TOEIC is not an ideal test

A lot of ESL students - especially Asian students - take the TOEIC exam to measure your English skills. However, TOEIC is not an ideal for that purposes. Why is that?

TOEIC does not test your conversation skills.

TOEIC is a test which only tests your listening comprehension and reading comprehension. As you know English skills are not only listening comprehension and reading comprehension. You really actually communicate using the language. Yes if you can understand what the other person is saying, it is better than not being able to understand it. But the thing is you are not tested for how you would respond to it. Communication is not one direction. It takes tow to tango, as they say. Being able to understand or have good listening comprehension does not mean you are good at communicating in English. TOEIC is known for testing communication skills, but I don't think its score is a good indicator for it.

Business oriented English

Another thing I notice is the English they test is mainly Business English. So there are some words they test which most likely used only in business situations. Sure, it is important to know them, but it is not balanced. Also, they are spoken very slowly. No one in the real business world would speak that slow.

I understand TOEIC is trying to test all the genres of English (like business, academic, daily converstaion etc.) but there is no focus, but too business oriented, and you can't really see which kind of English the person is good at only from the score. Meanwhile, TOEFL is for academic English and daily conversation skills needed for academic life, so it is easy to see what it means to have a high score.

Conclusion

We do not recommend to use TOEIC score as the indicator of a person's English level in communication. And even just for listening comprehension it is not good enough. It is too easy. You actually have to have at least the score of 850-900, you can't really effectively communicate in English.

Also, do not forget writing is very important too. In this day and age, we communicate on line all the time and to be able to write quickly and effectively is a very important skill. Even if you have the full score on TOEIC, it does not mean at all you English is perfect. Only it means you are one of the candidates who could have perfect English.