Educational Testing Services (ETS)
Educational Testing Services (ETS) is an American private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization. ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually — including the TOEFL and TOEIC tests, the GRE General and Subject Tests and the Praxis Series assessments — in more than 180 countries, at more than 9,000 locations worldwide. In addition to assessments, ETS conducts educational research, analysis and policy studies and develop a variety of customized services and products for teacher certification, English language learning and elementary, secondary and post-secondary education.
The Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL (/ˈtoʊfəl/, TOH-fəl) is a standardized test to measure the English language ability of non-native speakers wishing to enroll in American universities. The test is accepted by many English-speaking academic and professional institutions. TOEFL is a trademark of the Educational Testing Service (ETS), a private non-profit organization, which designs and administers the tests. ETS issues official score reports, sent independently to institutions, for two years following the test. more…
The Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) is “an English language test designed specifically to measure the everyday English skills of people working in an international environment.” There are different forms of the exam: The TOEIC Listening & Reading Test consists of two equally graded tests of comprehension assessment activities totaling a possible 990 score; the newer TOEIC Speaking & Writing Test comprises tests of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, fluency, overall coherence, and structure (organization of sentences) totaling a possible 400 score. In addition to the official TOEIC tests, there are also versions that individual businesses and educational institutions can purchase for internal use. These “Institutional” TOEIC tests can be administered at the organization’s choice of location and time for their employees or students. more…
The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is a standardized test required for admission to most graduate schools in the United States. Created and administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the exam aims to measure verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, analytical writing, and critical thinking skills that have been acquired over a long period of time and that are not entirely based on any specific field of study outside of the GRE itself. The GRE General Test is offered as a computer-based exam administered at Prometric testing centers.
The GRE was significantly overhauled in August 2011, resulting in an exam that is not adaptive on a question-by-question basis, but rather by section, so that the performance on the first verbal and math sections determine the difficulty of the second sections presented. Overall, the test retained the sections and many of the question types from its predecessor, but the scoring scale was changed to a 130 to 170 scale (from a 200 to 800 scale). more…
