Akram never thought he would have so much difficulty passing the TOEFL iBT. Even though he had not taken an online TOEFL course, he had already lived in the United States for four years. If he could complete a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry, why couldn’t he score higher than 100? And he was he having so much trouble scoring higher than 26 and 24 points on the speaking and writing sections. “What’s the problem?” he thought.
Akram has a goal of becoming a doctor in the United States, and he knew that, once he started medical school, he would be too busy to study TOEFL. In his view, not being able to pass the TOEFL iBT was one monkey he wanted to get off his back. And soon! Akram turned on his Apple notebook computer his parents had given him as a graduation present, opened up his browser Mozilla Firefox, and typed in the key words “TOEFL course” to see what types of online instruction was available. Google displayed more than 18,000,000 search results. “Holy sweet Jesus and Mary!” Akram exclaimed. “Finding online TOEFL lessons is like finding a needle in a haystack.” As Akram started clicking on various links, he become frustrated either because of the price or because many of the different courses did not allow him to have his speaking and writing practice tests scored by an iBT specialist. However, he desperately needed that feedback, but he did not want to have to pay 1000’s of dollars. He needed to save all of his money to pay for medical school which was really going to break the bank.
Not knowing what to do, Akram called one of his friends who was back in Saudia Arabia working as a banker. Akram knew that his friend had scored really high on the TOEFL and that he had studied for the exam online. Nevertheless, Akram could not remember which course his friend took or where on the internet he could find it. Therefore, he called Mohammed and subsequently found out that the name of the course was “The 7-Step System to Pass the TOEFL iBT,” founded, written, and taught by California State University, San Benardino professor Michael Buckhoff. After a little bit of searching, Akram landed on Michael’s You Tube Channel which has almost 1.5 million video views and almost 1,300 subscribers. “Geez, this guy is a TOEFL teacher superstar,” thought Akram.
Then Akram clicked on a link in one of Michael’s videos, and he found himself at http://bettertoeflscores.com, home of “The 7-Step System to Pass the TOEFL iBT.” After watching the promotional video and reading testimonials from dozens of students who had scored high on the exam, Akram knew he had finally found the course in which he needed to enroll.
| This article was written by Michael Buckhoff–co-founder and materials writer for Better TOEFL Scores and The 7-Step System to Pass the TOEFL iBT, Composition and Linguistics Professor, TOEFL Specialist, ESL Master Instructor, and Placement and Testing Coordinator for California State University, San Bernardino.Follow more posts and videos from Michael at Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube. |