(the) Road to the Deep East

As many blogs or news reported, an ex-Morning Musume member, Ogawa Makoto returned from New Zealand and appeared on Hello!Morning after one and half years.

While she was in New Zealand, she went to a local dance school, and also got a certification to teach children English. And she marked score 730 at TOEIC(Test of English for International Communication).TEST.

TOEIC's name is very popular among Japanese and people from some Asian countries, but many native speakers must be unfamiliar to. Then, how well can she understand English?

It has an official 'proficiently scale', and it explains the people who got over 730 are : 'capable of communicating appropriately in most situations.' (LEVEL B). And this 'LEVEL B is also the minimum requirement to promote to a middle manager in IBM Japan.

And here are some stats.

The average score of all examinees is around 570.
The average score of student majoring English is 495.
The average score of all university student is 498.
The average score of Office workers working in oversea department is 670.

Different from TOEFL test, this test just measures how well the person can listen and read English, but it is still amazing score. It's higher than average of all university students who major English and some professionals who use English everyday at their office.

We can conclude:

The probability that Ogawa Makoto can understand what you said is higher than that of Japanese office workers in your country, and it is just as well as IBM Japan executives.

Many Japanese university students study abroad recently, and there are some students who can't mark this score even after he studied two years, because he just communicated with Japanese boyfriends or girlfriends in the United States.

The result indicates, different from other lazy studens' or tarento's cases, Makoto's study in New Zealand was a kind of serious one and she worked very hard. Then now I'm VERY interested in how Akanishi-kun from KAT-TUN , who studied in Ameirca for 6 months is like.

*By the way, how the 'LEVEL A' is like?

Within his/her own realm of experience, the individual is capable of sufficient understanding and can typically respond with appropriate expressions even about topics outside his/her field of specialization. Although speech is not equivalent to that of a native speaker, the individual has a strong grasp of vocabulary, grammar, and structure and the ability to use the language relatively fluently.

... For some reasons, I know the person who barely belongs to this 'LEVEL A' well, and I can't agree enough with this definition.