The Chinese Testing Association held its 25th anniversary event today at National Taiwan Normal University. (Photo by reporter Lin Xiaoyun)
The Taiwan Test of Chinese Language Proficiency (TOCFL) has been promoted for 25 years. The overseas test has spread to 77 countries, the cumulative number of test takers worldwide has exceeded 1.3 million, and the number of strategic alliance partners has reached 194. According to statistics from the National Chinese Language Test Promotion Working Committee, from 2019 to 2025, some test areas in India, Thailand, the Netherlands, Canada and Vietnam have the most prominent growth in the number of test takers, with India growing by 1,600% and ranking first in the rankings.
The Chinese Testing Association held its 25th anniversary event today (8th) at National Taiwan Normal University. Song Yaoting, president of National Taiwan Normal University and chairman of the Chinese Testing Committee, Liu Guowei, Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Education and others attended the event. 50 candidates who passed the fluency level and proficient level participated. The two foreign students started with an interesting conversation, starting with festive food and talking about daily life expressions such as "jealousy", "eating love", "eating locality", etc. They emphasized that learning Chinese also requires understanding the culture, so as to truly "understand" the Chinese language.
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Liu Guowei said that the Chinese test has become an important basis for universities to recruit foreign students and teach Chinese. The Ministry of Education is promoting the AI-based Chinese digital learning platform, with the goal of reaching A2 level this year and C1 level next year. In the future, it hopes to conduct the Chinese test through the Internet and AI to reduce the long distance travel of overseas candidates.
Liu Guowei revealed that he attended the Executive Yuan Sovereign AI Conference yesterday. The past test questions of the Chinese Test have been included in the national sovereign AI plan as orthodox Chinese AI training corpus, hoping that learners around the world can learn Chinese through the Internet.
According to statistics from the China Testing Association, the top five candidates in terms of growth from 2019 to 2025 are India, which will have 1,496 candidates in 2025, an increase of 1,408 over 2019, a growth of 1,600%; Thailand, which is second, has 2,404 candidates, an increase of 2,142, or 817.6%; and the Netherlands, which is third, has 202 candidates, an increase of 168, or a growth of 494.1%.
The fourth place was Canada with 134 people, an increase of 108 people from 2019, a growth of 415.4%; the fifth place was Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, with 17,616 people, an increase of 11,976 people, a growth of 212.3%. The number of candidates was much higher than that of the other four examination areas.
Song Yaoting said that when preparing for the Chinese Test 25 years ago, there was discussion on whether to add the word "country" to the name of the committee and the certificate. In addition to the word "country", he advocated that the word "country" should also be endorsed by the Ministry of Education in order to establish credibility. In the early days of overseas examinations, paper-based test questions had to be carried abroad and destroyed with the assistance of the overseas embassy office after the test to avoid the leakage of test questions. Nowadays, computerized and adaptive tests have been developed. He hopes to establish Taiwan's right to speak in the field of Chinese language.
The Overseas Chinese Affairs Council stated that it has set up 93 Taiwanese Chinese learning centers in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and other places to provide local people over 18 years old with learning Chinese and encourage them to take the Chinese test.
Over the past 25 years, the number of test takers for the Chinese Language Proficiency Test has exceeded 1.3 million, with India and Thailand having the most eye-catching growth. (Provided by the Ministry of Education)
