TOEFL Mentor Gets Students Ready for Exams

At the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the Intensive English Center's Language Learning Lab TOEFL course, students used the TOEFL MENTOR CD-Rom in supplementary work in the fall, 1997 semester. The feedback from the students was encouraging to the instructor, Barbara Brownworth.

First of all, the material is user-friendly. This particular CD-Rom can easily be installed in an IBM Compatible P.C. or in a Macintosh II or better system 7.0 or higher. The students can learn "About the Test," "How to Use the Test," and "Test Strategies." Students are first encouraged to take practice test one. It is then analyzed for them, showing the particular areas of weakness. As a Brazilian student said, "This is a great practice tool. It shows us our weakness and gives practice in these areas. I enjoyed my time in the lab where I could go at my own pace."

Then the students can easily access the listening, structure, reading section or the TWE (Test of Written English) section. The first three sections are sub-divided into a "Practice" and a "Test" part. In the listening section you can choose "Practice" or "Test". The student can choose to have the dialogue shown or hidden. The practice allows the student to exit freely. In the "Test" part, the student is not allowed to go back and it shows you the time allotment for each answer.

In the structure part, the "Practice" section has a helpful tutorial in subjects, verbs, subject/verb agreement, pronouns, articles, word order, inverted word order, adjective clauses/phrases, noun clauses, adverbial clauses/phrases, parallel structure, comparisons, word parts, gerunds and infinitives, participial adjectives, word choice, active/passive voice, conditional sentences, prepositions, phrasal verbs, negation, redundancy and grammar overview of the material. There is also a main menu and a "Sub-Menu." A nice feature in the "Test" section is the time remaining, displayed so the student can be easily aware of pacing her/himself.

The tutorial in the reading section is twenty-two pages with particular attention paid to inferencing, contextual vocabulary work, pronoun/antecedent questions and detail questions. A prefix list is given. This is a good practice tool for the student. Thirty-seven pages are allotted to the TWE section which is divided into "Description" and "Strategies." The student is encouraged to take the last practice test when (s)he is finished practicing weak areas. As a Korean student mentioned, "I feel like I made real progress with this program."

Since TOEFL plans to be completely computerized by the year 2000, it will help our students to give them lab time with practice on the computer. The TOEFL MENTOR is a good way to ease them into it. As a student from Haiti stated, "Now I am more comfortable with the computer. This practice has given me confidence."