More QA with ETS

More QA with ETS This week I was lucky enough to again have an opportunity to attend a workshop hosted by ETS for TOEFL teachers. Here is a quick summary of some of the questions that were asked by attendees of the workshop. Note that the answers are not direct quotes, unless indicated.Q: Are scores adjusted statistically for difficulty each time the test is given?A: Yes. This means that there is no direct conversion from raw to scaled scores in the reading and listening section. The conversion depends on the performance of all students that week.Q: Do all the individual reading and listening questions have equal weight?A: Yes.Q: When will new editions of the Official Guide and Official iBT Test books be published?A: There is no timeline.Q: Are accents from outside of North America now used when the question directions are given on the test?A: Yes.Q: How are the scores from the human raters and the SpeechRater combined?A: Human scores and machines scores are optimally weighted to produce raw scores. This means ETS isnt really going to answer this question.Q: Can the human rater override the SpeechRater if he disagrees with its score?A: Yes.Q: How many different human raters will judge a single students speaking section?A: Each question will be judged by a different human.Q: Will students get a penalty for using the same templates as many other students?A: Templates are not a problem at all.Q: Why were the question-specific levels removed from the score reports?A: That information was deemed unnecessary.Q: Is there a maximum word count in the writing section?A: No.Q: Is it always okay to pick more than one choice in multiple choice writing prompts?A: Yes.