TOEFL is all the rage just now. Last week when it was available to register the exam from July to October, all the seats were occupied in four and a half hours, making many students anxious about no opportunities for taking TOEFL. Furthermore, the process of registering a seat was a torture that many people spend more than one day to grab one because the webpage of the Chinese version registration website appeared error message all the time, provoking people even more frustrated and furious. Until now, there are still a big many students unable to get a seat for exam, a incredible and chaotic situation that one in any countries can hardly imagine. Some of those miserable students have no other choices and, thus, are forced to go abroad to take the TOEFL exam.
This is definitely caused by short supply of seats for such a big population country. Indeed, this situation may be partly because the implementation of iBT TOEFL, a new practice which the entire problems are sent out from the test center in the U.S., requires hardware equipment, such as computers and access to the Internet, and, thus, the places where qualify to such requirements might not be as many as those in the PBT or CBT TOEFL times. However, another reason could also be that the institution of arranging iBT TOEFL in China has very limited ability to organize the exam here. One of the proofs was the slow response of the website when thousands of people trying to register their own seats at the same time, obviously deriving from the poor capability of its servers. But I do not think the ETS, the owner of TOEFL, dares to change this institution unless it does not plan to keep promoting its business in China, because this institution, actually, is the Department of Education of China.
Another unpleasant thing is that the price to take TOEFL in China is much higher than that in other countries. In China, one has to register a seat on a Chinese version website operated by the Chinese authorities and the price listed on it is RMB 1370, higher than the price on the international website set by ETS. Hence, who are making money from Chinese students?
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1 comment:
it is sad to know that the studnets in china are treated that way. and the fee of registration is very high too. I hope American authority could step in a little to change this unfair approach.
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