With the advent of the era of globalization, English is regarded as an international language, a lingua franca, so to speak. Acquiring some good English skills is, therefore, considered a niche, a plus or advantage to an individual’s competitiveness in the global job market. English is definitely a key competence when it comes to hiring or promoting an employee. Because of the growing importance of English for industries, TOEIC was designed in 1979 to evaluate an individual’s English proficiency and many enterprises all over the world have all used TOEIC as a benchmark to measure their employees’ English ability. The aim of this study attempts to investigate the use of TOEIC in industries. This research is mainly quantitative, including a survey questionnaire designed by Chung-Hsin Corporation, ETS Taiwan Representative. The questionnaires are mostly feedbacks from the industries which have ever used TOEIC as a benchmark. In total 417 enterprises, both domestic and multinational, took part in the study. The findings of this study may offer some help to companies or educational institutes which would choose TOEIC as a benchmark or a threshold for their respective purposes.
