[My High TOEFL Score: Tips and Experience]

School and major: Department of Radio and Television, National Chengchi University

Scores: first attempt, R25 S22 L25 W21

Test date: 2025/06/21

[Tips & Preparation for Each Section]

[Speaking]

Cindy's speaking class is taught entirely in English, but her pronunciation is very clear with no accent issues and she speaks at a moderate pace, so you don't need to worry about keeping up. From the moment you walk into the classroom, she encourages everyone to talk to each other in English, creating an immersive English environment. She also calls on students at random to answer questions in English, so everyone ends up speaking English much more often without even noticing. If you follow her guidance and practice seriously, you really get plenty of practice in every class. Especially for a section like speaking that depends on quick reactions, having ideas ready in your head beforehand becomes very important. She also reminded us to prepare ideas that can be applied to all kinds of question types, so we could use them flexibly in the test and get multiple uses out of one idea. On top of that, her analysis of the questions is spot on: if you catch the few keywords she points out, you can quickly find an angle, and questions that seemed hard become simple and easy to understand.

[Writing]

Chloe's writing class, on the other hand, is packed with content and very systematic. She provides lots of supplementary material, which helps a lot for people like me who worry about not being prepared enough. She is also very friendly: whenever I emailed her questions after class, she replied quickly, so students never feel ignored. As for homework, she doesn't strictly require you to hand it in right after each class, which is very convenient for people like me who like to prepare everything first and then practice intensively. The writing templates she designed are simple and practical, not too hard, yet they still show a decent level of English. Classes use real past test questions, so we can practice directly on actual exam material, and the listening exercises she prepares can also be used at home to practice Speaking Question 4, which doubles the learning effect. She sometimes shares her own life experiences and holds study sessions from time to time so everyone can exchange tips. The group chat she set up also shares all kinds of information in real time, and many classmates report the latest test questions in the group after their exams, which helped me a great deal.

[Study Plan]

I took the online course and was studying for the test full-time, so I spent two concentrated weeks watching the videos and studying. But you need to factor in how fast the teachers return homework. For example, Cindy treats all online students as lower priority for grading, so you wait even longer. I'd still recommend starting your preparation early.

[Test Center Report]

The test center was fairly basic, the restrooms were old-fashioned, and there was only one squat toilet and one sit-down toilet. At this center everyone starts the test at the same time, so everyone does the speaking section at about the same time.

[Words of Encouragement for Other Test Takers]

The TOEFL is going to change its format again. Best of luck to future test takers. Go beat this test!

[Score Report]