The US-based
Educational Testing
Service's (ETS) sudden decision to suspend the computer-based
Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General Test and reintroduce
paper-based versions in China from October 1 has caused concern
among Chinese examinees and international testing and training
schools.
The action came in response to security breaches in China --
including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Taiwan --
as well as in the Republic of Korea (ROK), said a press release
issued by ETS on Tuesday local time.
ETS said an investigation uncovered a number of Chinese and Korean
websites offering questions from live versions of the
computer-based GRE General Test. The websites included both
questions and answers illegally obtained by previous test takers
who memorized and reconstructed questions to share them with other
test takers.
``It is really a sudden shock to me!'' cried Ma Zhanying, a
post-graduate student at Peking University who has registered for
the GRE in November.
Ma
complained there was no signal at all before ETS' decision. The
usual practice has been for ETS to inform examinees six months
before big changes. For example, that was the policy followed when
computerized exams replaced written exams.
Some examinees expressed their support for ETS' decision, in the
interest of fairness. They said the websites were clearly wrong
because examinees signed agreements before the tests that they
would not share any of the questions.
But some others are of the opposite opinion on this decision which
affects all Chinese examinees.
A
net surfer on sina.com said it makes the test inconvenient again
for Chinese examinees. They can no longer register for the GRE at
any time but have to swarm to the mere two test opportunities each
year.
Some 46,000 people took the GRE in China last year (including 700
in Hong Kong and 5,000 in Taiwan), according to ETS statistics.
``It is an insult to all the Chinese examinees,'' said the net
surfer. ``Why should hundreds of thousands of students take
responsibility for the shortcomings of the computer-based GRE
version?''
Jijing -- a classic preparation material for the computerized GRE
-- appeared in October 1999, when the computerized exams replaced
written ones. It is a question bank gathered by test takers through
memorization. It was once the recipe for some Chinese examinees to
get high scores with relatively little preparation; a reasonable
preparation time of half a year fell to less than two months.
A
vocabulary book also cut the amount of words to be learned for the
GRE in half, compared with the former GRE vocabulary published by
the Beijing-based New Oriental School, China's most famous
international testing training centre.
``Paper-based examination is fairer and can better reflect
examinees' real standards,'' said Qian Yongqiang, vice-dean of the
school.
Qian said he believes most Chinese students have laid a solid
foundation in preparing for the GRE and have not relied on jijing
and trickery.
Wang Haibo, director of the school's international testing
department, said Thursday that the change in version will not have
any impact on New Oriental's training courses.
(China
Daily August 9, 2002)