Talking of tests

[Lucero]

Hi

I'm finding this forum extremely interesting and useful. I have been entertained and helped on my work by Alan and Amy. Thanks again.

Now, since you really know all about the ESL field, we have been very curios for a long time about which test measures better a foreigner's English proficiency level i.e., TOEIC, TOEFL, etc. Would you explain us which one and why...?

All your kind answers have been highly appreciated by myself and my co-worker, thank you again and

Best regards,

Lucero

[Torsten]

Hi Lucero,

Many thanks for your positive feedback, I'm very glad that you like our site and find the support you receive from our team helpful. As for your question, the TOEFL measures your ability to understand and use English in an academic setting while the TOEIC was designed to assess your business English skills.

So for you and your co-workers the TOEIC is probably the best choice.

Let me know what you think.
Regards,
Torsten
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Lucero]

Hi Torsten,

I appreciate you reply and interest. I will tell you about my experience.
Personally, I started studying English at a very young age and always love it. Then, I majored in communication sciences and had the opportunity to prepare and take my TOEFL in the US. Working as a translator, teacher, etc, have always made my living using my English. Further, I married an American and lived for 12 years in the US. Now, we divorced and have lived for the last 10 years back in my homeland, Mex. City, and of course, still making my living with my beloved language (although I loved languages in general, I was once able to communicate in Japanese too).
All the above background was to give a context to my opinion on the subject at hand. Here in Mex. City you have an array of English schools, which offer all qualities of learning opportunities, although nothing equals the willingness of the student to learn. On the other hand, when it has come to how I feel the level of the people who have taken either test, I think people who have TOEFL have better level. Even superior to that one call 'Proficiency' from Cambridge.
I am curios now to know of your personal experience and from that of others in the forum....

Any volunteers?

Best regards,

Lucero

[Jamie (K)]

I can't gauge the comparative level of people who pass the Cambridge exams, because I seldom bump into them now that I'm back in the US.

However, I can tell you that I think one of the TOEFL's American competitors, the ESL Compass test, places people at the wrong level very often. It seems to have a cultural bias so that the length of time one has lived in the US can really skew the results. At colleges that use the ESL Compass, I often find that it has placed someone with high elementary English proficiency in a high intermediate class if he has lived in the US for five or six years. Meanwhile, it may place a person with impeccable English into too low a class if he has been here only a few weeks.

Lucero, you forgot to mention another test that's widely used in the US, which is the MTELP.

[Lucero]

Dear Jaime,

I wasn't even aware of the MTLP, which stands for...? Thank you for enlighten me, love to learn more on the subject any chance I get.

I think the living-hands-on experience using the language usually makes a big difference in people's fluency and vocabulary, although not always in their grammar. And as you said, the test's results are not always as accurate for placing people according to their real abilities.
As a comment, I'd like to share that here in Mexico, British English for some people is regarded as "better" (for some unknown reason) and thus, when they get some Cambridge test certification they feel "superior", it is kind of funny...For me it is like if you speak Spanish with accent from Spain you can possibly speak "better" Spanish than Spanish from America, it is rather ridiculous but how many other behaviors are not?...just some cultural nuance to share with the forum...

Best,

Lucero

[Jamie (K)]

MTELP is the Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency. It has three parts, one on English structures, one on business vocabulary, and one on analysis of written text. Sometimes it's also called the Michigan Test Battery. Some colleges that require the TOEFL still make students take the MTELP on top of that.

Here is the official MTELP website: http://www.mtelp.org/

I know very well from teaching in Eastern Europe that in some countries many people think that what they claim is "British English" is superior to North American English. And it's often amazing what kind of English they'll think is "British"! It's quite ironic, because it's rather rare in the US for students to be taught "eθpañol como θe habla en Eθpaña", and gringos sometimes even laugh when they hear that accent. We are almost always taught with an orientation toward Mexican or Colombian pronunciation.

I guess people in Latin American must have the same kind of complex about the Spanish language also. When I worked on business publications, we found that no matter who we had do the Spanish translations, and no matter what the translators' qualifications, and no matter where in Latin America the person was, we got letters from all over that continent complaining that the publication was written in terrible Spanish. Finally, someone got the brainstorm to send all the translations to Spain. Once we did that, the Latin Americans immediately stopped complaining.

One of my prized possessions is a book called "Learning Construction Spanglish". It's for Anglos who have to supervise Latino construction crews in the US. It's a completely serious book, and does a thorough job of explaining vocabulary, grammar and everything. The authors say that if a construction supervisor goes and takes a Spanish class at a college, his workers will understand his Castilian perfectly, but he won't understand what they're saying.

They say that if you take a Spanish class, you will say: "Pedro, por favor estaciona la camioneta en la cochera."
However, your workers will be saying: "Pedro, por favor parkea la troca en el drai-wey."

"Shiroquear" means to install drywall (i.e., sheet rock), and the drywall installer is "el shiroquero".

It's a very interesting book.

[Lucero]

Hi Jamie,

It is interesting what you mention about the translations being prefer in Spanish from Spain, may I ask where -geographically- have you notice this. Usually in Mexico City we laugh at texts using words like "ordenador" for computer, "bañador" for swimming suit, etc. I'm curios since in general Spaniards and Spanish from Spain is not that popular in Mexico as far as I have observed.

I think, at least for me, this is turning into and interesting thread and it will be more interesting if we get more input on this subject.

I appreciate your time and attention,

Greetings from Mexico City,

Lucero

[Jamie (K)]

If we had the translations done by Mexicans, the Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Venezuelans, Argentineans and everyone else complained about the bad Spanish. If we had them done in Puerto Rico, everyone except the Puerto Ricans complained. It was the same with every other nation until we tried Spain, and then all the complaining stopped.

[Lucero]

Interesting Jamie, does it happen the same when the translating target language is English? Do English speakers react like that too?

As far as Mexicans, from Mexico City, we do not think cultural differences or regional idioms are "bad" Spanish, as I mentioned before we think it sounds kind of funny but never as an offensive looking-down-at sort of funny....Personally I enjoy very much listening to people speaking with different accents; and would not dare to called them "bad" "poor" or "uneducated". It is just different and being different does not mean being better or worse, doesn't it?

kind regards,

Lucero

[Jamie (K)]

I think that if a company in Mexico translated materials into extremely British-sounding English for specific use in the US market, there would be complaints, but people would generally just be bewildered as to why they did it. Many people would say nothing, but just have a vaguely bad feeling and not buy. A lot of people might become irritated even if they merely spellchecked it in British. They wouldn't say it was written in bad English, but they would find the use of very, very British English for communication in the US market to be odd and maybe a little insulting. Similarly, I think people would find it odd if the text were put into that sort of English for the whole world if the US were Mexico's largest market for the product or service.

It's a little bit like when a company makes advertisements for the United States, but shoots them in the UK using British actors speaking with American accents. You notice that the people's physical movements are odd, their clothes look strange and the joke is not funny, and you wonder why they didn't produce the commercial in the US using Americans, since this is such a big country.

One funny thing we used to run into was when the translator didn't put enough Spanglish into the text for Hispanics in the US market. We'd get something that said "camioneta F-150 de Ford", and the client would send it back wanting it changed back to "Ford F-150 Pickup".