At the college where I teach, the TOEFL looms large for international students hoping to study there. The purpose of the TOEFL is to give a standard measure of academic English proficiency for college or university study, and the ESL students in the academic English program need to demonstrate an acceptable TOEFL score to be able to move from ESL to degree classes. While my program has taken measures to minimize the dominance of the TOEFL (equally weighing it with coursework and teacher recommendations), it has always been a necessary evil. After reading chapters 2 and 3 in John C. Bean’s Engaging Ideas, I more strongly feel that the reliance on the TOEFL, or any standardized English test, for college admission works against the cultivation of critical through that goes hand-in-hand with writing.
Maybe this is all fine, as Bean’s purpose for the book is to show how writing can be a tool for active learning and critical thinking in the college classroom. Maybe the assumption is that students entering college do not have this perspective on writing yet, and college should be where they engage in dialogic models of writing that give greater attention to genre and audience, not starting with a thesis statement, but coming to a thesis statement after time spent in the planning and brouillon (the French concept of placing into disorder which Bean finds a more helpful metaphor than the more commonly used rough draft). Maybe it is too much to ask for a standardized test to allow for the type of writing and critical thought that is valued in academia, but it seems like the time, money, and stress expended for a college-bound English language learner to learn how to write a closed prose essay on a mundane topic, with no real audience other than the TOEFL rater, with just a ghost of a genre, is time, money, and stress that could be better spent learning how two engage meaningfully with academic English and critical thinking through writing.
On a more hopeful note, Bean’s suggestion to have students write for a variety of audiences in course assignments is something that I would like to begin implementing in my ESL classes. As I am preparing learners for entering their major and general education classes, I realize that there is always in the back of my mind this imagined professor who will be grading their work, and it is my job to make sure that they understand what this professor expects and recognizes as good writing. While this is one part of academic writing, there are other audiences that English language learning students could and should be writing for.
What do you think? Does the TOEFL do serious harm to English language learner writing? Do you envision the audience of your students’ writing to be an imagined future professor? Are there ways around this?
I do think that TOEFL does harm to L2 writers because, in my experience, the genre that is required of the students to produce on the TOEFL test is a genre that is not used anywhere else (other than perhaps old-school composition courses). Many international students spend weeks and months preparing for the TOEFL test, learn the 5-paragraph format, memorize clichés expressions and vocabulary to use in their essays, and practice test-taking strategies that help get them better scores. But these skills are not transferable to their future academic studies and careers. In my writing courses, I spend the first half of the semester trying to undo what the students learned about writing. I am sometimes faced with resistance from my students who think what they learn about writing from their TOEFL prep courses is what constitutes good writing. It is difficult for them to break away from the 5-paragraph essay format and to learn to think critically, write in different genres, and consider different audiences.
Agreed that TOEFL does more harm that good. It creates stress, leads to memorization of cliches, and is generally not what a university values. What would be better to implicate in place of it? Self-directed placement? I think that would be an interesting thing to try. It seems to work well among English I students across universities.
Which skills should be measured? What writing skills should a student have to succeed in first year college courses? What skills should English learners have to succeed in English-speaking universities? These are million dollar questions that the assessment community has grapple with for decades! Self-assessment is an option, but research shows that individuals tend to place themselves higher than they actually are. Also, there is always the question of prior testing experience and self-efficacy. In my institution, if we leave it up to the international students, very few of them would place themselves in developmental ESL courses!