ICANA -- Instituto Cultural Argentino Norteamericano

Assessing the Communication Skills of the Early Learner
TOEIC® Bridge

For some time, language teachers and corporate trainers throughout the world have asked TOEIC Program staff how to benchmark beginning and intermediate learners - especially those who weren't quite ready to tackle the TOEIC test. They asked for a measure of functional language proficiency, but at a lower level. They sought a test that would not be "childish" and wanted language contexts and tasks that could motivate both high school students and adult learners to improve their language ability.

The resulting product is TOEIC Bridge - a test designed to measure the emerging competencies of the early learner. Trina Duke, TOEIC Test Development Coordinator, described the lengthy design process: "We took a careful look at the possible uses of the test, and the proficiency levels and language strengths and weaknesses of the target population. We then sought feedback from local experts. These consultations enabled us to come up with question types suited to TOEIC Bridge."

The resulting test is both shorter and easier than the TOEIC test. While both tests are multiple-choice proficiency tests, TOEIC Bridge takes just one hour and has 50 Listening Comprehension and 50 Reading Comprehension questions.

According to TOEIC Program Manager Krista Mathews, 10,000 people took the test in 2001. Test-takers have come from 15 countries. "The TOEIC Bridge test-taking population has been very diverse," says Mathews. "Because the test is aimed at beginning to intermediate learners of English, the demographics of the test-taking population ranges from middle school students to junior high and high school to adult learners. Any individual learning English can use TOEIC Bridge to gauge his or her progress."

Leif French, Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi in Canada, administered TOEIC Bridge to a group of French-speaking students in the sixth grade. The students had been participating in an English immersion program five hours every day for five months. Professor French commented: "A particularly interesting facet of using this test with young learners is that it measures their global ability to use and understand language in a variety of contexts, both inside and outside the classroom."

The TOEIC Bridge test has also been used in business settings. Corporate trainers often struggle with how to motivate workers with emerging competencies to actually use their language skills on the job. Duke recommends that these corporate trainers use Bridge to help set the workers' language and learning goals. "Trainers should have their students become familiar with the format of the test, so that the question types are not a surprise," Duke says. "Learners should watch TV in English - with or without subtitles - and read magazines and picture books in English and they should study grammar, language functions and vocabulary. Adults will feel better about making mistakes if they experiment with the language."

Because the language covered by TOEIC Bridge is readily accessible to language learners at the beginning and intermediate levels, test-takers are more likely to receive positive reinforcement from their scores, which range from 20-180. This in turn stimulates them to work harder mastering new skills, and take more risks using productive skills. By the time test-takers reach a score of about 160 on TOEIC Bridge, they are ready to cross over - and take the TOEIC test. This is a powerful motivator in itself, because it means they are already at a new level of performance.

For more information about TOEIC Bridge, contact your local TOEIC representative office: Mara Arias, Departamento de Exámenes, ICANA, testing@bcl.edu.ar (54-11)5382-1531