Michael Goodine's Blog, page 9

TOEFL Speaking Raters Start Petition Re: Offshoring

Some TOEFL speaking raters have started an online petition in response to issues they have faced in recent months.  As regular readers know, scoring of TOEFL speaking responses is now done by raters based in India.  Before the offshoring process began at the end of last year, scoring was done exclusively by US-based employees of […]

On Blaming English Tests

Writing in the Financial Times, Cambridge University Press & Assessment’s chief product officer Pamela Baxter notes that “international students, who are expected to demonstrate only minimum standards of English for their admission to UK universities, often struggle to keep up with coursework and to contribute usefully to classroom discussions.” This, she points out, “is a […]

New Australian Visa Requirements!

The Australian Department of Home Affairs has finally released new English test score requirements for visa applicants.  As most readers know already, CELPIP General, MET and LanguageCert have been added to the list of acceptable tests. Additionally, many of the section score requirements have been adjusted.  I won’t list them all here, but a few […]

Join Me at the TEFL Development Hub

I’m going to join the TEFL Development Hub live stream tomorrow (Friday) to talk about tests with host Teresa Bestwick. I’m looking forward to it and perhaps some readers might like to join. It is a Youtube stream thing, so you can probably figure out how to attend by visiting the channel page.   Or just […]

I Took the iTEP Academic Test!

I took the iTEP academic test (at-home version) a few days ago.  I’ll paste in a few notes here while my memories are fresh. I’ll share my score report below.   Let me know if you have any questions.  And if you are a student prepping for this test and stumble upon my blog post, […]

TOEFL TPO for 2026 Format

Note that a TPO (TOEFL Practice Online) for the 2026 TOEFL is now available from ETS. It costs $49.00 plus tax. I think tax is added regardless of the test taker’s location. If you are using this to learn more about the enhanced TOEFL, just note that TPOs come with just one attempt. And if […]

No 1-30 Section Scores in New TOEFL?

Here’s a mildly interesting thing that was spotted while in conversation with John Healy. It appears that while the TOEFL will maintain a 1-120 score scale for two years following the launch of the enhanced TOEFL (alongside the new 1-6 scale), it will not maintain 1-30 scores for each of the subsections. At least this […]

More on Jagged Score Profiles

With the big TOEFL overhaul going on, it is worth mentioning that ETS still cancels TOEFL results that report a jagged score profile.  In these cases no refund is provided, and the test taker is not offered a free re-test.  There is no appeals process.  Below you’ll find a recent complaint culled from social media. […]

Change?

I’m hearing about changes in New Jersey. 

DET and Graduate Studies

Here’s a nice post on the Duolingo English Test blog about graduate admissions at the University of Missouri.  It points out that students admitted with TOEFL, IELTS and DET scores all perform about the same when it comes to overall GPA.  In 2023/24 DET admits earned the highest overall GPA.  And in 2024/25 IELTS admits […]