Figure 1
The ‘teacher talk’may have been significantly different in its essential nature from the language used on the TOEIC and therefore of little help in improving their scores on the listening test items.
The main text for the ‘TOEIC’ group On Target for the TOEIC was used in the order that the material was presented in the book, where the listening material precedes the reading material. At the time of the post-test, then, the students had just completed the reading section, while the listening section had been finished months earlier.
The Listening section is administered before the Reading section in the actual TOEIC examination. Since the students at the beginning of the year were not familiar with the test, it could well be that they tired towards the end. This would have resulted in poorer performance and a measurement which under-estimated their actual ability in reading (=one result of the ‘practice effect’).