The TOEFL, Global Mobility and Language Proficiency with John Clark

Welcome to your studying law Around the world. I'm Claudio Claus. In each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students, and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life. We talk about the hard parts, the surprises, and the decisions that shaped their paths. Whether you're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world, this podcast is for you. This episode is sponsored by Contender. How are you doing on LinkedIn? If you're like 99% of lawyers, your answer is not great. Which makes sense. You learned LinkedIn as the place to stash a digital resume and share firm pressers, so no wonder your LinkedIn presence is somewhere between vanilla and nonexistent. But I've got good news. Since we all learned LinkedIn the wrong way, it's pretty easy to attract more positive attention for you or your business. Since 2022, Contender has been the premier agency helping lawyers go from invisible train. Possible to ignore on LinkedIn. To learn more, check out www.contenderllc.com. Tell them Claudio sent you. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Studying Law around the World. Should I have the opportunity to speak with John Clarke, who is a global education strategist with a passion for expanding access to learning across borders? After his career as a litigator, John transitioned into the world of international education where he spent over a decade work with the intersection of policy, research, marketing, and students mobility. He currently works at ETS, the organization behind the TOFO and GR, where he helps shape global initiatives that supports students on their academic journeys worldwide. Thank you so much for joining us today and welcome to the podcast, John. Yeah. Thank you, Claudio. I appreciate it. Amazing. And you start off her episode. I'd love if you could introduce yourself to your listeners. We would love to hear a little bit about this legal connection and the role you have today. And and even if you can mention that we just talked quickly that you are quite familiar with the L sat and all of that. Yeah, of course. So today I'm the Director of Strategic Initiatives at TS and I think you did a great job summarizing what I do. And in a nutshell, I spend most of my time working with our score users or a TOFU, we call them designated institutions. So there are 13,000 institutions worldwide that accepts TOEFL for various purposes. And so I spend a lot of time talking with them to make sure that we are meeting their needs. But I started my career as an attorney boy almost 15 years ago. It lasted a couple years in the profession and maybe we could save that for later on or just not discuss it at all. I, I enjoyed it, but it probably wasn't the right career choice for me. But when I was in law school, I went to law school at Southern Illinois University, which is a small regional public school in the US. And the Department of Continuing Education let me stand up and a prep class for the LSAT, which is the law school entrance exam for much of North America. And I so I gained familiarity with the L SAT and had a lot of fun teaching students how to succeed on that exam, which is a very different exam from TOEFL. But after a couple of years of practice, I ended up working for Kaplan and the test prep space. And that's how I got into the assessment world about 10 years. Ago, that's awesome. And asking you a little more about tofu itself. So I'm sure that most of our listeners who are in this space of being either an internationally trained lawyer or a lawyer from another country looking into becoming qualified in another jurisdictions, they might know the letters, they might know what it means. But I'd love to ask you a little murder, You know, what skills does the test really measure? And from what I saw here, universities have been relying on it for over 60 years now. Can you tell me a little more about that? It's been awhile, yeah. So the test of English as a foreign language was created in 1964, which incidentally, was the year that AT&T's Bell Labs launched the first video phone technology. And it took 5550 years to actually scale that. But it was a time of real innovation. TOEFL inception was a product of a few American universities recognizing that with increased international student flows to top American universities, they needed a more coherent way of measuring English proficiency to ensure that incoming students would be able to thrive in academic settings. And so TOEFL was actually the product of universities. Universities got together and created it to meet their needs. So we've been around for 60 years, and over the course of that 60 years, it's been a perpetual innovation. And we have made some exciting changes that will kick in next year that we can discuss in a bit, But that's a little bit of the history behind the TOEFL exam. Fantastic and in this case here, just to give you a little more of a background about the podcast itself. So podcast is called studying law around the world. And it happens that a lot of our listenership are in in the global South or are in Canada and in a lot of them come from countries where English was not the first language. So that makes it that, you know, tough always is one of the tests that got used should be able to access that law school in another country. Usually people have already a law degree from from their country of origin and then they're either looking into a pathway for licensing and that could be, you know, an LLM usually in connection to a university North America as well. So many students might weigh the different exams available and in the different possibilities for them here. And I wanted to ask if you could tell me a little bit about what sets TOFU apart from other tests in the market? Yeah, that's a great question. And Claudio, I will begin my answer by noting that I failed to answer one of your core questions just 45 seconds ago and that is the TOEFL test, reading, writing, speaking and listening, the four core English skills. And that is a nice segue into what sets TOEFL apart. So TOEFL is a measure of English in academic environments. That's been its purpose for six decades. And starting in January, we are adding some more modernized language to the exam. So the exam will continue to be a test of English proficiency in academic settings, but we're going to modernize it by testing a few new things. To give you one example, we hear from a lot of institutions that accept TOEFL that they're increasingly curious about students ability to communicate with peers, not just their ability to read textbooks and listen to a lecture. But as group and experiential learning grows more importance, we're trying to capture a broader swath of English that's used in modern learning environments. And as it relates to lawyers in particular, I suppose in an ideal world, TOEFL would test terms like promissory estoppel and things of that nature. But it is a generalist exam, right? It measures your ability to understand general English and academic environment. And one reason why I'm excited about the introduction of more modernized English language is twofold. 1 you mentioned you have a lot of learners in the global S. Many students who are coming from the South have different education backgrounds and different learning experiences than students who have come from other countries that have been the more traditional sending countries for international students. So part of these updates to the exam are intended to ensure that everyone on a level playing fields. And the second thing I would say too, because we're now measuring A broader swath of English, the skills that it takes to succeed as an attorney wherever you are, extend beyond the case law book and the ability to read a statute in the corporate environment or client facing invites, let's say transactional environment, the ability to speak to clients, whether they're a homeowner or corporation in plain simple English is extremely valuable. And if you're a litigator, the ability to communicate not with a jury, but with judges who are also generalists is important. So. So in sum, we're trying to capture English in an academic setting, but we're also trying to measure a student's ability to communicate with others in different environments. That's fantastic. I cannot think of a better way to do that. When I'm thinking that really the like one of the biggest and most important parts of the student experience is really that that possibility of building a network of interacting with peers and being, you know, courts ready in a way. But I really appreciate that that's something that is looked at because I cannot even, you know, stage how, how important that has been for my story to really be interacting with peers should really be with people in the classroom and really exchanging those experiences. So I'm, I'm just very happy that the, the tofu is looking at that. And I took the top for myself last year to getting to my LM at the University of Toronto. So now I saw that ETS wrote out a few different things, including in-house proctors, they identity checks, simple, simpler check in for the home edition. And that's exciting to know. I'm always happy to see when companies are improving continuously. And I'd love to hear if there is, you know, feedback so far for these improvements. And I know that a lot of new things are coming up as well. So could you tell us a little more about those? Yeah, yeah, of course. By the way, I am curious. Let me talk about the updates. My experience that first year in in law school was that I had to learn an entirely different language because particularly English common law where there's a lot of parallels in Canada and US all, it's all Latin and French origin, which was profoundly frustrating. Is that been your experience and that I promise I'll answer the question. So it's all good, Yeah. No, in reality, really is. It's interesting because a lot of people who will be, you know, telling you how to prepare should take the most out of the experience of the course. We'll, we'll definitely advise you to, you know, keep an eye out for, for just improving your English in general. And then classes will do well. And, and honestly, that was a good advice. But definitely there's a lot of new words to learn and a lot of new, you know, Latin and French references should be caught on. And it's even interesting for people who know the language. I have a few classmates who speak French, but the, the French references in law are like old French. So the words don't even make sense if they just hear, you know, the the expressions right now, they're not really connecting to what those would mean in, in knowing French of 25th 2020. So it's been really interesting to see that that, yeah, language learning aspect of it. Yeah, yeah. Even at the fundamental bit of litigation, plaintiff is, I think that's French origin and defendant is more of an Anglo-Saxon. The thing that comes out of the back of your throat, you could call it something different. Anyway, Claudio, I'm scouring the question. So the TOEFL updates were relevant to the conversation. You mentioned a couple of things. So I would bucket the changes into two categories. Category one is the content and flow of the exam itself. So starting in January, TOEFL has will have modernized English language content, including, as I referenced, just to use one example of the ability to communicate with peers and engage in a group conversation. We're also adding multi stage adaptivity. Now that's different from the test today, which is purely linear. Under the modernized TOEFL. Starting in January, the reading and listening sections will adapt midway through each section to each learner's proficiency level. And that way they're not beating their head against a wall with excessively difficult or easy questions. And the second part of that section. So it'll make it more efficient and allow us to derive a more nuanced understanding of English proficiency. Lastly, we're going to guarantee a 72 hour turn around, which is a couple days faster than we're giving scores back today. For some students, it's not that big a deal. For others, especially as a countries and I am in the US and it has been a flurry of daily changes. Students are having to make decisions in much faster fashion. So we're trying to help deliver scores faster. So that's on the test content side today. What we have done is we've also updated our home edition exam. You referenced a couple of the updates we've made there to give you 1 interesting statistic. In Bangladesh and Pakistan, as of 2023, about 10% of test takers took our exam in the at home environments. But last year that number rose to 40% in both countries. And that's pretty representative of what we see in South Asia and Latin America and East Asia. There remains in Europe a preference for the testing centre environment, but that's changing so that students are really voting with their feet and the at home test is becoming more and more a part of students expectations. So I won't give you too long winded explanation, but in at home testing, there's there's two different models. Money is what we call record and review where you log in to the testing environment and you're just guided by a series of instructions and some mix of AI. The other one is like having a live human Proctor in the room. And that's what we offer. So when you take the exam, you've got a person there. And one of the improvements we've made to the exam is we brought our proctors in house. So they're now total employees. We can keep a closer eye on them, manage them. We manage them on not just their ability to catch security infractions, but also are they displaying empathy to the test taker? Because that's really important. And those proctors are really key to the unique nature of our at Home exam. And the other thing we've done is we've really streamlined the process. We built the at Home exam in 2020 on the heels of COVID and we built something that we're very proud of, but we recognize the need to make it more of a digital native experience. So now the check in is much faster, the interface is much cleaner. It's just a much better experience for those who choose to take the test. At home that's amazing, fantastic. And, and all of this in mind, I saw that as part of the, the changes to January 2026 going to be, you know, beyond the adaptive things, there's also going to be a one to six band linked to the common European framework. And also I was curious about how would that, you know, those changes also help the admissions teams compare candidates. As you mentioned, you're the person usually interacting with the users on the other end. So the universities and all of that. Does that also help the admissions teams when they are trying to compare candidates? Yeah, that's a great question and I'm digging myself 5 podcast points for failing to mention that in my long winded harangue earlier. So yes, TOFU is introducing A1 to 6 score scale and half point increments in January as well. And before we release this publicly, I've been speaking for several months with focus groups of universities and various score users to make sure that they were on board with this change. And there's a lot of excitement about it. And the reason we're updating the TOEFL score scale is threefold. So the first is you referenced, we're drawing a more direct and intuitive link to the common European framework is the C for proficiency levels were released in 2001 as I referenced before TOEFL was launched in 1964. So for a long time TOEFL has existed as this thing on the side that had its own unique secret sauce. And we recognize that there's a need to align with students expectations. And so that's a second thing, we're drawing a more clear link to server and this serves a lot of students, many of whom their English training followed those Seifer tracks from 1 to 8 two and so forth. So students will now be able to draw a cleaner connection between prior learning and assessments and TOEFL. And the third thing is, if you look at a chart of TOEFL scores by section, the score that you need to obtain today on a zero to 30 scale to meet, let's use AC1 level of proficiency as an example. It's all over the place. It's a 25 for this section. It's a 24 for this. It's a 22 for this one. And this causes unnecessary confusion for students as well as universities. You know, especially with a high degree of turnover and admissions offices, you have a lot of new folks coming in. TOEFL is an important part of the admissions process, but it's just one part. And so if we can make this one part a little simpler, a lot of institutions that are excited about this. So the last thing we're doing is starting in January, test takers will begin to receive a score on the one to six scale. But when we send their score report to institutions, the institution will see the one to six score as well as a comparable score on the current scale. And we're going to do this for two years to give everyone time to grow accustomed to the updated scale. So yeah, universities are excited about it. It's going to be a little bit of a transition period as they update their websites to communicate to test takers what we think that once all stakeholders gain comfort, it's going to be much simpler and much more intuitive. Score scale. That's amazing, fantastic. And then on the end of students, you had just mentioned that students are very excited because you know, in in some circumstances and depending on which country you are you're taking the test from or coming from, there's really this need to make decisions quickly. As you know, all these changes are coming up, you know, the 72 hours. I've also seen something that if you're taking it in person in a test centre, there is some kind of upgrade to the headphones. So I'm wondering if there is any, you know, change specifically there that students are waiting for the most and what's what, what have you heard in your team about? That as well. That's a great question. You know, we, we survey our students just mercilessly and we're always mindful of making sure we're not over surveying them because you know, who wants to talk to TOEFL after they've taken it? But we take those responses really seriously. And over the past few years, one of the most common criticisms of the test centre experience is the level of noise in the testing environment. That's a very fair criticism. In a perfect world, everyone would be able to take their exam in an individual hotel suite, but logistics constraints prevent us from doing so. So we are we are launching updated headphones that allow students to take the exam with less interruption. There's going to be less noise in the test environment that allow them to focus better at the test centre. So that's something we're excited about. I would say too, we had piloted the new home edition experience in several countries this spring and one of the exciting things is we've reduced the amount of technical debt students have to incur to take the exam. The check in process is now three times faster. You can complete some of the check in components even before test day because we want to make sure that whether you're taking it in a test centre or home edition, the experience feels very similar and you're spending your time and effort displaying your English proficiency, not your ability to function in a noisy environment or log into a complicated at home exam. So that's a common thread. It's just making the testing environment more pleasant, more simpler, and the check in more efficient. So that's so great, that's so good. So application season is about to start. People who are at least here for Canada, it's as a new semester comes around in school and there's also the new. Application season coming in so people can send in their applications and all of that. And I'm curious of what you would recommend for someone booking a test this upcoming month. What kind of resources would you point them to 1st? And you know where they can maybe follow the latest updates if they want to know a little more about how to get ready. Absolutely. Well for those that are taking the test in the short term, if you go to our website, we have a host of resources that will help you get acclimated to the exam. From full length practice tests to online section specific practice. You can also tell us how much time you have study and pull up study guides based on the duration of prep time you have. I think those are really helpful for the updated version of thing I'm starting in January, we've started to release a series of resources and we'll have much more in August. So you can follow us on your social media of choice at TOEFL or check out the website. But the last note I would get to is gaming. Comfort with the format is really valuable because then again, you're not sweating the format on test day. You're just showing us how great your English skills are. So to the extent that you can and these resources are all available for free if you want to really understand what the test is, how it functions, that's all available on our website and I would encourage folks to check. That out fantastic. Well, I really appreciate it. It's not every episode that we talk about admissions and all of that that we have the chance to speak to a former lawyer in that process. So it's it's just a big satisfaction to have you here today. Thank you so much for taking the time and thank you all for tuning into today's episode. Thanks so much, Claudio. Every every now and then I think about getting back in the profession. So maybe someday I'll work for a listener. So thank you so much. This is a lot of fun. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode. This episode was sponsored by Contender. Checking out add contenderllc.com.