What is the TOEIC?
The TOEIC stands for Test of English for International Communication. It is a standardized test that is used worldwide for people to assess their English skills. There is an online version, but this blog post will not be addressing that. The paper version is the test that Midwest Language Services, LLC administers at companies in Indiana. The first section is a listening test that includes 100 questions based on a recording of people speaking. This lasts 45 minutes and is a multiple choice test comprised of photos, question-response, conversations, and talks. The second part is about 75 minutes long and includes incomplete sentences, text completion, and reading comprehension.
To prepare for this, it is recommended that you listen to English as spoken by a a variety of people — men, women, and people from various countries, primarily the U.S. and England or Australia, as many of the accents in the recordings seem to include these and this can be difficult for people who have not tuned their ear to catch what people are saying with a slightly different pronunciation.
Many Japanese companies have their employees take the TOEIC and it is said that people’s promotions are in part, connected to how well they do on the TOEIC. As someone who has taught English to Japanese living in Indiana, someone can score well on the TOEIC, but lack confidence in speaking the language until they have been living abroad for a few years.
Here is a breakdown of what the scores indicate:
Beginner/Elementary Proficiency: Scores below 400.
Intermediate: Scores between 400-600.
High Intermediate: Scores between 600-700.
Advanced Proficiency: Scores 800 or more.
Professional Proficiency: Scores 900+ are often considered to indicate international professional proficiency.
To schedule a time for Midwest Language Services, LLC to administer a TOEIC at your company, please contact us at least one month in advance to help ensure that we have a test date available. With enough notice, we are able to administer the TOEIC on Saturday mornings, which helps ensure that more of your team members can take the exam. The test results are usually ready within two weeks and are delivered to your workplace.
Please contact us at info@midwestlanguageservices.com to schedule the TOEIC at your company.