Ho Chi Minh city, 22/7/2014, HCMC Department of Education and Training together with IIG Vietnam held the “TOEFL Junior Teacher Workshop”, with the participation of about 400 local secondary school teachers and officers of local Bureaus of Education and Training. The purpose of this event is to equip the officers and teachers with updated knowledge and modern methods of English teaching to help their students get to know and prepare for the TOEFL Junior test, before the start of the new school year.  

Workshop venue filled up with participants from local schools and Bureaus of Education and Training

The TOEFL Junior test is a reliable measure of English-language proficiency for students age 11 to 15. Researched and developed by ETS who has 60 years of experience in providing English tests, the TOEFL Junior test is an objective and reliable measure of students’ English proficiency. This test is a part of the TOEFL Family of Assessments, which also includes the TOEFL iBT test and the TOEFL® ITP Assessment Series. Based on the long-standing and trusted heritage of the TOEFL test, the TOEFL Junior tests use the most up-to-date methods for language testing and are fair, reliable and valid for their intended purposes.

Mr. Pham Ngoc Thanh – Deputy Director of HCMc Department of Education and Training giving opening speech

Despite being launched only recently in 2012, the outstanding characteristics of the TOEFL Junior test made it trusted and used widely to assess students’ English skills in more than 50 countries, including French, Korea, Japan, China, The United Arab Emirates, Greece, Portugal, Brazil and so on. In Vietnam, TOEFL Junior gained the interest of many students, parents, schools, and educational organizations. Especially, according to the official letter number 384/GDĐT-VP of HCMC Department of Education and Training on 17/2/2014, TOEFL Junior was officially used in the English teaching and learning assessment process in the city. According to this official letter, for the advanced English classes, by the end of the school year, 6^th graders need to achieve 655-670 points in the TOEFL Junior test, 7^th graders need to achieve 675-690 points, 8^th graders need to achieve 695-715 points, and 9^th graders need to achieve 720-740 points. In addition, for the Foreign Language Project 2020’s classes and self-select English classes, when graduating from secondary school, students need to achieve at least 640-650 in the TOEFL Junior test. If the students reach the assigned level for each class, they can be transferred to the advanced English classes.

Teachers eager to study TOEFL Junior teaching guide and instructions

At the workshop, Mr. Nguyen Phuong Suu – IIG Vietnam’s Vice President in Academic Affairs – provided the participants an overview of TOEFL Junior. In addition, to help the teachers and students to get to know and prepare for the TOEFL Junior test, Ms. Nguyen Dieu Linh – IIG Vietnam’s Education Expert – delivered a detailed presentation called “Introducing TOEFL Junior teaching guide”, in which she proposed instructions and recommendations to use the guide. This includes Lexile – a useful program to help TOEFL Junior test takers improving their reading skills. Lexile provides various recommendations about reading materials such as books, newspapers and websites which are appropriate for the learners’ English level, based on their TOEFL Junior scores. Teachers and parents can rely on Lexile and TOEFL Junior scores of their students and children to guide and supervise their learning progress.

IIG Vietnam’s presentations and the handouts provided the participated teachers and education officers sufficient and detailed information about the TOEFL Junior test for them to pass on to their students.

During the Q&A session, the participated teachers and officers asked many questions to get to know the TOEFL Junior test and the attached teaching resources better, as well as to prepare for the English teaching program in the new school year. The HCMC Department of Education and Training’s officers together with IIG Vietnam’s representative answered all the questions of the teachers carefully.

As the country representative of ETS and the only organization to provide the TOEFL Junior test in Vietnam, IIG Vietnam committed to fully support the HCMC Department of Education and Training and primary school English teachers, with the hope that the primary school students in the city will have the best knowledge and preparation before taking the TOEFL Junior test to gain the best results.

For more information about the TOEFL Junior test, please contact IIG Vietnam’s offices or go to www.toefl.com.vn – www.iigvietnam.com