Two TOCFL Testing Sessions Successfully Administered in Utah -Ministry of Education Republic of China (Taiwan)

Two TOCFL Testing Sessions Successfully Administered in Utah

Date: 2013-12-16

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The Education Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco held two sessions of the 2013 Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language (TOCFL) in the Utah State, U.S.A. Eighty-two American examinees were tested in the first session at Brigham Young University on October 10, 2013, and another ten students participated in the second session at the University of Utah on October 12. Most of the examinees were non-Chinese heritage language learners who were currently taking Chinese courses at the universities. They were eager to figure out their learning progress.

The number of Chinese language learners in Utah has been significantly growing in recent years. This rising interest in language learning in Utah has been accompanied by a steady growth in the number of examinees registered each year, since the TOCFL was first held in Utah in 2008.

In Utah, the TOCFL has gradually come to be recognized and accepted by more and more educators and students as a helpful and standard instrument to use to assess Chinese learners’ language proficiency. In addition, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education has now made having passed TOCFL Level 3 a requirement for international students applying for an MOE Taiwan Scholarship to study a degree program in Taiwan, and this has also contributed to a higher TOCFL participation rate in Utah.

In 2013, six TOCFL testing sessions were held in Utah and in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a total of 227 people participating. Anticipating a growing demand for a Chinese proficiency testing tool, the Education Division of the TECO in San Francisco will continue reaching out and promoting the TOCFL to institutions at the different educational levels in northwest America.