How international is toeic?

[Nicole]

Hi, I've been following this discussion with great interest because it raises the question how objective an English test can be. I also wonder what impact a person's accent or dialect has. I mean, you make a first impression by your appearance in a face to face meeting but when you are on the phone all the other person gets to know about you, is your voice. It follows, your pronunciation is important but is there any scientific data available on the question how your pronunciation can determine the impact you make in a conversation, especially in business negotiations?
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Life is for living.

[hipster]

I think pronunciation does matter. Not that you have to speak like a native speaker. Why should you? Not all native speakers have a perfect pronunciation. What you should try doing is raise your awareness of how English is spoken and how sounds are produced. This way you can express your respect and interest for the language and their speakers.
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hippy hipster

[toeic]

[in japan]

I have a different theory about why they use an american accent for the test. I found on a different toeic-related site statistical information on the percentage of test takers from each country and the data was amazing. According to the site, SEVEINTY PERCENT of all test takers are japanese. Seven out of every ten people that take the toeic are japanese. That is amazing. Therefore, japan is the biggest, most important customer. I say customer because the test costs money. And in the japanese school system they teach only american english. Therefore, the toeic uses american accent because american accent is what their biggest customer studies. I truly think this is the reason.

[Guest]

Here is the link. http://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/TOEICTT03.pdf

[Torsten]

Hi InJapan,

You are raising some interesting points here. It might be true that Japan is the biggest single TOEIC market currently, as a matter of fact, Japan has been the largest TOEIC country ever since it was created in 1979. As you know the TOEIC test was developed by ETS because the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Trade wanted a standardized business English test for their companies.

However, things change. The TOEIC is becoming more and popular in European countries too. France is probably the European TOEIC pioneer and through companies like Renault-Nissan, T-com, Coca-Cola, etc. the popularity of the TOEIC is spreading pretty fast. I think ETS is going to introduce other accents in addition to the standard US accent.

Early 2007 the new version of the TOEIC will be launched and as far as I know the listening comprehension section will contain voice samples from speaker of various origins (British, Australian, Canadian, Irish, Scottish etc.).

Anyway, what is your relation to the TOEIC?
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Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[in japan]

What's my relation to the TOEIC? I'm part-time English teacher in Japan (and a full time college student) busily helping my students raise their TOEIC scores. ...............The TOEIC is definitely big business here.