Minimal English Test vs. TOEIC® Masaya Kanzaki Kanda University of International Studies PanSIG2015, May 16, 3:30-3:55, Room 309

Minimal English Test A listening, cloze test Origin: Simple Performance-Oriented Test (SPOT), a Japanese language test Two passages (about 200 words each) with 72 blanks Test-takers listen to the audio and fill in the blanks. The target words are four letters or less.

Purpose To compare the scores of the listening, reading and speaking tests of the TOEIC and the Minimal English Test to see how closely they correlate with each other

Participants 90 university students attending a private university specializing in foreign languages Year: 7 in the 1st year, 47 in the 2nd year, 16 in the 3rd year, 20 in the 4th year Sex: 15 male, 75 female Major: 51 International Communication, 26 English, 11 International Business Career, 1 Chinese, 1 Portuguese First language: 87 Japanese, 2 Korean, 1 Chinese

Materials TOEIC Listening and Reading Test (TOEIC LR) TOEIC Speaking Test (TOEIC S) Minimal English Test (MET)

TOEIC LR: 200 multiple questions, 2 hours, 10-990 points Listening Part Task # 1 For each question with a photo, listen to four sentences and choose the one that best describes the image. 10 2 Listen to a question or statement followed by three responses and choose the most appropriate response. 30 3 Listen to a conversation and answer comprehension questions. 4 Listen to a short talk and answer comprehension questions.

TOEIC LR: 200 multiple questions, 2 hours, 10-990 points Reading Part Task # 5 Choose a word or phrase to fill in a blank in a sentence. 40 6 Choose words or phrases to fill in three blanks in a passage. 12 7 Read a passage or a set of two passages and answer comprehension questions. 48

TOEIC Speaking: Computer-based

TOEIC S: 11 questions, 0-200 points, 20 minutes # Task 1–2 Read aloud the text that appears on the screen. 3 Describe the picture on the screen. 4–6 Answer three questions about a single topic as though you are participating in a telephone interview. 7–9 Read the information on the screen and answer three questions about it as if responding to a telephone inquiry. 10 Listen to a recorded message about a problem and propose a solution for it. 11 Express an opinion about a specific topic.

Results

Descriptive Statics (N = 90) Test (possible score) Mean SD Minimum Maximum TOEIC L (5-495) 369.61 56.67 170 495 TOEIC R 256.17 71.52 100 430 TOEIC LR (10-990) 625.78 116.22 310 925 TOEIC S (0-200) 112.36 21.39 60 MET (0-72) 47.49 8.55 31 67

Reliability Cronbach’s alpha for the MET: .85

Correlations among 3 TOEIC tests (N = 90) * = p < .001   L R S 1 .64* .45* .38*

Correlations between MET and TOEIC (N = 90)   TOEIC L TOEIC R TOEIC LR TOEIC S MET .39* .51* .50* .59* * = p < .001

How closely correlate with TOEIC S Correlations with TOEIC S: TOEIC LR .45 MET .59

Conclusion The MET would be a better placement test for a speaking class than TOEIC LR.

References http://www.geocities.jp/makibelfast/MET.html

Q&A Thank you. Acknowledgement This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 25370727.