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!