Grammar exercises for TOEFL

Because on November 9^th, Roa’a is going to take TOEFL, I thought I’d better help her make some preparation for TOEFL rather than spending too much time on the pronunciation project. Therefore, we just went over the pronunciation project very quickly. For the recording part, it was for advertising a product and she said she didn’t prepare well so she would like to do it by herself later and showed her recording to me next time. But she already came up with the topic of curling iron, which she uses sometimes. And because she had a headscarf that I couldn’t see her hair, she offered to show me the pictures of her hair! That was the first time I saw the hair of who had headscarf everyday! I was surprised that she looks so beautiful with curly hair in her photos. And she told me that is why females from Saudi Arabia have headscarf everyday, and only women, her husband and father are allowed to see her hair, because they don’t want other males have imaginary thoughts for her. I was shocked and asked her how about her hair before marriage, she said most girls have headscarf even before they get married, but for her, because her father is open minded, so she didn’t use headscarf when she was young. This cultural thing is so interesting to me, and it makes me realize how different we are in various cultures, that we should respect every culture.

Then we began to do some grammar exercises. Since practicing speaking is one of my goals as well as grammar points, I made Roa’a speak out the grammar exercises and discuss with her if she had any questions related. I found a website About.com which there are some TOEFL grammar exercises, and I brought my laptop with me when we had a meeting. Roa’a was all right speaking out the questions with a little accent. However, she had problems with some grammar points. For example, when she was doing this question: _______ that the American Indian crossed a land bridge into North America from what is now Russia. She couldn’t get why the answer is It is thought rather than It was thought, I told her that because it is a fact, thus we should use the present tense. And no matter people at that time or people in modern society think that the American Indian crossed a land bridge into North America from what is now Russia. She also had problems recognizing some singular and plural verbs. When she was answering the question: Singer and entertainer, ____________ for his beautiful and expressive voice. Even though the choices are: was Frank Sinatra famous; famous was Frank Sinatra; Frank Sinatra was famous that she didn’t need to choose the be-verb, she was confused why it is was instead of were, because she saw two identities in this sentence. I told her even there are two identities, they refer to the same one person, thus for one person, the be-verb should be the singular. Then I thought maybe she would also have problems with choosing the verbs for like none of them, he as well as I, either he or she, so I wrote them down and made her search for or make sure of the correct usage of them. We took about one hour finishing about 30 grammar questions, and in generally she did a good job that her accuracy is about 65/100.

We even talked about her trip to Washington D.C, and her experiences in embassy to ask for scholarship, which makes me feel she treats me not only as a language partner, but also a good friend. And I do wish her a good score in her TOEFL this Saturday!

Plan for application

This time I prepared some advices for Roa’a’s application to have a discussion with her. In our meeting, I started the conversation from an advice that she should go to observe classes that she is interested in or may take in the future after she is admitted. If she attends class and engages in discussion, asks questions and participates when appropriate, she will be standing out in a good way. This can also make her interest and commitment in success obvious, which may end up helping her if she needs to ask her professor for help with anything, or if she is interested in pursuing a master degree in his or her field. She agreed with me, but told me that she was afraid that if she showed up in a class one time, but then found it not interesting or she couldn’t go later because she was busy. That would give the professor a bad impression. I comforted her that at least she got the chance to make an impression on professors and let them know that she was interested. Besides, if she is interested in working with a specific professor for a thesis or graduate project, there is another good step she could take. Reading articles or papers the professor has published recently, or seeing work they've shown if they're in a creative discipline, can help her get a better idea of what their academic priorities are. Finally, I told her that sometimes, academic departments would have parties and other social events that professors, staffs and students would have an opportunity to interact in a more relaxed and fun environment. But here Roa’a was confused because she thought there was no channel for her to get this kind of information about the parties or events in educational leadership program. I suggested that just as we have mentioned before, going to observe classes is a good way to make friends with students and professors who are in that program, then she could get information from them.

Then our pronunciation project went well just as always, and this time Roa’a already recorded the one of the two passages in the Recorded Practice before we met, and she showed it to me. Now I feel my judgment about her English proficiency before was not completely right. Because I was always thinking that her English was good since she talked with me in a relatively fluent way. After listening her record this time, I felt she may be just good at daily life communications because she has been in US for years, but when it comes to academic readings, it seems her performance is not so good, especially her intonations, stress and pause of sentences. I have a feeling that she was like talking to someone in emotion when she was reading the passage about astronomy, so I should give her some guidance in how to read in a non-daily life way. This new finding will be my focus in our next meeting.

When we were going to say goodbye, she asked me if I was free tomorrow in the evening, because there would be an interesting activity at Hub about Turkish culture, and because her mom is from Turkey so she is also interested in Turkish culture. I told her I would definitely like to join her, but I had a shift at that time. Actually I am so excited that she asked me out. 

Pronunciation exercise

My language partner Roa’a was waiting for me when I got to the library, and we went to the group study room which I booked online. I realized I had difficulty differentiating my language partner’ pronunciation of /l/ and /r/, and I guess this is a common problem of  people from Middle East, since I have friends who are also from the same area with my language partner, their pronunciation sounds a little stiff, not as soft as native speakers. Thus I read some parts of the chapter Consonant System in our textbook Teaching Pronunciation again, and prepared some materials about the pronunciation of the two sounds for her.  I made her read a list of vocabularies with these sounds, such as laugh, lake, mall, palace, flight, milk, melt, rock, red, fries, correct, carrot, ferry, and several sentences with these words, such as “My plane arrived late.” “The taxi took the wrong road and we had to walk five long blocks carrying a heavy load.” She said she would notice the differences when she was reading this list, but she wouldn’t pay so much attention of these two sounds when she talks in daily life. And my reminding is a good way for her to have a standard pronunciation of /l/ and /r/.

Then we went on with our pronunciation program packet. I felt the dictation part of this meeting was not easy, because there were some scientific vocabularies which were not often seen in daily communication. She seemed to get them very well, with only a little confusion about a few words, and even if she couldn’t get the meaning of some words, she would take a guess and write the correct words by my pronunciation.

Later when we were doing the phrase level practice, she was a little confused about how to identify the thought group. I explained to her from my point of view, that just as the guidance said, prepositional phrases are one type of thought group, thus if we could recognize the preposition in a sentence, it would help us to identify the thought group in it. She got it and then completed this part smoothly.

When we came to the last part recorded practice, she realized that she hadn’t taken pictures as preparation, so she offered to take a picture of the group study room with me in the picture. As she described, I helped with some specific details. I felt this time she was more at ease and more willing to talk with me. Thus I thought it was a good chance to talk more with her and get to know more about her. When I told her that some of my classmates’ language partners’ oral English was poor, but I spoke highly of her English speaking, she told me that maybe it was because she had spent two years in Texas where her husband got his master degree. And she said they were sponsored by their government, but if she couldn’t pass TOEFL and get admitted by PSU, the government would stop the sponsorship of her, so she had lots of pressure. I encouraged her that she should take it easy because from what I see, her English is good especially her oral English, compared with other IECP students. Then I got a surprising message that there was no speaking part in TOEFL which she would take three months later. I responded that the most difficult part for me in TOEFL was speaking, and all of my friends who had also taken TOEFL had experienced the speaking part. So I was totally confused what kind of English examination she would take. She explained to me that there was TOEFL, TOEFL iBT, and what she would take is TOEFL in which the grammar part is most difficult for her. Then the reason why she didn’t seem care about the pronunciation project was clear now. We also talked a little about her husband and children, and I offered that we could hang out as a way to practice our oral English, then she asked me what kind of movies I liked and maybe we could go to watch movie together someday.