Hi Michael, sorry for taking so much time to reply!! I will now talk about your “7-Step System TOEFL Course.”
Well, in last year’s august I decided to apply to a master’s programme in UK, so I would have to take the an english test, either toefl or ielts. I decided to take the toefl because in Mexico we are more familiar with american english, and also because toefl is less expensive than ielts! I have always tried to read english material, and during university, most of my books were in english; but I’ve never lived in an english speaking country and I’ve never been in a situation in which I should speak english all the time, so I knew this would be my main weakness in the toefl. For the master’s degree, the university required at least 23 in the speaking part.
So, in August I enrolled in an english school, before taking my first toefl attempt in october…, The classes were very expensive, it was difficult to find a time to go to the classes because I work full time in a bank; but the problem I find in this kind of schools, is that they focus primarily in grammatical structures, and I didn’t practice the speaking part of the test. This first time I got the scores I requires in all the sections, except for the speaking part, in which I received 22, one point less than the requirement.
For the second time I took the test, I did almost the same than the first time. I went to an english school, and I tried to read books or magazines in english, at least 20 minutes each day…, and I tried to watch as many TV shows or CNN Channel as most as I could; I thought this would help me in the listening part. But the second time I took the test I didn’t raise my speaking score not even one point. I improved the other sections, but speaking remained the same. This second test I took it in february, and I was very worried about gettiing the acceptance from the university soon, because I need it to apply for scholarships or loans.
At this point I realized that no english school would help me…, and I was thinking about what I could do, and looking in the internet for videos or schools or particular teachers in Mexico, I saw your advert and you videos; I read the comments about your system and saw the example videos, and I thought that I should try it. I liked your system and it would be perfect for my work schedule, because I could make the exercises at night, when I come back from work.
I tried to do each exercise your recommended me, and I spent almost a week and a half studying your pronuntiation exercises. The first time I heard my own recording, I realized I spoke very bad! This exercises helped me a lot to realize about many mistakes I was making when speaking english, because as I said you before, I had a lot of practice with reading and listening, but almost nothing with speaking. I think that the VoxPop is very helpful. I didn´t reach to make all the exercises you suggested me, but in all that I did, I recorded my voice and I tracked your readings also, and comparing my first recordings and the last ones, I think that I did improve my speaking. Unfortunately, because of my work schedules, I couldn’t make a daily recording and I didn´t have many free time to study the exercises, but I tried to study at least 2 hours each time I could.
I found also very helpful the exercises about the response structure in the speaking part, because I wasn´t taking that into account in the other tests I took.
And finally, at the toefl test last march 23rd, I was nervous like always, and I thought I wouldn´t get that point I needed. I was already making my mind that I should arrive earlier to UK to take a presessional english course, with all the extra costs it carries. But I was so surprised when I got my results, because I got 24 in speaking, which was amazing for me; but also, I improved each of the other parts of the test. So, with 1 month studying your exercises and making the practice tests, reading something in english and watching tv shows in english daily, I raised 6 points in my overall score.
As a conclusion, and thinking about all the money I spend in english classes -I had to pay like 300 dollars monthly for that english school I was attending-, I wish I should have seen you website since the first time, because is very effective and I would have saved some money also.
Thanks a lot again!!,
Katia