Lana looked at her TOEFL Speaking subtotal score of 26. Her eyes welled up, and two tears streamed down her face. Finally, after all of her TOEFL iBT speaking practice, she had finally reached her goal, thereby meeting the pharmacy licensing requirements. Lana wept tears of joy. Since her previous speaking score was 23 points, how had she made these improvements?
Perhaps the most important decision that Lana made was to join an Online TOEFL Course so that she could post and get daily feedback from an iBT TOEFL Speaking Specialist. Lana had felt that she could reach her goal on her own and would be able to improve her speaking without outside help, but that was simply not the case. As a result, Lana had to swallow her pride and put her trust in a qualified TOEFL iBT specialist.
One important observation that Lana’s TOEFL iBT Specialist noticed was that Lana had delivery problems in three areas. First of all, when Lana recorded and uploaded her speaking practice tests for her TOEFL iBT speaking mentor, she was informed that she had some word stress problems, particularly with three and four syllable words. To remedy this problem, Lana was advised to study and complete Pronunciation Lessons 25-28, all of which centered around word stress. Second of all, Lana was also advised she needed to improve her intonation. Her tendency, according to her TOEFL iBT speaking mentor, was to speak in a monotone voice. Consequently, Lana was advised to study Pronunciation Lessons 36-40, all of which would help her to vary her tone more, thus giving her a more natural sounding delivery.
Often distracting listeners from what she was saying, the last issue that was affecting Lana’s delivery was her awkward pauses and hesitations. Simply put, Lana was sometimes pausing during her ideas because she was trying to find the grammar and vocabulary appropriate to the speaking tasks. Her TOEFL iBT mentor advised her to study Pronunciation Lessons 41-44 so that she could learn to identify thought groups with her ideas and to also use blending within her designated thought groups. In addition, Lana also started a regular routine of reading and listening to academic topics on a daily basis, and it was this extended exposure that helped Lana develop better control over her vocabulary and grammar usage. Of course, the better control Lana had over her language use, the better control she had over her pausing and blending.
In addition, Lana also made some improvements with her language use. When Lana started completing some of her independent and integrated speaking practice tests, her iBT speaking mentor noticed that she expressed mostly basic ideas in response to the arguments she was trying to make and that she had trouble paraphrasing ideas from reading and listening passages. Part of Lana’s problem was that her vocabulary limitations were preventing her from fully expressing her ideas. To help her address this issue, Lana’s TOEFL iBT Speaking Mentor recommended that she study Vocabulary Lessons 3-6, which would help her to expand her basic and college-level vocabulary. Furthermore, Lana continued her routine of reading and listening to academic passages, this also helping her to expand her vocabulary.
Now no obstacles stood in the way of Lana’s becoming a pharmacist. She had completed all her studies, passed her pharmacy exam, and cleared her TOEFL requirements. Overcoming her delivery and language-use problems would not have been possible had she not joined the Online TOEFL Course “The 7-Step System to Pass the TOEFL iBT.” Improving from 23 to 26 did not happen overnight. In fact, it took Lana 2.5 months to overcome her problems before she was ready to get her dream score. But it did happen! And oh how sweet was her joy!