TOEIC continues. Recently, students under their intermediate records are rising since the New TOEIC, which changed its format last May, has not been settled properly, or some people are in urgent situations to get graduation certificates. Expenses for an Away TOEIC start from two nights and three days to two weeks, and cost from 1,000,000 won to 2,000,000 won.
The problem is not just scores approved as a graduation certificate, but they also receive recognition as an employment test. So domestic TOEIC students are in quite an unfair position. National examinations and public companies do not acknowledge the Philippine TOEIC, but interrelationships among some big industries do not have proper measures towards the exam. Moreover, most medium and small industries accept the test from the Philippines. Particularly, these businesses do not administer an extra written test, so TOEIC scores hugely affect employment.
Referring to the matter, students who prepare for domestic employment complain that it is not fair to treat the domestic and Philippine TOEICS as the same when the degree of difficulty is quite different. An unemployed Park (26) prepares for employment with his domestic TOEIC results and said, “I could not go to Away TOEIC because I could not afford the expense. A colleague of mine didn’t make a high enough score for graduation approval, but he gained up to a hundred points in just several days and got a job, which makes me feel worse about studying English for all that time.”
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 / 입력시간: 2007. 01.04. 08:34
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