A Review of the Reading Section of the TOEIC

Abstract

In 1979, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) developed the TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication), an English proficiency test for people working in international environments, based on a request from the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry. The Chauncey Group International, a subsidiary of ETS, currently develops and publishes the test. Over two million people per year take the TOEIC (www.toeic.com). According to the TOEIC Report on Test-Takers Worldwide, 1997-98, 63% of the TOEIC results were used in Japan, 29% in Korea, and 8% in other countries. Most reviews of the TOEIC have been descriptions of the test (Gilfert, 1996; Perkins, 1987). The TOEIC comprises the listening and reading section. Buck (2001) reviews only the listening section. For the reading section of the TOEIC we could find only one critical review (Richards, 1992) published over the two decades since the test was developed. Therefore, our purpose in this article is to review critically the reading section based on recent studies of language assessment, particularly for construct validity and content validity, which are considered by language testing researchers (Backman, 1990; Cumming, 1996) as fundamental for validation of language tests.