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Official TOEFL material makes English mistakes!

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Official TOEFL material makes English mistakes! [#permalink] New post 01 Nov 2010, 08:00
Hi,

In the GMAT SC books it is made clear that "like" cannot be used to introduce an example, as "such as" or "for instance" must be used instead.

Well, there is a problem with the TOEFL, well at least with one of the free official CAT I have just taken. In the third listening example, I hear "let me take an example, like water". Boom!

What the hell is that? TOEFL is supposed to assess our english ability and yet the official training material itself makes such errors.

Help! There is no way I will take a test that uses wrong English.
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Re: Official TOEFL material makes English mistakes! [#permalink] New post 01 Nov 2010, 22:17
ha ha! i wonder if its the same with other exams too. .
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Re: Official TOEFL material makes English mistakes! [#permalink] New post 03 Nov 2010, 22:09
You're right you cannot use like to introduce an example in written English. But in spoken English it is extremely common. The goal of the listening section is to make sure that you can understand American English the way it's spoken in a day to day college situation. I don't know if you've lived in the US but I've been living in California for almost 4 years and I can tell you that people can't make a sentence without saying like at least 2 or 3 times. And don't get me started on the valley girl accent... :)

If you're interested check this link out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valspeak

I can't believe wikipedia has an article on this lol
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GMAT: 720 Q47 V41 / TOEFL iBT: 118

Senior Manager
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Re: Official TOEFL material makes English mistakes! [#permalink] New post 04 Nov 2010, 03:21
It's true it is common in spoken in English, but still, it's a mistake ;)

I did live in the USA, and I recall that people used "like" a lot and "damn!" even more :lol:
Re: Official TOEFL material makes English mistakes!   [#permalink] 04 Nov 2010, 03:21
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