Needing to improve his TOEFL score, Liu joins an Online TOEFL Course.

Li Liu knew that scoring only 47 on the TOEFL exam was a low score that would not help him to be admitted to any graduate school in the United States. Still, taking the TOEFL exam gave him valuable information—a sort of benchmark indicating his current academic English proficiency level. The next piece of information that he needed was which of the many TOEFL online courses would suit his needs the best and how long he would need to reach his goal of scoring more than 80 points on the TOEFL iBT exam.

To find the TOEFL Online Course most suited to his needs, Lui googled in key words “TOEFL Online Course,” and, in .28 seconds, Google displayed the first page of TOEFL learning web sites: ETS, TestDen, Thunderbird, The 7-Step System to Pass the TOEFL iBT, and NoteFull to name a few. For some reason, “The 7-Step System to Pass the TOEFL iBT” allured him to click, and he was sent to a web page in which he learned about the 630 vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, listening, reading, writing, and speaking lessons offered in the course. In particular, Liu liked that he would be able to complete pronunciation, speaking, and writing practice tests and would get feedback from an iBT pronunciation, speaking, or writing specialist who would evaluate, score, and recommend specific lessons to help him improve the weaker areas of his academic English language development. Therefore, he felt that the course met his needs based on his current English proficiency level.

While at the “The 7-Step System to Pass the TOEFL iBT,” Liu noticed that other students would ask questions to Michael Buckhoff–the founder, owner, and materials writer of the web site– after which the owner would recommend a specific plan to help each student reach her/his goals. Hence, to understand how long he would have to study before reaching his goals, Liu, like many others before him, sent Michael his current TOEFL score, including reading, listening, speaking, and writing subtotals. Then Lui told Michael that he needed to score 80+, the requirement to enter his graduate studies in Engineering at the University of Texas.

To his surprise, Michael prepared a video during which he analyzed Lui’s TOEFL results and then recommended a 90-Day TOEFL Study Guide to help him improve his vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, listening, reading, writing, and speaking proficiencies. Now Lui had the answers to his questions, and he had a specific plan that he could follow. Furthermore, even Liu knew that it would take some time and a whole lot of effort before reaching his goals and that he would be able to reach them in time, which was a very good feeling for him. As a result, Lui decided to enroll in this Online TOEFL Course to begin improving his academic English.