Today, I received my toefl scores. Happy to see 100 on my scorecard. (Trust me, It's huge achievement for an average guy like me)
Honestly, I prepared just for 2 days. Thanks to GMATCLUB, coz I didn't have to waste my time searching on Google for prep materials.
I knew I can score good in reading and writing, my main concern was of listening and speaking section. So I went through the format and structure of the questions and, trust me, that helped a lot.
1st Feb'13 (First day): I devoted my 75% of the day for Listening and 25% for Reading.
Listening: I attempted 30 listening questions(15 conversations and 15 lectures) from
http://www.english-test.net/toefl/listening/ and was quite comfortable then with the listening section, as it gave me pretty good insights on what to jot down and what not to, and what kinds of questions to anticipate.
Reading: As I am preparing for GMAT, by the time I started preparing for TOEFL I had solved approximately 100 passages. But I didn't know what type of questions and how long passage would be in the toefl. So I had to prepare for toefl reading section in order to get familiar with structure. so I attempted 4 reading tests from
http://www.examenglish.com/TOEFL/toefl_reading.htm , One thing I would like to mention here is that don't ever read entire passage in one go, as Toefl questions are pretty straight forward and are asked in sequence with paragraph. e.g. 1st question will be on 1st para, 2nd on 2nd para and so on...and the last question would ask you to summarize the passage. So read question first and then read the corresponding para and mark the answer.
2nd Feb 2013(2nd Day)I knew speaking can ruin my score so decided to give 80% of the day to speaking section preparation and 20% to writing preparation.
Speaking: At first, I went through all the videos of speaking and writing section <use this link
toefl-instructional-videos-speaking-writing-very-useful-100611.html>, this gave me idea about type of questions and about how to prepare for the answer in 15-20 seconds. After every speaking question video, I tried 5 questions of the same type from this site <
http://www.eng1on1.com/ibt.php?test=1 >.
I used following templates for speaking and writing section
templates-tfl-94210.htmlWriting:I didn't prepare much for this section. I took two random questions of each type and attempted them with proper time limit. The above writing videos and writing template helped me a lot. closed everything and slept at 11:00pm.
3rd Feb 2013(Judgment day)Woke up at 7:30am, got ready and by 9:00am I left for the exam center. Midway I had heavy breakfast (exam was of 4 hrs, so I had to make sure that I don't feel hungry). 9:30 was the reporting time, I reached there by 9:45am. After all the document procedures at 10am, I entered into the exam hall and everybody had tested their mics and started with reading section. (if you are reading and everybody else is testing their mic, It's very hard to concentrate on reading. As I was late, I was the last one to test the mic). Reading went like breeze, faced no disturbance. Listening also went well until I reached last 2 lectures, as all the people have started their speaking section already making me difficult to concentrate (I was late, I had to pay somewhere).
10 Mins break.(I didn't leave my seat, instead I wrote down the templates I prepared for speaking section.)
Speaking section went OK. I felt independent tasks to be more difficult than integrated tasks. I tried to avoid hmm, umm and gaps while speaking. I was not quite happy with the way Speaking section went, but kept up my spirit saying I'll cover my score in writing.
In writing section, both tasks were very easy, used templates and tried to write down as much as I can. In integrated task I wrote down about 350 words and in independent task I wrote down about 450 words. and was the last person to leave the exam hall.
Well, English speaking can't be learned in just two days, so In the end, I was quite satisfied with the way exam went.
I roughly judged my performance and expected 20 in speaking, and at least 25 in each other sections. total of at least 95 (20+25+25+25).
12th Feb 2013 (Today)I received my scores for Toefl. here they are:
Reading:
28(Expected)
Listening:
23 (Lowest of them all...it's disappointing, but remembering that I had to struggle with last two tasks, it was expected)
Speaking:
24 (Happy happy, can't ask for more)
Writing:
25 (Expected)
total: 100/120..
TOEFL mission accomplished..
:)..Should anyone need any help, feel free to post.
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Don't give up on yourself ever. Period.
Beat it, no one wants to be defeated (My journey from 570 to 690) : beat-it-no-one-wants-to-be-defeated-journey-570-to-149968.html
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