Has anyone heard about BULATS?
Is it difficult?
[quote=“josephine0213”]Has anyone heard about BULATS?
Is it difficult?[/quote]
A business English test part owned by Cambridge ESOL.
There’s not a lot of point doing it in Taiwan, unless you have a particular need to do it.
Dear Butterup,
Thanks for your reply. 
I would like to have some licences in English.
Besides PET, I also took a toeic test and I got 790.
Before I prepare for FCE, what kind of test can I try?
FCE’s the next one up in the Cambridge ESOL suite. It’s quite a lot more difficult than PET, though!
Do you find it gives you motivation to prepare for tests? If it does, then it will help you to do other tests. However, you didn’t do PET that long ago, and if you feel like you aren’t ready for FCE yet, you won’t get a score that’s much higher than your PET score. Does that make sense? 
What are your plans for your English study? Are you learning to study abroad? If so, focus on preparing for FCE, then IELTS/TOEFL and practice your general language and train yourself to listen to longer recordings and read longer more complex articles. You don’t ‘need’ FCE, but if you do that, you’ll find it easier to get good scores in the other tests, and also to get the most benefit from your overseas’ study. On the other hand, if you plan to work for an international company, you could focus on business vocabulary and communication and do BULATS or BEC.
If I were you, I’d relax a little, and just focus on improving your grammar and vocabulary, perhaps by reading and listening to lots of English. Well done with your TOEIC score, by the way! Nice work!
I helped prepare a student for BULATS a couple of years ago. We used ‘Essential BULATS’ by David Clark. I suggest you visit Caves or Eslite bookshop and look at this book. It’s blue and white. Pages 38 and 60 list the grammar most commonly tested, but more importantly look at the vocabulary in the reading section. I think it’s pretty high level. I remember I had to google a fair amount of the business jargon before each lesson, such as ‘brand stretching’, because I wasn’t entirely confident that I understood it.
I’d also echo Buttercup’s comment that I’m not entirely sure what the point of the test is. It has the feeling of a test that was created by a marketing department. If you choose to do it you will pick up some useful business vocabulary, and it’s definitely been put together very well, but I can’t think of a situation where an employer or academic institution would ask for it.
tomthorne, it’s more of a euro thing; you can take it in a couple of european languages, also (although I doubt there’s a test centre in Taiwan for the others). I think companies use it to identify their training needs, although not so much in the 'wan because these tests are pretty expensive.
It’s not a bad test, but there are only three bands so it’s not that sophisticated in detecting smaller improvements you make, josephine. Your TOEIC score gives more information about your ability than a BULATS score would.
However, I don’t mean to discourage you from studying business English, if you are interested. Have a look for the book that tomthorne suggested, although you might find it difficult at first, it should help you.
Dear Buttercup & tomthorne,
Thanks for your reply.
I took a sample test in BULATS and I got bad grade. You’re right. It’s really hard to me. 
The initial reason why I keep on taking English tests is just because I’m really interested in it.
But now I want to get some useful and creditable licences to find a better job.
So I took a TOEIC test. Is 790 a good grade? I have no idea.
I read a article about how Taiwan company’s senior officers treat with TOEIC.(I mean their attitude and thinking)
They said all these grades can be done well by going to the cram schools which will give you thousands of tests unless you have a good grade.
Although I didn’t go to that kind of learning center( I just bought the book to practice), I started to doubt my English ability.
So I still want to have other licences to prove my English ability, and I also can improve my English through these tests.
I remember reading an article somewhere that stated the average TOEIC score in Taiwan was around 530, so 790 is excellent.
The businesses I’ve dealt with who use TOEIC as a tool for judging English ability usually require a score of 600 or 650 if an employee is to be considered for certain positions.
790 is a brilliant score, so you shouldn’t doubt your English ability. Buttercup’s advice about learning languages is really good.
Hi Josephine
You asked about the BULATS test and whether it is a difficult test. I think it depends what you want to achieve.
The first point I’d like to make is that like TOEIC you cannot fail the BULATS test, you will get a grade from 0 to 100 (Beginner to Upper Advanced). BULATS is a Cambridge University test. It is international and companies use it to test the ability of their staff, trainees and job applicants to do business in English.
Doing business in English means using the skills people need at work, for example:
Writing
Business emails, faxes, letters, short messages
Speaking
Interviews (answering questions about yourself), Presentations (A monologue. In business, we may need to present sales figures or other things), Discussion (solve a problem by asking questions & giving opinions - skills needed in business meetings)
If you expect to use English for doing the things above in your career, it’s a good idea to choose a test that will measure your ability to do them. You may want to compare TOEIC and BULATS in the four skills they test (reading, writing, speaking and listening) to see which test will help you to do business in English. Having such skills should make it easier to find a job and make it easier to do your job when you have one.
I hope this helps.
Cambridge ESOL, not Cambridge University. It’s a subtle distinction that CESOL makes a lot of cash from …
Josephine, it’s natural to feel frustrated, at your level. Many students feel like they aren’t improving, and don’t know how to move forward. To get better, stop trying to ‘measure’ yourself all the time. It’s like going on a diet. You want to drop two dress sizes, so you eat less and weigh yourself everyday. Some days, the number on your scale is higher, some days lower, even though you are exercising and eating right - so on the days you weigh ‘more’, you get discouraged. Just remember that even if you are ‘heavier’ some days on the scale, you are still losing weight.
It’s the same with learning something. Some days you will do better than others on tests, some days worse. You should keep practicing and don’t worry so much about the numbers. If you keep doing the right stuff, the numbers will take care of themselves. Just keep studying regularly and you’ll get better. Stop stopping to check how far you have come!
You are much, much better than when you first posted on forumosa! Your grammar is far more accurate.
[quote]I read a article about how Taiwan company’s senior officers treat with TOEIC.(I mean their attitude and thinking)
They said all these grades can be done well by going to the cram schools which will give you thousands of tests unless you have a good grade.
Although I didn’t go to that kind of learning center( I just bought the book to practice), I started to doubt my English ability.
So I still want to have other licences to prove my English ability, and I also can improve my English through these tests.
[/quote]
TOEIC was developed under market pressure from Japan. Japanese speakers, generally, do very poorly in productive tests, for a variety of reasons (no value judgement; it’s very very difficult for a Japanese speaker to speak and write accurate English, just as it is very difficult for an English speaker to write accurate Japanese), so it was felt to be useful to have a business test that was more ‘receptive’. It’s very possible for certain types of language learners to gain high scores without being able to communicate very well. That doesn’t mean they don’t ‘know’ English, just that they don’t use it very fluently. I think that is what employers worry about with TOEIC; that it doesn’t accurately reflect how you will cope with international telephone calls, or important letters, and so on. However, this is true for many English tests.
Good multiple choice tests have a statistical set up that makes them valid (‘correct’ at assessing you) even if you guess a certain amount of answers. But think about it; there’s always a way to get something if you guess all 'A’s. Also, because of the way the tests are written, there are ways to predict answers based on grammatical patterns. There’s a huge, lucrative industry in ‘cracking’ these tests, either through analysis, or through industrial espionage and cheating, particularly in China, Korea and to a lesser extent, the middle east. It’s sad that all this devalues the scores that genuine people earn through working hard.
Nice post Buttercup. You’re right there.
Regarding Cambridge ESOL, this is one of the departments in Cambridge University. Here’s their link:
cambridgeesol.org.tw/
As for making lots of cash, they are a not-for-profit organisation as their Wikipedia profile states:
[quote=“C.J.Smith”]
Regarding Cambridge ESOL, this is one of the departments in Cambridge University. Here’s their link:
cambridgeesol.org.tw/
As for making lots of cash, they are a not-for-profit organisation as their Wikipedia profile states:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University … aminations[/quote]
Yes, I know. It’s called ‘surplus’, not ‘profit’ as they are not registered as a company. Educational charity status. Most British ESL money-making orgs such as IH, British Council, university presses, exam boards etc, exploit this one. It’s basically a tax dodge which reduces competition from private companies. 
And it’s a good thing that we have this tax dodge in the UK. It allows us to publish so much more than in a completely free market situation. It’s a shame that some organisations have taken liberties, such as cancelling much of their poetry output , but in general it works just fine.
It’s a bit like having Buttercup posting on a web site - a genuine pleasure that we can enjoy at no cost.