Pearson Announces New Test for Uni Admissions

Pearson has announced a new test for university admissions called the “Pearson English Express Test.” It is targeted at students seeking admission to American universities. According to information published by Pearson this week, the test will take one hour to complete, results will be available in 48 hours, and the price will start at $70. It will be taken at home and a secondary camera will be required. It isn’t immediately clear when the test will go live, but the website suggests that it is already accepted by some (unnamed) American universities.

A 30-minute practice test is available, as are descriptions and samples of each item type. At first glance, it looks like this test is based on (extremely similar to?) the “Versant by Pearson English Certificate” product, which is no longer available for purchase. I took that test back in 2023, and you can find my notes here and here.

Obviously, Pearson’s test shares some (many?) characteristics with the Duolingo English Test. It’s somewhat surprising that it took more than a decade for one of the big testing firms to make the decision to go head to head with the DET. One could argue that ETS tried to do that with the “TOEFL Essentials” product back in 2021, but it wasn’t exactly in the same category.

I’ll write more on this test in subsequent newsletters, no doubt.

TOEIC Stats for 2024 Now Available

The TOEIC “Report on Test Takers Worldwide” for 2024 is now available. The report is based on responses to a questionnaire given to a total of 3,229,884 people which I think represents the entire test taking population. The figure is just about identical to 2023 and 2022. It was about 4.8 million in 2019.

Note that ETS overwrites the old reports each time a new one gets uploaded. If you want to see old stats, you can start looking for them at the Wayback Machine.

I’m working on a short blog post about the relative decline of the TOEIC in its key market of Japan between 2015 and the present. Stay tuned for that.

At-Home TOEFL Gets New ID Verification

The at-home TOEFL test now includes ID verification via a mobile app called IDVaaS (developed by Entrust). It looks like test takers receive an email following their test registration with a QR code and instructions on how to get started. They are instructed to complete this process at least 48-hours before their scheduled test.

During this process they’ll take a picture of their passport, and then a picture of themselves, and finally press their phone against their passport to read the chip (if applicable). More instructions can be found here.

The launch has not been without some hiccoughs. A few test takers have reached out to me to express puzzlement about not getting the QR code. Apparently the launch of this feature is staggered, but that hasn’t been made clear to everyone so far.

Who Takes the IELTS and TOEFL Tests?

For those who are interested in the business of English testing, it is worth taking a second look at Table 2 in the new IELTS/TOEFL score concordance. It lists various first languages/first language groups and what percentage of the overall test taker population they made up back in 2022. If nothing else, they confirm some long standing assumptions about each test.

Note how 35.4% of TOEFL takers in 2022 used Chinese as a first language. It has long been known that China is TOEFL’s biggest market, but this number is higher than I would have guessed… even if we keep in mind that plenty of these folks took the test outside of China.

People with a first language in the Indian group made up 13.2% of all TOEFL testers. That’s a bit lower than I assumed.

Korean speakers made up 7.8% of TOEFL testers, and Japanese speakers made up 6.4%. That’s really something. China/Korea/Japan has always been the heartland of TOEFL… but a combined 50% of testers is startling. No wonder ETS is trying real hard to diversify their test taker population.

Spanish speakers made up 8.6% of TOEFL testers. This is due, in part, to the test’s traditional popularity in Mexico and in key South American markets like Colombia, Chile and Peru.

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Meanwhile, the chart shows us that 39.6% of IELTS test takers in 2022 spoke a language in the Indian group. Obviously India is critically important for the IELTS partnership.

Chinese speakers made up 15.8% of IELTS test takers. Given that IELTS-A (probably) has roughly a 3x larger worldwide footprint than TOEFL we might take this as a suggestion that IELTS is now bigger than TOEFL in China.

The third biggest language group among IELTS test takers was the South-East Asia group, representing 8.2% of all tests. Needless to say, I’ve written a ton in recent weeks about how important Vietnam is to this test.

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Note that it looks like the concordance study did not include test takers who listed English as their first language. Such testers make up a decent amount of each test’s overall population.

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It isn’t quite the same thing but, for reference, here are the top countries for the Duolingo English Test, based on test taker ID.

• India 18.91%

• Mainland China 15.88%

• Canada 4.35%

• South Korea 3.51%

• Brazil 3.42%

• United States 3.34%

• Mexico 3.12%

• Indonesia 2.78%

• France 2.09%

• Pakistan 1.94%

IDP India Published a Silly Video

Last week IDP India uploaded a silly video to social media that parodied the PTE Test as the “Phishy Test For English.” The video was poorly received when I shared it on LinkedIn. But since it was quickly removed, I’ll leave it at that. Here’s a screenshot:

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That’s all for now, but stay tuned for more news next week. I’ll conclude with your “photo of the week,” below.

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