'You're 20 minutes early for the iBT, so you're too late!'

I thought we had everything worked out for the internet-based TOEFL. I checked my students online profile, and the name matched his passport perfectly. Nevertheless, on Monday following the scheduled Saturday test, I queried Patrick about his exam. Well, actually, he wasn't able to take the test in the end.

"Whaaat!! Whyyyy?," I asked, gasping. He was 20 minutes EARLY; therefore, he was too LATE to take the exam. According to ETS rules, you should arrive 30 minutes before the iBT to ensure that there is enough time to check you in before the exam. However, depending on which test center you choose, this arrival time is flexible. After all, if there is no line of students waiting to be processed for the exam, it does not take a half-hour to check in. Unfortunately, in the case of my student, although his test center was not crowded, the person at the front desk was poorly trained. Despite there being no line of waiting students, Patrick was prevented from taking the test as planned, and , of course, lost his registration fee too.

If this is standard policy across all ETS centers, why were some of my students downtown being admitted five minutes before the exam and others being told they were too late when they were 20 minutes early? Obviously, one ETS center manager was trained to provide good service whereas the other manager was trained to follow directions to the point where she behaved like a mindless, thoughtless robot. In the process, a young, non-native English speaker was turned away from the TOEFL test center feeling crushed, angry, sad, defeated, robbed.

As a TOEFL instructor at a relatively small school, I can only imagine that this maltreatment of students is going on all the time across the USA. All I can do now is to get the word out to other teachers and TOEFL students. READ and PAY ATTENTION TO EVERY PRINTED WORD on your registration form and profile for the internet-based TOEFL.

1. Make sure that your profile name matches your passport name EXACTLY (i.e., if you have five names, put them all there. There is no space for middle-name, so put the middle names in the last name box. Better yet, go to the test center and register face-to-face and get a written note from the person who registered you stating the date, time, and place that you got registered.)

2. Arrive early - at least 45 minutes, but maybe one hour! early and check in at the front desk. If you arrive 29 minutes early, be prepared to argue for your right to sit and take the test, since you're supposed to arrive 30 minutes EARLY.

3. If you encounter any problems at the test center, do not leave without getting a piece of paper with signatures of the test center manager, clerks, and so on. Document what happened and why you were denied admittance to the exam. Make ETS personnel accountable by getting their names and contact numbers.

Good luck!

ETS Fails, Part Deux

My last post was about Educational Testing Service's policy toward students whose names don't match their passports exactly. If you thought a name change could be done online a day before the test, please beware that this is NOT possible.

One of my students discovered last Friday (he is registered to take his iBT on Saturday) that to make a name change and not lose his money, he had to FAX a copy of his passport and full name five business days in advance of his test. He tried several times on Saturday to FAX his information, but the ETS fax machine did not respond until Monday morning. Furthermore, ETS will NOT send a confirmation of receipt of the change in name, meaning that it is up to the student to keep checking his profile before the exam date to make sure that the change was made.

We don't know yet what happens if the change isn't made by ETS prior to the exam. I have advised my student to go on Wednesday or Thursday to the exam center with a copy of his FAX and demand that the test center expedite confirmation of the name change before Saturday. I told him to be sure and get a signed document showing that someone has taken responsibility for him to be allowed to take the exam on Saturday. We'll see.... Good luck, TOEFLers!

ETS (Educational Testing Service) Fails

Recently one of my students went to a TOEFL test center to take his exam, but to his dismay, the test center would not admit him. The reason? As he was from Spain, he had more than one surname and had 'mistakenly' entered only one of his two surnames on his application form for the test. Consequently, when he arrived at the exam center, he was denied permission to enter because the last name on his registration form was not IDENTICAL to his passport name. Despite the fact that there was no doubt that he was indeed the person identified in the passport and that the passport number matched his registration form, he was denied access to the exam center. Even worse, the test center refused to credit the student with the $150 that it cost to take the exam - all of this from an organization that is a 501(c)(3) non-profit company.

In addition, in the span of 20 minutes, my student observed the same thing happen to a student from Mexico and another from Argentina. These students also lost their $150 for not having written all of their names on their passport. The girl from Mexico had a California driver's license with the same name as was on her registration form, but not with her. Because it would have taken two hours to retrieve the driver's license, the people at the test center did not allow her to take the test, even though she could have shown the alternate identification afterward. Why not?

It seems that the test center could have accommodated all these students (especially the latter student from Mexico) and permitted them to take the exam and not mark it until verification had been received from ETS 'Central.'

This has been going on for some time so that ETS could have fixed this problem. In fact, the same thing happened two years ago to another student of mine who left out her second name (she had four names!); she was from Paraguay. Is there a pattern here? Does ETS encourage students with multiple names to omit one or two because of apparent lack of space on their online application form?

There is no doubt in my mind that the practices of ETS violate all business and non-profit business models for customer service. I have searched online to see if there is a pattern of exploitation of foreign students by ETS, and not surprisingly, there IS. (However, it's not just foreign students who are being ripped off by ETS. College-bound Americans are subjected to numerous tests monopolized by ETS. That's another story.)

Check out Americans for Educational Testing Reform, which has numerous links to related articles from the New York Times to the BBC. In addition, you might want to read this query from a Nigerian student. There is a curious reaction to one question about names not matching on test day. I am now wondering if Muhammad (who had a very long name) had a problem taking the test in the USA. Some of the responses from other parts of the world suggest that the over-the-top security measures taken by test centers in San Diego reflect some peculiarly American paranoia about students taking multiple TOEFL tests under aliases. Other absurdities from ETS are discussed at this site. I'm sure you can find many more .

Watch out, students. This is what ETS is coming up with next - a way to profile students that have traits for success. Heaven help us if this also becomes another exam score that must be submitted along with the SAT and/or the GRE test results.


This post is dedicated to my TOEFL students Alicia and Chema.

Learn Accents to Improve Your Pronunciation

In searching for a video that might be instructional for ESL students to improve their pronunciation, I ran across this set of material produced by Amy Walker (Parts 1 and 2) who displays a range of different English accents and demonstrates how to learn them. In addition to the demo, she gives some great tips that would be useful for anyone trying to master the pronunciation of a foreign language.

Ms. Walker's most important tip is to be completely fascinated by the 'accent.' If you are captivated by the language and its accent, then you will pay attention to the pronunciation of the consonant and vowel sounds and to the way breath, mouth, and tongue are used in speaking, to the melody or 'melodic patterns' of the language, to its rhythm and stress, to its grammar and word meanings, and to that essence-like thing that she calls the 'vibe.'

In a nutshell, to be successful at capturing an accent and improving your pronunciation so that you sound more 'native', you must be very observant, analytical, and willing to practice, practice, practice! Just do it! Ten minutes a day, even.