The research on aligning TOEFL iBT® test scores to China’s Standards of English Language Ability (CSE) has successfully completed, with joint efforts from National Education Examinations Authority (NEEA) of the Chinese Ministry of Education, Educational Testing Service (ETS), and experts from Chinese institutions, under the Memorandum of Understanding on Conducting the Collaborative Research on Linking ETS English Examinations to China’s Standards of English Language Ability signed by NEEA and ETS.

      The research started at the end of 2017, and was successfully completed after two years’ work. Members of the research team came from the National Education Examinations Authority, Educational Testing Service, and experts from Chinese institutions. To provide a meaningful and robust alignment of the TOEFL iBT® test scores to CSE levels, the methodology was informed by the experience and suggestions from previous alignment studies conducted internationally, and different sources of evidence were collected and integrated to arrive at the final alignment results. For example, the research team collected data from TOEFL® test takers in universities, middle schools and training schools in 13 representative cities in China. In addition, the test takers’ teachers were trained to use CSE levels to evaluate the performance of the test takers.

      Please go to https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ets2.12281 to see the full research report.