South Korea’s World Ranking on TOEFL Test
The Korea Times carried a summary of South Korean students’ performance on the TOEFL test, compared with test takers from other countries. Not surprisingly, their speaking proficiency remains nearly at the bottom. Korean TOEFL test takers ranked 136th out of 161 nations in speaking skills. However, Koreans overall TOEFL score stood at 78 out of 120, placing the country 89th, also lower than the world average of 79. In 2007, they scored 77. Listening and writing scores were 19 and 20 each, compared with the world’s average of 19.5 and 20.5, respectively. Koreans beat the world average only in reading, at 20, compared with the global average of 19.4.
Korea has the world’s largest number of TOEFL test takers. More than 90 percent of elementary school students receive private English education, and last year the amount of money spent on English education reportedly reached 15 trillion won.
