Hi TOEFL prep students,
I am Michael, the founder, owner, and materials writer of the Online TOEFL Course “The 7-Step System to Pass the TOEFL iBT.
Jose, an international student needing to improve his TOEFL score, sent me an e-mail earlier this month and shared his story with me. He took the TOEFL exam a few months ago and scored 91. Of course, this is a strong score, but Jose needed to improve his speaking and writing proficiency.
First of all, even though Jose speaks Spanish, German, and English, he has some fluency issues in the sense that he has difficulties formulating ideas when completing TOEFL independent speaking tasks. These difficult speaking problems are also manifested in his inability to use basic vocabulary since he just completed his graduate study, thereby making him more comfortable using more advanced, academic, and discipline-specific vocabulary.
Second of all, Jose also has problems with writing, particularly with the integrated writing task in which he is asked to explain the main points of a reading and listening passage and show how the two passages are related. For instance, Jose said he was having problems summarizing the sources so that it was clear that the information came from the reading and the listening passage and not from him. As a result, because of this and some other language-use problems, Jose was given a fair rating on the TOEFL integrated writing task.
Finally, Jose wanted some advice from me to help him improve his speaking and writing abilities of academic English. The following video will explain my recommendations to Jose:
Have a Happy New Year!
Michael