浅析雅思托福与DET分数的相关性

By 2020, more than 800 universities have acknowledged DET score as the language ability certifi-cate for admission as an alternative to TOEFL and IELTS. In consequence, numerous students who intended to take TOEFL or IELTS exam might consider taking DET. Under such circumstance, the validity and authenticity of the score concordance among three tests claimed by Duolingo is worth examining. Moreover, since the latest correlation study, namely the experiment conducted by Geoffrey T. LaFlai and Burr Settles in 2019, did not look into the correlation between the overall DET score and each individual unit scores of TOEFL and IELTS, this research probed into this area so as to offer pedagogical insights to test takers and teachers who are familiar with TOEFL and IELTS but not with DET. This research employed a qualitative method, using IBM SPSS Statistics to compute Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients. The sample involves 116 participants, among of which 86 have TOEFL iBT and DET score, and of which 30 have IELTS and DET score. The findings show that: 1) there is a significant high positive relationship among TOEFL, IELTS and DET overall scores, which accords with previous research results claimed by Duolingo; 2) TOEFL writing and speaking scores are moderately correlated with DET scores, indicating that these two parts might share similar scoring rubrics and test difficulty with DET; 3) there is no significant correlation between DET and TOEFL’s reading and listening scores, suggesting test takers and language teachers who used to prepare for TOEFL should use their experience with discretion; 4) there is a moderate positive relationship between DET scores and all four IELTS part scores except writing, which means that although test takers and teachers with IELTS test preparation experiences seem to have lower difficulty in preparing for DET, yet they still need to pay extra attention to the writing items in DET.