The Online TOEFL Course “The 7-Step System to Pass the TOEFL iBT” boasts more than 630 lessons to help students improve their vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills. Furthermore, Michael Buckhoff–owner, founder, materials writer, and instructor for this Online TOEFL Course—recently made three important changes to the Grammar section of the course.
First of all, Buckhoff added a diagnostic pre-test to the grammar section, a 25 question test to diagnose problems students are having in the following areas: simple, compound, and complex sentences; prepositional phrases; appositives; adjective clauses; noun clauses; adverb clauses; sentences with multiple clauses; misplaced modifiers; subject-verb inversions; word forms; word choice; parallel structure; word order; count and non-count nouns; irregular verb forms; word forms; verb tenses; passive verbs; redundancy; articles; prepositions; subject-verb agreement; adjectives versus adverbs; gerunds and infinitives; and comma splices, run-on sentences, and fragments. Upon completion of the 25 minute diagnostic test, students will have the test automatically scored and will then get links to the lessons on which they should focus the most.
Second of all, Buckhoff created specific lessons students should study based on the results of the grammar diagnostic pre-test. For instance, if students have problems with gerunds and infinitives, they can click on a link that will take them to the lesson explaining when to use gerunds and when to use infinitives in both speaking and writing. In addition, this list will help students master which verbs and adjectives more commonly take gerunds and which ones usually take infinitives. Finally, students can also download audio files of various of lists of gerunds and infinitives to which they can listen when they are on the go.
Third of all, after students have completed the grammar pre-test and have reviewed all the necessary lessons, they will complete a grammar post-test that Buckhoff designed. The purpose of completing the grammar post-test is to help student see which areas of the grammar section that have or have not mastered. Case in point, after completing the post-test, if a student finds out that he/she still has trouble with irregular verb forms,s/he can review that particular lesson. In that lesson, there are eight lists introducing the student to 169 of the most common irregular verbs in the English language.
To sum up, the new additions to the grammar section of Buckhoff’s Online TOEFL Course will help students develop better control of grammar when completing speaking and writing iBT tasks during the exam. Ultimately, students will be able to improve their academic English and their TOEFL scores after completing these and all the other lessons in this comprehensive Online TOEFL Course, which essentially replaces an intensive English Program.