The Educational Testing Service has taken an important step toward improving academic rigor in updating the TOEFL - the exam that measures English proficiency in non-native speakers.
For both international and local students the change will be a welcome improvement in classroom dynamics. Most students have had a teaching assistant who, while bright, is unable to explain concepts to other students due to language barriers. The awkward pauses and garbled responses will hopefully end soon with the addition of the speaking element to the examination.
Strong conversational skills are a crucial prerequisite to participate in university life. A student who must interact with professors, peers and community members cannot fall back on strong reading comprehension skills alone.
American universities have strong conversational components built into daily curricula - an educational characteristic that is rarely found elsewhere. At Tufts - and in classrooms across the country - professors welcome challenges and comments from students. Few other systems grant students the right and privilege to question professors and participate in discussions to the same degree. It would be a shame for students to eke through four or so years at Tufts without this experience.
A higher education is a significant investment for any student, whether they are paying $160,000, ?90,000 or seven million rupees. For students paying the additional expense to trek across oceans to attend Tufts, they should do everything possible to prepare themselves in advance.
While it is safe to assume most Tufts students - all of whom have struggled through many language classes - can sympathize with the difficulty of mastering a language, it is something international students must complete early. Oral fluency is much easier to attain in adolescence than later in life. A university-level education in English needs to be built upon significant groundwork developed prior to arrival to ensure that students may be capable of maximizing their time on campus.
Incapable students are not only missing out on important elements of classroom exchanges, but they are putting other students at a disadvantage. The University has always emphasized its diverse student background. People from different cultures need to be able to communicate their unique experiences with the larger community.
Education experts predict Asian students will have the most problems with the new test. The traditional emphasis on grammatical exercises in classrooms from Beijing to Mumbai will need to give way to more time mastering long vowels and hard consonants. This is a positive development - the next generation of Asian business leaders must to be able to communicate with the world's largest economy.
The goal of a university is to prepare students for the future. In today's rapidly shrinking world, effective and rapid communication is a necessity. By pre-selecting international students based on oral proficiency, Tufts can achieve a more dynamic and fruitful classroom experience and ultimately graduate both local and international students with more valuable degrees.
