Nov. 13th, 2003 21st Century -- You can now test your oral Englishability by making a short phone call. PhonePass, a telephone-based oral exam, allows students to dial a designated phone number and choose an exam. They then follow the instructions on the phone and finish spoken tasks in a few minutes. The student's word are automatically stored and the performance is scored immediately

The system was designed by California-based Ordinate Corporation. About 5 million people have already taken the test, more than half of them from South Korea and Japan.

"Organizing large-scale face to face oral tests is not easy since they require a large number of qualified teachers for a restricted period of time. PhonePass offers a solution and increases the availability of oral tests," explained Larry Preiser, Ordinate’s marketing manage, at a PhonePass unveiling ceremony in Beijing last Thursday.

Yang Huizhong, chairman of the National College English Testing Committee(NCETC), also spoke ate the ceremony: "Only students with a minimum of 80 marks for the CET-4 and 75 for CET-6 can take the Spoken English Test (SET) in side CET. But NCETC hopes to increase accessibility of the oral test. The cost of the face to face model makes it impossible to hold tests for a large number of students."

More than 8 million have appliede for this year’s CET test.

Cooperation between NCETC and Ordinate is being discussed to make CET-SET more available, but no details have been released. PhonePass now has three tests: SET-10, SET-7, and SET-5, with the number indicating how many minutes the test will take. All tests are designed with the same difficulty level. They cost 300, 210 and 150 yuan respectively.

SET-10, the most popular, has five parts: reading sentences, repeating sentences, answering simple questions with two or three words, making up sentences and answering complex questions to show your opinion.