Shane Vietnam recently hosted a trial for the forthcoming TOEFL Primary test. The program called “TOEFL challenge” involved primary students from all over Vietnam, with 20 of our students. Shane Vietnam was selected after a meeting between our Managing director Wendy Nguyen and the local ETS office. We chose two of our CL09 classes to take the test as well as including some top students from other classes.
TOEFL is a test primarily used as a measure of English for entry into American universities. The TOEFL Primary has more advantages for younger learners, for one it is for a larger age range and provides a result on a scale, useful if a parent is not sure which young learner exam to take. It also uses a computerised speaking test, this will obviously save money but we will have to wait to see if that provides as robust a result as using human examiners.
The students attended a preparation session hosted by Shane Vietnam a few days before the exam. This was to go through the procedure of the exam, including filling in the answer sheet correctly. We also included some games to help the students prepare for the type of questions in the exams and included a practice test. All the students performed well and were much more confident for the TOEFL Primary.
The students arrived at our District 3 school early on Saturday morning, with an hour spare to go through some final preparation before the exam. The students were all very excited and a little bit nervous. After a few hours which comprised the reading and listening sections of the test (Reading 50 minutes, Listening 40 minutes) the students emerged letting us know that they had done well. The students made their own way to the speaking test, which was done primarily on computer systems. This lasted about an hour and was located in the ETS center of Ho Chi Minh city. We will now have to wait for the results but given their feedback we are sure our students have done very well.
