Ready to beat the TOEFL

I had already took the TOEFL last year, but it was the CBT TOEFL. I scored 240 and it was enough to apply for my Financial Management studies at Holland. I thought it was a pretty good score and I didn't feel disappointed at all. Actually, I was so confident by that time that I scheduled the CBT without any preparation time. In my defense I can say that I didn't have enough time to prepare all the paperwork required for the Finance course and I had to shorten times as much as I could.

Now it was different because I had a more ambitious objective: reaching a score that would give me the chance to get accepted by a top-tier B-School. Now I knew 240 was a poor score for that goal. Because of the good results I got from a GMAT course I decided to take a TOEFL course; but there were a few problems to overcome:

• After I took the GMAT I was so confident about my ability to beat the TOEFL that I scheduled it to take place almost a month after I took the GMAT, in April 28th.
• Every TOEFL preparation course in my country lasted three months at least.

Regarding this, I realized self-study would play a part on my TOEFL results. Luckily, I found another English institute called FLC (Fast Language Center) which provided the course in three months and let me pay only the months I was able to attend. So, I enrolled the course for one month; I was really happy because I would have the opportunity to take trial tests and make up my mind for the D-day; admittedly, simulated tests helped me a lot when preparing for the GMAT. Besides, some friends from the GMAT course brought me very useful material: Josianne provided me the latest OG and Alvaro gave me 10 audio CDs with all the material for an iBT preparation course (I don't know which one because I only asked for the CDs). With all these ammunition in my bagpack I was ready to face the test, a few weeks later.

On the good side, I felt confident because of my GMAT results, so I thought the Reading part wouldn't be a problem, and that I also would do my best in the Writing section. I was really concerned about the Listening and the Speaking part. That's why I wanted to take the trial test as soon as I could, so that I would know what weaknesses I should work on. After I took the first trial, I was pleasantly surprised how good my Listening was; I still remembered that Listening was the hardest part for me in the CBT TOEFL I took last year. Thanks to MSM and my team-mates in Holland (Pomme, Marika, Josie and Madoda) now I was able to do it well in that section. However, Speaking was my weakest ability.

Fortunately, the institute had only two students in my class so I could convince the teacher to reinforce our speaking abilities and she did more practice on that. Besides, I found some Speaking TOEFL-like questions in the CDs I got, so I started listening to them in my car every time I was driving; so I listened to the questions and tried to answer them (I must have been looked like a crazy man talking to himself to the other drivers). In addition to that, I found some online American talk radio stations in my Palm's playlist so I started listening to them every night because I didn't want to lose the listening ability I had improved when studying in the Netherlands.

By the way, the radio stations I listened by that time were:

• KUOW (NPR, BBC and local news and talk. University of Washington): http://www.kuow.org/listen/listen_live.asp
• WBUR (Boston's news station): http://www.wbur.org/listen/
• WNYC (New York Public Radio): http://www.wnyc.org/

One problem international students face is that it's not easy to find someone to talk to in English. And when you find someone you always ask yourself whether you're talking the right English or a sort of "local English". I started reading some blogs where former TOEFL takers said they started speaking only in English at their homes the entire month just before taking the test; I thought "I wish I could but in my country that's not possible".

Anyway, I tried my best in order to practice speaking as much as I could.

Finally, the D-day came. I know I did a good job, but I didn't know if it was enough.