TOEFL ITP (Test of English as a Foreign Language: Institutional Testing Program) is now used as part of the test format designed by Vietnam National Foreign Language Project 2020 to test the English proficiency of Vietnamese. However, they tend to do poorly in the listening comprehension section of the tests of the Project, in which short conversations between two people in part A are the first challenge. | Võ Việt Cường Tạp chí KHOA HỌC & CÔNG NGHỆ 109(09): 45 - 49 SHORT CONVERSATIONS IN THE LISTENING COMPREHENSION SECTION OF TOEFL ITP IN LIGHT OF SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR Vo Viet Cuong* College of Economics and Technology – TNU SUMMARY TOEFL ITP (Test of English as a Foreign Language: Institutional Testing Program) is now used as part of the test format designed by Vietnam National Foreign Language Project 2020 to test the English proficiency of Vietnamese. However, they tend to do poorly in the listening comprehension section of the tests of the Project, in which short conversations between two people in part A are the first challenge. Besides the high speaking speed of the native speakers in the recordings, the grammatical structures that convey the meaning of each conversation seem to be one of the linguistic components affecting the students’ understanding of each conversation. Realizing the students’ problem above, we have conducted an analysis of clause expansion in three selected short conversations consisting of requests and their responses in part A of the listening comprehension scripts of the book “TOEFL Preparation Kit Workbook 2002-2003, Volume 1” designed and introduced by ETS, in light of Systemic Functional Grammar. The results of the analysis suggest further studies on more conversations of this kind. Key words: TOEFL ITP, short conversations, challenge, clause expansion, requests and their responses, Systemic Functional Grammar. INTRODUCTION* Besides IELTS (International English Language Testing System), TOEFL ITP (Test of English as a Foreign Language: Institutional Testing Program) is now used as part of the test format designed by Vietnam National Foreign Language Project 2020 to test the English proficiency of Vietnamese. In addition, a considerable number of international institutions still accept TOEFL ITP score for admissions to them. These indicate that TOEFL ITP is still popular in Vietnam. As teachers of English at Thai .
