Research Title:

How the pre-specialization course help students (be graduated students) in improving TOEFL score?

Research Student:

Brenda Liseth Mejía

Claudia Patricia López Cruz

Erick Wilfredo Perdomo

Ana Mercedes Hernandez

Nelson Pérez Torres

José Davis Nájera

INTRODUCTION

The focus of the present investigation was to know the opinion regarding what

circumstances or factor that influence in many occasion fail the TOEFL test after five or

more year of study. Language English nowadays is very important around the World.

To know English open several opportunities in the life for example to obtain an

excellent work with a good salary, also the English provide us the possibility to know

another cultures, people that belong another countries that speak English too in this

context is possible share ideas, experiences, that could help and develop a good

environment to learn English. Through of English teaching-learning process students

could learn and to find different way to study English, learner can find lot resources on

Internet, besides book, films, and videos and so on. All this resources help a lot to

understand the English very well depend of the interest that student show for learn the

language, the result will be excellent.

The investigation of this social situation to carry out for the interesting to help to

students to improve their knowledge’s, in the four skills that English has. There is a

specific test that consist to measures the ability to use and understand English at the

university level. And it evaluates how well we combine our listening, reading, speaking

and writing skills to perform academic tasks especially for non-native speakers of

English.

Take this test is very essential because at the present time the majority of

institutions require certification to provide any opportunity of work in an educational

institution, but how to know what is the best way to prepare for the TOEFL. As we

know the TOEFL is designed a wide variety of skills in English for those motive

students must study hard and take part in a regular plan program of TOEFL and practice

when as possible.

Our research it focus to know of the different point of view of student specially

at UTEC where to take part graduate students and university professor g as well as take

into consideration their own and each other’s behaviors regarding the test.

The present research has the following objectives:

General objective:

Measures the ability to use and understand English at the university level through of

TOEFL test.

Specific Objectives:

Identify the weaknesses and strengths in each part of TOEL test.

Evaluates how well you combine your listening, reading, speaking and writing skills to

perform academic tasks.

Know if student would like learn strategies regarding mini-dialogues and long

conversation.

Listen carefully the intonation of the sentences in a conversation.

Description of problem

In the Educational system of El Salvador there are several issues that are

ignored.

It known that there is a good education system in the country but the reality is

that the truth is away from that fact. If we want a good education system in El Salvador,

it is necessary to involve teachers and students in the process. It is vital to provide

schools with good teachers to improve the quality of education.

Many teachers lack of good preparation and when they perform classes they

transmit the same problems to students. Therefore, they never learn. For example

Other important factor that causes a bad education is the fact that some Teachers

don´t have English major. Some others simply don´t have the vocation of teaching. All

this affects the learning process.

Teachers play an important role in the teaching -learning process because they

are the guide for those students that need to acquire the English knowledge. But if a

teachers and students lack of resources as electronic as no electronic, or maybe teachers

never plan the classes and they go to invent the class. Students never learn. Sometimes

the teacher knows a lot about the English language, but they do not know how use a

correct methodology or techniques.

At the present time English language is very important because the majority of

work it is requirement to performer the four skills that English have, the professionals

obtain more opportunities to find a good work whit good salary. Taking into

consideration all factor already mentioned it is important take decisions that improve

the education in El Salvador.

OBJECTIVES

General objective:

Measures the ability to use and understand English at the university level through of

TOEFL test.

Specific Objectives:

Identify the weaknesses and strengths in each part of TOEL test.

Evaluates how well you combine your listening, reading, speaking and writing skills to

perform academic tasks.

Know if student would like learn strategies regarding mini-dialogues and long

conversation.

Listen carefully the intonation of the sentences in a conversation.

Learn how to analyze written texts for specific information.

Develop writing techniques and skills.

Improve overall English skills; reading, writing, listening and speaking

JUSTIFICATION

The implementation of a second language it is very important, because people

can get better opportunities and at the same time it contributes to the country growth. In

the case of the TOEFL test with the implementation of the English language learning in

the education, it allows students to acquire skills and abilities to function successfully in

life and in their future work. The study pretends to investigate why be graduated

students from Universidad Technological don´t pass the TOEFL test at the end of the

process.

Teachers and students will be surveyed to find out what are their views and also

we pretend if the lack of autonomy is a factor in the students that affect the results of

TOEFL test.

This investigation is a contribution to diagnose and propose solutions to improve

the teaching learning process in the English area; such way in the future put in practices

the all knowledge on TOEFL test.

At this point, it is necessary to analyze why is important to achieve a better

quality of education in learning the English language? What elements can be used to

improve educational quality of the English language in all setting that the life provide us

We have to know how teachers plan their classes to teach strategies regarding the

TOEFL .

This study aims to explore the conditions and factors affecting the learning of

English at university it would be a good idea to implement better teaching methods and

strategies of learning English language because there is little information and

knowledge on how to teach TOEFL class.

On the other hand, there is a possibility that teachers are note qualified enough in

this area due to the fact that their proficiency level is not good to teach, the teachers are

having deficiencies in mastering the language, and in this way it is difficult for the

students to learn it.

This study will value important factors determining the process of teaching

English language learning, the methodology, the class planning and the context in

which class is developed.

It is important for the teachers to have the necessary tools to teach the

students, providing the resources and favorable conditions help students learn English.

This study aims to determine the factors that might be affecting the English language

learning in order to provide suggestions to encourage and improve the teaching learning

process.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

According to (Messick 1989) “Attempting to develop theoretical rationales,

designers of a new TOEFL began by exploring how theories of Languages proficiency

would serve as a basis for the test design”. Making new research about the language

proficiency nowadays could help to the development of a new format of the TOEFL test

and this will help to measure the previous knowledge that the students have when taking

the test. Teach English it is something very special in the life of teacher for that reason

is important to explore all possible way that improve the English knowledge, the

teachers must implement all necessary tool to encourage the students in the learning

process. Cumming et al. (2000) proposed that a “reader-writer model” is necessary for

the writing component of the TOEFL exam. In our time almost nobody practice or make

a model before to take the TOEFL research studies in education have demonstrated that

the use of model before the real test improve the result of the TOEFL because student

have a training about task of writing providing excellent compositions in the writing

section of the TOEFL.

As argued (e.g., Stansfield & Ross, 1988; Weigle, 1994), fine points of

discourse, coherence, grammar, lexical usage, or presentation of ideas are the principals

factor that evaluators have into consideration when check the TOEFL test but it is

important to show consistent assessments. (Henning, 1991; Purves, 1992; Raimes,

1990). The simplicity of the holistic scoring method, and the rating scales that typically

accompany it, obscures its principal virtue: reliance on the complex, richly informed

judgments of skilled human raters to interpret the quality of students’ writing abilities.

Sometime the global scores in the TOEFL damage the result that students have

obtained as express the researcher because there are occasions where students feel

frustration when look the score and perhaps only two or three point are necessary to past

the test but how is necessary to have the score that it is require for the accreditation it is

impossible to help the students, and students again take the test, in some circumstance

when students fail the test twice, three, or four there is some institution that try to help

but another whether student do not passed the test there finish all.

(e.g., Ruth & Murphy, 1988) have produced rating scales that are too imprecise and

broadly defined to demarcate individual students’ achievements in writing, either for the

purposes of achievement testing or of research into second-language writing

development (Cumming, 1997;Polio, 1997). Moreover, there is considerable debate

over which types of holistic scoring methods are most appropriate and informative for

second-language assessment (Cumming, 1997; Hamp-Lyons, 1991):

Truly holistic scoring schemes that combine several traits into single score

points?

Multitrait scoring methods that assign ratings to distinct aspects of compositions

(e.g.,discourse organization, presentation of ideas, grammar, and vocabulary)?

Primary trait methods that assign ratings to key features of compositions

expected for a specific writing task (Lloyd-Jones, 1977)?

All aspect proposed before are the vital importance that should be implement in

the present time such way that improve the score in the TOEFL almost always

there is not enough research about the weakness or mistakes that have the

TOEFL, to make the possible changes besides is essential make researches about

what are the strength the TOEFL and so develop or improve another way toward

success of a good score.

Two further issues are a) the variability in cultural standards that

implicitly inform holistic scoring and b) the sampling of types of written genres

for assessment purposes. Numerous recent studies have found groups of raters to

differ in their evaluations of writing according to their cultural or disciplinary

backgrounds and according to the types of written genres assessed (e.g.,

Kobayashi & Rinnert, 1996; Mendelsohn & Cumming, 1987; Song &Caruso,

1996). More information is needed about the range of scoring behaviors that

experienced raters with diverse academic, cultural, and experiential backgrounds

demonstrate when using holistic scoring. Such information is needed to identify

differences as well as commonalities among experienced raters and also to

determine which rating behaviors might be worth either promoting or

discouraging in the context of particular writing assessments. Similarly,

information is needed to describe how raters’ scoring behaviors may vary across

different types of writing tasks. Many of the schemes now widely used for

holistic scoring of adult ESL/EFL learners’ compositions (e.g., the current rubric

for TOEFL essays; Hamp-Lyons & Henning, 1991; Jacobs, Zinkgraf, Wormuth,

Hartfiel & Hughey, 1981) were devised only to rate brief, argumentative-type

essays; they are not suitable for scoring other types of writing tasks, for

example, that might involve the integration of content from reading or listening

sources.

While more investigation unless ignorance this mean that have a exact

point of view regarding how to evaluated any writing is very essential to have

wide knowledge about punctuation, about culture because do not exist an

specific ruler, all this aspect must implement in all skill, in all section that is

divide the TOEFL test.

There are some researches about whether genders have influence in the

result of the TOEFL it belief that female have a lot percentage to answer very

well the test have expressed some researchers. Gender differences on free-

response writing examinations have tended to favor females, but the magnitude

of gender differences varies across populations of examinees. For example, the

National Assessment of Educational Progress (1994) has reported gender

differences in performance on essay tests for national random samples exceeding

one-half of a standard deviation in grades 8 and 12. Similar results have been

reported for some statewide examinations at grade 8 (Englehard, Gordon, &

Gabrielson, 1991). In college-bound populations, gender differences in

performance on essay tests of writing skill have been much smaller, ranging

from a little over one-tenth to about one-third of a standard deviation, but still

favoring females (Breland & Griswold, 1982; Breland & Jones, 1982;

Bridgeman & Bonner, 1994). In graduate school applicant populations, females

have averaged about one-tenth of a standard deviation higher on essay tests than

males (Bridgeman & McHale, 1996: Schaeffer, Briel, & Fowles,2001) Although

the majority of researches refer to writing will be excellent implement

researches if in all skills if the each day female have the power in the TOEFL.

Every day is more necessary to learn about all aspect of language

English because as have mentioned some raters the English to cover the

educational aspect and business aspect too Test takers’ language family,

particularly Indo-European and Non-Indo-European, has been widely

investigated in language-testing research (e.g., Kunnan, 1995) and has been

examined. Prevalence of English use in educational and business contexts in the

test takers’ home country, particularly Kachru’s (1984; 1985) classification of

inner-circle countries (English is primary; e.g., United States), outer-circle

countries (English has special administrative status; e.g., India), and expanding-

circle countries (English is considered important but has no special

administrative status; e.g., Japan), is frequently used in the English as a second

language/English as a foreign language teaching and learning literature (e.g.,

Thumboo, 2001) and was recently investigated in a TOEFL iBT study (Xi et al.,

2006). Test takers’ language exposure, especially in a formal school.

Consider the model of factors that influence performance on a

conventional test shown in Figure 1. Performance is directly positively or

negatively influenced by an examinee’s degree of (a) achievement, (b) test

preparation, and (c) test anxiety, along with a host of other unnamed variables

that may contribute error to measures of ability as operationalized by test

performance (e.g., health, testing environment). Previous research suggests

relationships among the elements 1of this model. Test performance is influenced

by an examinee’s academic achievement which, in turn, is influenced by

opportunity to learn (Wiley & Yoon, 1995). Test preparation, which influences

test performance, is also likely to influence text anxiety (Powers, 1993; Powers

& Rock, 1999). Finally, it is clear that an examinee’s social background

influences opportunity to learn, test preparation, and achievement levels (Kim &

Hocevar, 1998; Powers, 1993; Turner, 1993). Hence, it seems that social

circumstances play an important role in determining performance on

conventional tests. As mentioned before when taking the TOEFL test

achievement, test preparation, and test anxiety, are causes that all students to

tackle when they take the TOEFL. Each cause has different issues for example

achieve the good scores is crucial but is obligatory have a test preparation to

solved doubt regarding languages English, make a test anxiety could to help

students know their anxiety, and so try to establish a correct level or anxiety.

In general, speaking can be defined as the use of oral language to interact

directly and immediately with others. For the purposes of the TOEFL 2000

assessment, the concern is with such interactions as occur in academic settings.

In such settings, interactions are primarily directed towards acquiring,

transmitting, and demonstrating knowledge. In addition, interactions in the

academy may concern the organization, management, and regulation of learning

activities. Communicative competence in oral academic language requires

control of a wide range of phonological and syntactic features, vocabulary, and

oral genres and the knowledge of how to use them appropriately. As He and

Young (1998) show, the interactions may not provide a firm foundation for

generalizations because the oral test is itself a unique oral genre with

significantly different patterns of turn-taking and topic control. It is important,

therefore, that the validity of the test be demonstrated explicitly, rather than

assumed.

A number of writers (Paltridge, 1997; Swales, 1990; Jefferson & Lee,

1992; Fairclough, 1995) stress that genres are ideal text types, prototypes, or

templates that people orient to but do not necessarily conform to. Although

these underlying abstract structures exist, participants negotiate their way

through such structures and regularly disrupt them. It will thus be important that

the test not take too prescriptive a view of generic structure. Similarly it will be

important to include what Bakhtin (1986, p. 78) calls “flexible, plastic, and

creative” genres such as personal narrative or expression of opinion in addition

to those with a more rigid generic format such as formulaic exchanges in

everyday situations.

A value-added measure is the “contribution of various factors toward

growth in student achievement” (Goldhaber & Anthony, 2003, p. 38). According

to leading researchers in the field, value-added models can be thought of as “a

collection of complex statistical techniques that use multiple years of students’

test score data to estimate the effects of individual schools or teachers”

(McCaffrey, Lockwood, Koretz, & Hamilton, 2003, p. xi). There are two main

ways in which value-added models are used in practice. The first is to evaluate

schools for accountability purposes, and the second is to evaluate teachers in

terms of their effectiveness relative to other teachers.

There are effective and ineffective teachers in all educational institutions

know identify who is the effective or ineffective it a hard work for that reason

exist some researches that provides way how to procedure in this cases. It is very

important have teacher quality specially teaching TOEFL, when mention quality

also means that the teacher must have wide knowledge in technology, whether

teacher use the technology to teach the TOEFL classes will be more interesting,

less boring particularly grammar classes according to McCaffrey & Hamilton

(2007) found that Pennsylvania schools were given access to classroom-level

value-added data but little use was made of the data to change instruction. In

Ohio, teachers in some schools also receive valueadded information about their

classrooms and teachers can use the data to see whether they are more effective

with high-achieving students or low-achieving students; however, whether they

use that information to actually change instruction is not clear. Also, there is

little other information in value-added scores that can be used instructionally. In

other places, various kinds of agreements have been achieved that allow the use

of value-added scores for limited administrative purposes. One modest but

important way that value-added scores have been used in Tennessee is to

determine the distribution of effective teachers within the state (Tennessee

Department of Education, 2007). Using this information, Tennessee can target

technical assistance to those districts that need to find ways to improve the

effectiveness of their teachers. Similarly, value-added scores can be used to

identify clusters of particularly effective teachers within a district or even within

individual schools.

Research in the area of variation in tasks and contexts, as well as their

effects on language use, has supported the hypothesis that both test performance

(Bachman & Cohen, 1998) and strategy use (Poulisse, 1990) differ across tasks

and across different proficiency levels (Purpura, 1999; Yoshida-Morise, 1998).

As Cohen and Olshtain (1993) pointed out, “[N]ot all speaking tasks are created

equal . . . there are tasks which make far greater demands on learners than do

others” (p. 50). Butler, Eignor, Jones, McNamara, and Suomi (2000) also

recognized how task characteristics and performance factors can influence test-

takers’ output on speaking tasks. In addition to examining test-takers’ reported

strategic behaviors, we investigated how the reported strategic behaviors vary

across three SSTiBT task groups and six individual SSTiBT speaking tasks, and

the relationship between respondents’ reported strategic behaviors and their

performance on the SSTiBT as indicated by their test scores.

METHODOLOGY

Type of research

The type of research is quantitative.

Instrument

In this descriptive study, the instrument was the type of questionnaire designed

for students in male-female genres, about the use of technological and non-

technological resources used by the teachers in the TOEFL answers consist in checking

the resources they consider teachers use in terms of always, sometime, never.

Type of instrument was answered by 30 students at Technological University of

El Salvador.

Participants

This instrument was answered by students at UTEC. The research was looking

for data about knowledge that student have regarding TOEFL. At the same time verify

if the students would like practice the TOEFL before to take the real TOEFL. Our

instrument was questionnaires, which were used in three different classroom whit

different levels of English being basic, intermediate and advance to taking information.

Sample selection and population

The sample in this investigation was a total population of 30 students of the total

of 430 students that mean that the study was conducted in only some classroom

therefore only the 7% of the population answered the questionnaire. Each element of

the sample represents 14 students that were survey.

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Building a validity argument for the test of English as a foreign Language

Carol A. Chapelle, Mary K. Enright, Joan M. Jamieson.

Scoring TOEFL Essays and TOEFL 2000 Prototype Writing Tasks: An Investigation

Into Rate’ Decision Making and Development of a Preliminary Analytic

Framework Alister Cumming, Robert Kantor, Donald E. Powers

An Analysis of TOEFL CBT Writing Prompt Difficulty and Comparability for Different

Gender Groups. Hunter Breland, Yong-Won Lee, and Michelle Najarian ETS,

Princeton, NJ and Eiji Muraki Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan RR-04-

Factor Structure of the TOEFL Internet-Based Test Across Subgroups

Lawrence J. Stricker Donald A. Rock.

TOEFL 2000 Speaking Framework: A Working Paper

Frances A. Butler Dan Eignor Stan Jones Tim McNamar Barbara K. Suomi

Using Value-Added Models to Identify and Support Highly Effective Teachers

May 2008 Laura Goe, Ph.D.

Tennessee Department of Education. (2007). Tennessee’s most effective teachers: Are

they assigned to the schNashville, TV: Author. Retrieved May 9, 2008,

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