This term we had such successful TOEFL scores that I thought it would be nice to reflect on what got us to this historic point in the College Prep Program.
I started working at HTIC somewhere in Spring 2003. Only Nilo was here before then. At the time we had a fun but not so academically rigorous program. Students were being admitted into the Liberal Arts Program with TOEFL scores under 400, Japanese use in class was rampant, attendance was spotty, and BBQs at Kapiolani park were common Wednesday activities, In-Class Essays did not exist.
In winter 2005, when I was appointed Coordinator, Dr. Yoshikawa mandated that all students must get a 450 on the IPT TOEFL to enter LA. It seemed impossible. The CP faculty then of which only Nilo, Mark, and myself remain, set out to revise the curriculum not only for TOEFL, but to ensure study skills were being developed, and that students could actually write essays in English.
The forefathers of this new curriculum, starting in Spring 2005, added an extra hour of class time to the program, a Reading Lab, the In-Class Essay, an English-Only Policy, an attendance policy, TOEFL outcomes, and stricter and clearer assessments of our previously existing reading, listening, writing, and speaking outcomes. We also added a skipping policy that allowed students scoring 450 (this number has been raised to 460 with a 3.7 GPA) to skip one level. And it worked. Students actually got 450. Students also actually began failing, repeating classes, and consequently crying in my office at the end of each term. They also began to understand what it means to study, and what it means to reach an outcome.
At the end of the Spring 2005 term, Nilo states, "they will be getting 500 soon". I respond, "NO WAY DUDE". Soon after, the TOEFL 500 Club is born and students remarkably start stepping up to the challenge. In winter 2006 a pre-CP pilot class emerges to help students with remedial skills and to address confidence issues especially with such a high rate of failing .
In Spring 2007 a new curriculum with 5 levels, as opposed to 4, begins with extra support for lower level students. The skipping policies expand to include skipping directly to LA with a TOEFL score of 500. Also during this year, CP undergoes a technological revolution, with Moodle and the Portfolio System bringing innovative new ways to teach TOEFL and Academic English with mp3s, video, pdfs, and a new way for students to reflect on their experiences by uploading work, tracking their own progress, and blogging about their experiences. Evaluation rubrics are refined, added and put online and as a whole the CP Community becomes more standardized, and more comfortable with the established curriculum.
Most significantly, a real and continuing team of highly qualified instructors that have a special talent of motivating students becomes apparent. With everyone on board, unified and dedicated to the curriculum plan, we reach this historic point with the Fall 2008 term yielding six students reaching the TOEFL 500 goal, averages for both Levels 4 and 5 equaling 484, Level 3 at 465, Level 2 at 448 and we even have one student in Level 1 scoring a whopping 497.
Although TOEFL is not our only assessment, it is our strongest and clearest indicator of success in our program and success in comparison with the rest of the world. That we have reached such levels so far is evidence that we are providing a high quality program and producing students that can compete globally. To everyone that has played a part in this 5 year story, I salute you.
Keywords: success, TOEFL