The Internet-based Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL iBT) will be held as scheduled on January 13 and 14, as its online registration and exam communication system has been repaired from last December's earthquake damage, according to China's Ministry of Education.

 

The TOEFL iBT, jointly organized by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) of the US and China's National Education Examination Authority (NEEA), resumed its online registration service on Friday, according to an announcement on the ministry's official website.

 

China Education and Research Network, which offers digital technological support for the TOEFL iBT, has launched a standby communication cable to ensure the normal operation of the upcoming exam.

 

In recent years, around 70,000 Chinese college students per year take TOEFL, measuring the ability of non-native speakers of English to use and understand North American English, to get access to postgraduate programs at US universities, making up about one tenth of the world's total. In 2005, nearly 90,000 Chinese took TOEFL.

 

Subsea cable connecting China with the US was severed by the powerful earthquake on December 26 off Taiwan's southern coast, which caused Internet connection disruption between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, Hong Kong, the US, Southeast Asia and Europe.

 

(Xinhua News Agency January 6, 2007)