TOEIC® Speaking Test Adopted by Samsung Group

Seoul (January 21, 2008) – ETS confirmed today the decision by the Samsung Group to use the TOEIC® (Test of English for International Communication™) Speaking test in recruiting and evaluating employees at Korea’s largest company. Samsung will begin accepting the TOEIC Speaking test from March 2008 in preparation for the next recruitment period.

“ETS is delighted that the Samsung Group, one of Korea’s great global success stories, has chosen to include the TOEIC Speaking test as part of its English-proficiency testing solution,” says ETS President and CEO Kurt Landgraf. “Samsung’s adoption of the TOEIC Speaking test as part of its assessment criteria reflects a growing awareness among leading global companies that proficiency in English, the international language of business, is a key competitive advantage for both companies and individuals.”

The TOEIC Speaking test was introduced in response to a global need for an oral component to the TOEIC® test, which also includes listening, writing and reading components. ETS’s English-proficiency test is designed to assess English-language skills in daily life and within the global workplace. The test emphasizes spoken communication skills and communicative competence. Candidates are not required to have specialized business knowledge. Completed test responses are sent to ETS's Online Scoring Network, where they are scored by certified ETS test raters, providing test users with a fair, objective and reliable score that reflects their true abilities.

“ETS is excited by the opportunity to assist Samsung in implementing this valuable business tool – the TOEIC Speaking test — in Korea,” says Paul A. Ramsey, Senior Vice President of ETS’s Global Division. “Korea is a rapidly globalizing economy, and Korean professionals who develop their English-language skills bring about new opportunities for themselves and the companies they represent. Samsung has taken a bold move in formalizing an assessment process for spoken English skills. By adopting the TOEIC Speaking test, Samsung has set the standard for globalization in Korea.”

Since 1979, the TOEIC test has been recognized for the highest levels of score reliability and fairness. Developed by ETS, the same company that developed the TOEFL® test (Test of English as a Foreign Language™) for students, the TOEIC test has set a worldwide standard for workplace English-language proficiency testing. Today, over 5,000 corporations in more than 60 countries use the TOEIC test, and nearly 5 million TOEIC tests were administered last year. Leveraging this history and the benefits of technology, the TOEIC Speaking test continues the ETS tradition of establishing a worldwide standard for communication competency in today’s global business environments. The TOEIC Speaking test compliments the TOEIC® Listening and Reading test and the TOEIC® Writing test to provide a complete assessment of a test taker’s language proficiency.