News Roundup: April 14 to 23
HOELT gets an update, TOEFL gets a secondary camera, IELTS gets a community, DET gets an experiment...
Updated HOELT Market Engagement
On April 10, the UK government posted an updated market engagement notice for the forthcoming HOELT test. I haven’t seen any reporting on this, so it may be useful to share a few notes:
The tender now lists estimated contract dates of August 2026 to August 2031, with a possible extension to August 2034.
Interestingly, the total value of the tender has been reduced from £1,130,000,000 to £680,000,000. I initially speculated that this could relate to recent suggestions that the HOELT will be used for work visas only (not student visas). That said, Beth Kennedy’s article from December of last year suggests that the HOELT was never intended for student visas.
The deadline for participation in this third round of engagement is May 1, 2025 and the estimated “publication date of tender notice” is August 1, 2025.
Under “Engagement process description” it is noted that one of the primary purposes of the third round is to “Confirm the level of interest in the delivery of the Service under a single Contract.” This suggests that the Home Office may be seeking a single supplier to both develop and deliver the test. As you may recall, the original plan was for those aspects to be handled by separate suppliers. Or separate contracts, anyway. This sort of change could narrow the range of acceptable suppliers. Not everyone can do both of these things, of course.
PTE Core Accepted in Alberta
The PTE Core Test can now be used to meet the language use requirement of the Alberta Advantage Immigration Program. Applicants may now submit scores from the IELTS (General), CELPIP, PTE Core, and a couple of French tests.
This brings to mind a story from a few weeks ago. You may recall an item about how the CGFNS began accepting PTE scores from foreign nurses seeking visas for the USA in 2022. Pearson's market share in this use case increased from 7% that first year to 50% in 2024. IELTS dropped from 84% to 35% over the same period. I would love to see data from Alberta in a couple years time.
TOEFL Gets a Secondary Camera Requirement…
ETS has begun rolling out a secondary camera requirement for the at-home TOEFL.
The requirement kicked off in select countries on April 18. It will be required in all countries starting on May 16.
Basically, test takers will be required to point a phone or tablet at their keyboard, monitor and face during the test. More information is available on the TOEFL website.
LanguageCert and Duolingo have had this requirement for quite a while.
…And a User Account Overhaul
The TOEFL website and testing process has been spruced up. I’m seeing an overhauled user account, which is nice and tidy. The user account now highlights a trilogy of videos explaining how to complete the at-home test, how to set up the secondary camera and how to use the ETS Secure Browser (now referred to as the “TOEFL Test app”).
The app seems to function differently than when I last took the test. That may result in a smoother test day experience.
IDP IELTS Spruces Things up As Well
IDP Education has launched a new website section called “IELTS Community.” It’s basically a souped-up FAQ, with answers posted by (and credited to) IELTS experts. I think the page kicked off last month, but I only got the press release this morning.
I like it a lot. Needless to say, test takers (of all tests) frequently struggle to find answers to the very important questions they have. New approaches like this one are necessary, as testing firms haven’t figured out the most perfect ways to disseminate necessary information, particularly in regards to outlier cases.
The trick here will be to:
Provide answers to questions test takers actually have (instead of the questions IDP wants them to have).
Resist the urge to switch into marketing mode.
Keep the community active and up-to-date even when certain analytics suggest that few people are using it.
Number 3 is critical. I’ve seen so much useful stuff go by the wayside over the past decade that could have really helped create communities of test takers (and testing pros). The official TOEFL blog, for instance, appears to have been recently tossed on the scrapheap.
Another Fun DET Experiment
There is an interesting experiment going at the end of the DET practice test. Duolingo seems to be trying out “describe-the-picture” tasks that are based on images connected to the test taker’s locality.
I’m in Korea and received a picture of a scene containing elements that would be immediately familiar to most people here. After describing the scene I was asked how familiar I was with the image, how well I thought I did on the task, and if I would like to see similar items on the real test.
Following that, I received an image with elements that would be less familiar to people here and was asked similar questions.
I wrote a few days ago about the quick growth of some tests due to how “nimble” certain test makers are. Duolingo certainly benefits from their ability to quickly run large experiments like this via their online practice test. The practice test frequently includes experiments like this one - completing the test every now and then is a great way to keep up items that might appear on the DET in the future.
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