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| epingchris Triglot Senior Member Taiwan shih-chuan.blog.ntu. Joined 7020 days ago 273 posts - 284 votes  5 sounds Studies: Taiwanese, Mandarin*, English, FrenchB2 Studies: Japanese, German, Turkish | Message 1 of 2 01 September 2007 at 7:27am | IP Logged |
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I occasionally regard English as my native language subconsciously nowadays. That's ridiculous and by no means true, as I still often get stuck with my tongue when I'm speaking, and I know there are plenty of minor grammar mistakes as I write, and all those idioms and slangs prevent me from ever becoming totally fluent. Overall, however, I'm very confident with my English.
I'm taking TOEFL in order to be free from English classes in school (as the regulation goes, if you get certain points on TOEFL you can apply for not taking the course, which is mandatory as all the other classes in Taiwan's high school), and even though the teacher at GVO said I can really take the test any time, of course the higher score I get, the better it'll be, so I'm preparing pretty intensively recently, including a tome of TOEFL-iBT including 7 sets of model tests...... The whole test structure of TOEFL is new and interesting to me. Especially fascinating is the listening section, which presents real-day scenarios occurring in universities and lectures in universities. It's great fun listening to English as well as environmental science, philosophy, arts, astronomy, psychology and geology at the same time! I hope I can face it with confidence and receive a good score. Edited by epingchris on 01 September 2007 at 7:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| epingchris Triglot Senior Member Taiwan shih-chuan.blog.ntu. Joined 7020 days ago 273 posts - 284 votes 5 sounds Studies: Taiwanese, Mandarin*, English, FrenchB2 Studies: Japanese, German, Turkish | Message 2 of 2 07 November 2007 at 6:43am | IP Logged |
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I took the test last Saturday. In Taiwan it's sort of prestigious, or at least respectful, for someone to take those kind of test and receive a high score, probably because of our culture that emphasizes on academic study a lot. Here are my experiences with this test.
TOEFL test is basically a university applicant-oriented examination. Therefore, it attempts to present situations everyone might encounter during his/her university life, and to test the ability of students understanding lectures, conversations with different personnels, etc. Although I have no plans as yet to apply for university in other countries, I find it challenging to learn how to integrate what I've been learning for years and show it as an overall skill. The passages in the reading test are a lot longer than those I've done in school tests, and it is really demanding at times to finish the entire passage and still keep track of what you've read. That's the ability they want to test, because in university one would be required to read large tomes, textbooks of various subject. Different from my father's previous experience with the test, the new iBT test doesn't overwhelm you with a lot of exotic vocabulary, but rather deals with your ability to comprehend the main focus of the article, certain keywords, and the sequence in which different topics come along in the article. For example, there are two special questions in TOEFL reading test: one that asks you to put a sentence in a place where it would best fit, another requiring you to select statements that could summarize the article best. The listening part necessitate you to be fast in taking notes (acting like a real university student), getting an general idea about the subjects being discussed, and to be able to understand colloquialisms that speakers in the reocrdings usually make. The speaking has always been my weakest part, since I speak a lot worse with microphones than when talking to real people. My English teacher gave me some advice, though, to help me not only be better in speaking test, but also in conversation: I should speak more slowly, and prolong the vowels a little bit longer so that I would stammer less. I think that's a grave problem with my speaking skills: I want to imitate the native speakers too much that I would try to speak at their speed and omit certain phonemes like they sometimes do. However, it doesn't help me achieve the most important purpose of speaking: to make others understand. Moreover, I felt depressed before when I say something and my teacher asks me to repeat. I thought it was due to my poor pronunciation, but after several occasions I realize those things happen even when I'm speaking in my mother tongue, and it wasn't about pronunciation, but rather about volume and paying attention. Knowing that, I would try to be more relaxed when speaking. Writing is the part where I got the most practices because I use the internet as my primary source of language learning besides classes, and naturally would have to write a lot if I wish to participate in forum discussion, which I love to. My teacher also helped me greatly - he was so good in editing writing assignments. During the classes of preparing for the exam, I frequently came up with questions about pair words - for example, the difference between "despite" and "in spite of", "to rise" and "to arise", "homogeneous" and "homogenous", etc. I use this technique a lot: as there are tons of synonyms and antonyms in any language, I feel it inevitable to ask the valuable questions of whether or not they really have identical meanings, and how their usages differ. It helps me clarify the subtleties and nuances between words in a foreign language that the learner may fail to notice. It also enables me to find more accurate and fitting translations. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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