STEALTH, the Online TOEFL Course “The 7-Step System to Pass the TOEFL iBT,” offers international students a chance to have an independent speaking task scored for free by Michael Buckhoff, a TOEFL speaking specialist who has more than 22 years of TOEFL teaching experience.
How does the free TOEFL speaking practice test evaluation work?
International students go to http://onlinetoeflcourse.com/free-toefl-speaking-practice-test-evaluation/, they enter in their name and email address, and they are directed a new page with instructions on how to complete the free independent speaking practice test. To be more specific, students read the speaking prompt, and, using their phones, they make a 45 second recording. These students then save the audio files with unique names and email them to Michael Buckhoff, who has graded more than 10,000 speaking practice tests over the last three years. Students are instructed to give their e-mails titles, and they must include specific information in the body of the e-mails. After Buckhoff receives these independent speaking practice tests, he will listen to them, and, during the second time he listens to these speaking tasks, he will make delivery, language use, and topic development comments to help these students understand why they received the score they did and what they need to do to improve their overall speaking fluency.
What type of feedback will these students get after they complete these free speaking practice tests?
After giving these test-takers a score from 0 – 30 pts. using the TOEFL iBT Speaking Rubrics, Buckhoff will provide specific feedback in three areas: delivery, language use, and topic development.
First of all, Buckhoff will comment any delivery problems relating to vowels, consonants, syllable division and grammatical word endings, word stress, sentence rhythm, intonation, and thought groups and blending. The purpose of these comments is to isolate the intelligibility problems that users may be having so they know exactly which areas of their pronunciation need improving.
Second of all, Buckhoff will provide comments to these students relating to language use which is broken down into vocabulary and grammar errors or limitations that these students may be having. For example, Buckhoff will inform users if their vocabulary is too basic, vague, or incorrect. In fact, Buckhoff may offer corrections on words that will work better in the students’ responses so that they learn from their mistakes. Similarly, if students are using grammar that is too basic, incorrect, or unnatural, Buckhoff will also offer suggestions of more advanced or accurate grammar that will help these students better explain their ideas. Buckhoff will also isolate some general grammatical problems that are preventing these students from fully expressing their ideas. To illustrate, if students are using mostly basic sentence structure, for example, simple sentence constructions consisting of one subject and one verb, Buckhoff will advise these students to learn more about compound and complex sentences so that they can advance their grammar proficiency. Even further, based on the types of limitations that these students may have with their lack of using or misusing complex sentences, Buckhoff will advise students to learn more about noun, adjective, or adverb clauses.
Third of all, Buckhoff will give topic development comments to those students who complete the free TOEFL speaking practice test evaluation. In this case, these comments will focus around organization and development of ideas. To assess the organization, Buckhoff will closely look at the introduction, body, and conclusion of the free speaking practice tests submitted to determine how well the students connect old and new information together. If some of these free speaking practice tests have organizational problems, Buckhoff will explain how to utilize four cohesive devices in order to tighten the organization of their ideas: transition words, determiners and pronouns, repeating and rephrasing of ideas, and parallel structures.
All in all, students who take advantage of this free TOEFL speaking test evaluation will understand why, according to the official ETS TOEFL Speaking Rubrics, they got the score they did, they will also understand specific delivery, language, and topic development issues they are having, and they will get some long-term strategies and suggestions of how they can improve their speaking proficiency.
Who should participate in this Free TOEFL speaking practice test evaluation?
The target audience for this free TOEFL speaking practice test evaluation is TOEFLers who need 26 pts on speaking but who have repeatedly taken the TOEFL exam and have scored 22-23 pts on the speaking section of the exam. These understandably highly frustrated students often do not understand why they received the speaking scores they did, and they do not know how to improve their overall speaking fluency of American English.
Another audience who is invited to participate in this free TOEFL speaking evaluation is those students who are preparing for the TOEFL exam for the first time and need to find their level from 0 – 30 pts on the speaking section of the exam.
The last target audience for the free TOEFL speaking evaluation are those non-native English speakers who do not need to take the TOEFL exam but who want to have their speaking proficiency accessed by an ESL professional with a Master’s Degree in English Composition with an Emphasis in TESL.
Are there any rules limiting the use of the free TOEFL speaking evaluation service?
Yes, each student who takes advantage of this free TOEFL speaking practice test evaluation is allowed to submit ONE speaking practice test. It takes Buckhoff 6-8 minutes to provide audio comments for one student and 100’s of students are taking advantage of this free service, so these students can only take advantage of this free TOEFL speaking practice test evaluation one time.