Free Business English Exam for Corporate Assessment Centre Use

This is a free Business English Exam designed for use in corporate assessment centres, to determine the extent in which a job applicant can function in an English working environment. It is mathematically correlated to the TOEIC and can be used to fairly estimate a candidate's performance on that exam.

The Business English Proficiency Test (BEPT) was designed to test a second language user’s ability to use English in a business setting, and was originally administered as part of a company’s recruitment assessment process.

I designed it as a short alternative to the TOEIC, and regression analysis has indicated that a person’s score on this test can be used to predict their performance on the TOEIC exam. From a business perspective, this provided great cost savings given there is an associated cost with administering the TOEIC.

Test design

The test was designed to be independently administered within 1 hour. There are three sections:

Section	Description
1.       Error detection section	The error detection section is to determine whether the candidate could spot common errors made in the use of the language.
2.       Reading comprehension	Reading comprehension provides a business-level article, after which the candidate must answer a series of questions to demonstrate they understand the nuances of the text.
3.       Writing	The writing section asks the candidate to choose from two business tasks.

A listening component was not included as it would complicate exam administration, and extend the time needed to complete the exam. Listening and speaking abilities were to be captured as part of the interview process if they passed initial screening.

With the exception of the writing section, all questions are multiple choice to allow for ease of marking.

Correlation to TOEIC

A total of 833 people completed the test over a period of 2 years. Out of the 833 people, 54 people were offered a position within the company and subsequently took the TOEIC test.

To validate the test’s effectiveness, for the 54 people a regression analysis was performed to determine whether there was a correlation between this assessment’s mark and a candidate’s TOEIC score. Results indicated that there was an adjusted R-square value of 71.5%, indicating an acceptable level of correlation.

As a result, it was also possible to estimate an individual’s TOEIC score using this exam, within an acceptable range of error. The data indicates that the exam is useful in providing an accurate estimate of an examinee’s business English ability.

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Exam Papers

The exam is available as a PDF and can be formatted to print on A3 paper as a foldable booklet.

[##download##  Exam Papers Download]

Mark Scheme

This document contains a rubric to assess a candidate’s writing and provides answers to the reading section.

[##download##  Mark Scheme Download]

Raw data (with regression analysis)

All candidate raw scores from the BEPT and TOEIC is included in this spreadsheet, along with the regression analysis. The third sheet also contains a formula in which you can calculate a candidate’s estimated TOEIC score based on their BEPT score.

[##download## Raw Data Spreadsheet]

License

Please note that all of these documents are available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. While this does not allow Commercial use, I have included one caveat: you are permitted to administer the exam in a business, company or other commercial entity. However, you are not permitted to sell the test itself. If you would like to use this test in any other manner, please contact me.