Maria -- Tutoring 3 (Day 2 TOEFL preparation)

Lu and I met again at Strozier library a few days ago. On this day we were going to practice questions 3 and 4 of the Speaking section of the TOEFL test. These questions integrate reading and listening with the speaking part. For each question, the testee first reads a short passage, then listens to either a conversation (question 3) or a snippet of a lecture (question 4) related to the passage just read, and finally answers orally to a question regarding what s/he just heard. After looking at several examples it becomes clear that question 3 usually deals with a college student's "administrative" issues (attendance to class, required discussion sections, holds on account due to unpaid fees, and the like); whereas question 4 entails reading for a college level class and understanding a lecture on ANY given topic (homeostasis, infant communication, Malthus's gloom and doom economics, you name it). Given that the TOEFL test is taken in order to attend college/graduate school in the US, it seems only fair that its content should be university related. However, this very content makes these questions more difficult than one would think. Question 3 deals with problems/issues/realities students experience in an American college, but these can be quite different from the ones experienced by students coming from another country's university context. For instance, Finnish college students will never have to deal with a hold in their account because they don't have an account to begin with, since college in Finland is free of charge. This, obviously, does not mean that once a Finnish student is in an American university he or she won't understand the concept (or reality) of "having a hold in your account" -- but that will happen after having taken the TOEFL. That is, the TOEFL, although logical in its content, by being so US specific adds a "cultural" difficulty to the linguistic one. Maybe this is unavoidable, I don't know.

But going back to Lu. She is not having an easy time with these questions. After practicing a few of them we realize that her main problem is their listening part, rather than the speaking one. She just doesn't understand enough of what is being said to be able to speak about it with the required detail. This is also reflected in the low score she got in the listening section of the mock TOEFL test she did as her homework. It is a good thing she did this test, as now she is aware of where she is and what her likely score on the real test will be. It is, unfortunately, much lower than what she expected and nowhere near where she would like it to be. She is worried and feels self-defeated, so I point out that learning a language takes time, much like learning to play the piano, or skating, or any other skill. You cannot cram a language into your head, like you can the Napoleonic wars or the elements on the periodic table. Practice makes perfect and it takes time. This universal truth helps her realize that it is not her fault that she is not where she would like to be and look instead at how far she has actually advanced in the short time she has been in the US. Still, she has to take the TOEFL, so we will meet again tomorrow.