TOEIC Reading Section: The Evaluation of the Four Cardinal Criteria for Testing a Test

The Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) has been widely used to measure English proficiency over decades. Despite being commonly accepted, there are some controversial issues concerning the correlation between English language ability and TOEIC scores. This paper evaluates the TOEIC Reading section of the TOEIC Listening and Reading test in terms of the four major principles of language assessment: validity, reliability, authenticity, and practicality. The evaluation in this paper is based on the TOEIC Sample test and the TOEIC Examinee Handbook. The evaluation revealed that the TOEIC Reading test shows a certain level of validity and reliability. Moreover, the test is in agreement with authenticity as the language used is natural and somehow related to real-life situations. However, interactiveness and contextualization should be taken into consideration. Additionally, the test has strong practicality due to its sufficient resources used. Finally, some examples of alternative test types are provided.