The English Proficiency Test (EPT) is a standardized test designed to evaluate a graduate student’s ability (especially at the Ph.D. level) to use all four language skills of English in an academic setting. It serves as a foreign language requirement of Suranaree University of Technology to fulfill a doctoral degree. The EPT focuses on elements necessary to academic English, i.e., listening comprehension, grammar, reading comprehension and speaking.
The written test is divided into four parts—listening, error identification, cloze summary and reading comprehension. The speaking test comprises an interview on a student’s academic activities and a prompt-based narration.
Graduate students are required to obtain a score of 60 points or higher to fulfill the foreign language requirement. Those who score lower than 60 points are placed in one of the three Graduate English courses:
Graduate English I,
Graduate English II,
and Graduate English III according to their scores.
Students are allowed to take the EPT a maximum of 9 times within 3 years (9 trimesters). Failure to pass the EPT or Graduate English III within the specified period automatically results in termination of a student’s enrollment.