P360 Anti-test Preparation
P360 is designed to measure how ready the candidate is to be working in a global business environment . The unique design makes it difficult for candidates to prepare for the test beforehand. To prevent candidates from studying techniques only to attain high test scores, we have introduced some methods such as the ones shown below.
P360 ATP 1. Non Disclosure
By producing text books, it makes it easy for candidates to prepare for the test. As a result, many language schools teach their students only on how to achieve a high test score in their tests. This only shows how much a person can achieve in a test and not necessarily how much they can use English in a global business environment. For this,P360 does not disclose the content of the test to the public and restricts both the production and distribution of text books related to the course.
P360 ATP 2. Zero Preparation Time
Most English speaking tests allow candidates to prepare before they answer. For example, a question may say ‘Please answer question 1 after 30 seconds’. This allows the candidate to prepare the contents of his speech and check his sentence structure. However in a real business situation, there is usually no time to prepare before making a speech. In order to measure how quick the candidate can respond, P360 does not have any preparation time before the speech.
P360 ATP 3. Emphasis on Oral Communication Skills
Simply memorizing words or taking a short term training course will not improve speaking skills, but rather how often the speaker is exposed to English speaking environments. The P360 test focuses on speaking and listening rather than reading and writing which makes it difficult for the candidates to study and prepare beforehand. For listening skills, P360 counts exactly how many words the candidate understood in a sentence rather than measuring whether he/she grasped the overall meaning.
P360 ATP 4. Individual Test Number
To prevent candidates from preparing for the P360 test, we stopped individual testing in November 2015 and currently accept group testing only. We also focus on corporations with employee size of 500 or more and we currently do not target small organizations. P360 focuses on evaluating the English speaking ability of employees working in large size multinational corporations and we try to avoid other institutions from affecting our test scores or analysis data.
P360 ATP 5. Lowest Score Measurement
In P360 we do not ask the candidates to take the test several times and submit the best score. We test for their Naked score (scores achieved without any test preparation). This is to respond to the HR management issue that a lot of their employees that have high test scores cannot speak English in real business situations. Test frequency varies with line of work and department, however a company will generally conduct a test 1-2 times a year.
P360 ATP 6. Contents × Actual scoring
Responsive Time is one of the assessment criteria in P360. If the candidate can respond quickly to the examiner’s question, the score will be higher. However, in real business situations, the content of the speech is as important as the response speed and this the reason why we implement the hybrid scoring system where the examiner makes the final decision and it is difficult for the candidate to prepare beforehand.
