“Dear Michael,
Can you help me in recommending which lessons in your Online TOEFL Course: “The 7-Step System to Pass the TOEFL iBT” would be most suitable for my situation? Reason being, the first time I took the TOEFL I scored 76 with R-18, L-16, S-20 and W-22. The second time I took the TOEFL I scored 85 with R-21, L-18, S-22 and W-24. I need to score a minimum of 100 in order to receive admission into my university of choice. I will be taking my next TOEFL Exam on April 28, 2013. Is it possible to improve by 15 points until then? And what course of action would I need to take to make this happen?
Sincerely,
Carlos.”
Originally from Portugal, Carlos noted how he wanted to improve his TOEFL score by at least 15 points in order to be admitted by his university of choice. At the time of his message, it was February 04, 2013, so he had roughly three months to prepare for his exam. With this in mind, Michael recommended that Carlos needed to work and study diligently and was not negligent everyday to improve his score. In addition, Michael recommended that Carlos complete various exercises and practice tests in each one of his lessons for him to develop and improve his overall intelligibility of all lessons. With this initial feedback, Carlos began with the vocabulary section and worked his way down to the pronunciation, grammar, reading, listening, speaking, and writing sections in the 7 Step System.
First of all, in the vocabulary section, Carlos had lessons, exercises, and practice tests for mastery of 1,700 TOEFL words. Second of all, with the pronunciation section, Carlos worked on his understanding of vowel and consonant sounds as well as the instruction of the stress, intonation, and pausing of various phrases. Third of all, with the grammar section, Carlos learned basic and advanced sentence structures, verb tenses, word forms, word choice, parallel structures, and so on. Fourth of all, in the reading section, Carlos completed numerous academic speed reading practices, testing his ability to read from 100 to 350 words per minute. Fifth of all, with the listening section, Carlos learned to catch the main idea and important details of campus-related and academic listening passages. Sixth of all, with the speaking section, Carlos had 100′s of skill-building exercises and access to the Exclusive Voxopop Discussion Group where he posted his speaking responses online. And finally, with the writing section, Carlos learned how to decode the writing task, organize a coherent response, write detailed developmental paragraphs, and end his essays with a conclusion.
With all this, Carlos truly became a more efficient reader, listener, speaker, and writer. Such that when he re-took the TOEFL iBT for his third time he scored 101 with R-26, L-24, S-25 and W-26! What a remarkable improvement from his previous scores and all though effective studying and diligence. Reaching his TOEFL goals, hopefully Carlos found peace of mind knowing he accomplished something worthwhile. Carlos’ final comments to Michael were listed as the following: “Michael, I am happy to inform you about my TOEFL score results, which I have got today. It is 101! My previous results were 76 and 85. It was a really cognitive breakthrough. Especially improving by a total 16 points! Thanks a lot for all your help and lessons; you are doing a great teacher and instructor!!!
Sincerely,
Carlos”