TOEFL essay simulator

[Lukas]

I've developed a web based essay simulator with the following features: random essay topic, countdown clock, wordcounter, sample essay for the essay you practiced.

This is a more advanced version of my "random essay script (Random essay topic script)"

More detailed description:
- Get a random topic from a pool of 182 topics (official list from the toefl bulletin) by pressing a button.
- Countdown of 30 minutes starts running as soon as you get your random topic
- When the time is up there is an alert and the words of your essay are counted.
- On the press of another button you can see a sample essay (from the list provided by riz1983; in this post (ESSAYS in the range of 5.0-6.0 from TestMagic)) on the same topic. I have started putting more essays in either from the essay list here on TestMagic or from posts on the forum. Supposedly all 5+ essays. For the following essay topics I have not found a scored essay (at least not 5 or higher):
1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 9; 10;11; 12;28; 29; 30;31; 32; 33; 40;132; 133;135; 136; 137; 138;140;141; 142; 143; 144; 145; 146; 147; 148; 149; 150;
151; 152; 153; 154;156; 157; 158; 159; 160;161; 162; 163; 164; 165; 166; 167; 168; 169; 170;171; 172; 173; 174; 175; 176; 177; 178; 179; 180;181; 182;
If you have a good essay on one of these topics send it to me by email. If not, WRITE one and send it to me by email.
I will try to integrate as many as possible into the program.
If you think one of the sample essays is not any good, please send me a better one or a corrected version.

Finally, if you find a bug or have any suggestions to improve the program, let me know.


All you will have to do is download the attachment and unzip it. Open the index.html and you will find further instructions.

The zipfile contains the files to run the simulator and the official topic list from the toefl bulletin in pdf format.

I hope the simulator is helpful and I'd be happy to get some feedback on it.

[awhig]

Good effort Lukas. I 'll have a look at it.

[Lukas]

I know you shouldn't praise yourself too much. But with this tool I've become a lot faster and efficient at actually writing essays. I don't have to look up topics or go look for a stopwatch before I can start. I just click and can start right away. When I'm done I can quickly compare my essay to a sample essay written by someone else and maybe get some more ideas what I could write about (currently there are sample essays for about 65% of all topics).

I plan to add some more functionality to it. One idea is, that you could choose a random topic only from "Describe", only from "Explain", only from "Point of view" topics, or any combination of the three. This way you could focus on the essays that are hardest for you.

One thing I didn't mention so far is that I've only tested the program in internet explorer, it may not work in other webbrowsers.

It would be a lot more convenient to have the actual page uploaded somewhere and then just keep updating the files there. I've tried uploading to geocities, but apparently they don't like my javascript (I get an error...).

[Lukas]

This is the newest version of the essay simulator
(could an admin remove the zipfile in the first post and replace it with the one attached to this post? I've found another bug in the old version and since I'm kind of a perfectionist I wouldn't feel comfortable people using a version with known errors. Thank you for your time.)

[Lukas]

nobody using this?

[agrowingcaterpillar]

Hey Lukas, I've just downloaded ur simulator, i'm sure it would be helpful in my TWE prep. Thank you!

[Jean & Walter]

it's terrific stuff!!

[deren]

two thumbs up

[Lukas]

ahhh, finally I get the recognition I deserve, muahaha. Er.. anyway, thanks and good luck to everyone.

Greetings from OZ

[Erin]

Hehe, nice to see you back. I'll honestly see if I can incorporate this somehow in our site.

You deserve more than just two thumbs up!