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Bam! I got a score of 26 on the speaking section Hi Erin and everybody: Eventually, my eight year nightmare is almost over. I received a required score of 26 on the speaking section. First, I would like to thanks Erin, the administrator and the owner of this wonderful forum. As a pharmacist and a moderator, thank you for being so patient with us. We were so stressed out with the process. From time to time, a lot of arguments were made in the pharmacy forum. You handled them very well. Good job! I wish you well in future. I am sure that this forum will grow over time. Oh! I plan to visit you in San Francisco soon. In addition, I would like to thank Micheal or Wasleys who moderates the TSE and TOEFL forum. He answered a lot of questions about grammar in TOEFL grammar forum. Furthermore, I would like to spread a thank you note to the English teachers in this forum: 1. Kennyp, or Ken Pechenick, a tutor in Canada who gave us emotional support in TSE forum since 2003. He also gave a lot of tips about the speaking section. He is warm and friendly. I consider him as a family member. At least, two of my friends passed the TSE because of him. I talked on the phone with him several times. I even planned to have a tutoring session in person with him in Canada but it was pretty difficult because of he lives in Canada. He will correct your speech word by word when you practice with him. 2. TSE Prep, or Charles Park. He is based in CA and the author of the mastering skills of the TSE. He continues to give emotional support and tips about the speaking test. I sent my sound files and he evaluated them to me. Thanks again. I appreciate your help. He took the TOEFL iBT himself and received a score of 28 on the speaking section. 3. Englishraven, or Jason Renshaw. Thank you for being dedicated to give us tips and how to do the speaking section correctly. I had a chance to log in and check all his online course materials. They are very helpful. His videos on you tube are excellent. You cannot miss watching his videos before taking the speaking section of TOEFL iBT. He is very thorough about what each task needs to get done. On his online course, he gives several examples of every question. Those voice examples will train your thoughts to think systemically. I believe that after I read every book available in the market, I started to get confused on what to do. He will teach you how to think step by step. This is the key since after you finished the first two sections of the TOEFL iBT, your mind will get mixed up with difficult and boring topics on listening section. I remember that I got several passages about astronomy, geology, and photography. These topics are difficult and require us to use our imagination to understand. It takes out almost all energy from me. 4. TOEFL Corey. Thank you for your evaluation on the best book for TOEFL iBT and your tips on passing the exam. I agree with you that the complete guide for TOEFL iBT by Bruce Roger is the best one. It gives a lot of sample answers and practice tests. 5. Bruno Hill. I cannot reach him since his web site has changed. I took his online TSE and TOEFL iBT course. The speaking practices by recording my voice allow him to correct my pronunciation and grammar. I took both writing and speaking online lessons with him for over 2 years. He provides tons of examples of speaking sound files. 6. Kaplan, Seattle. Thanks my speaking teachers, especially Tom and Kevin. Tom is the academic manager at Kaplan. He is a very good teacher for TOEFL iBT-speaking. We practiced speaking in noisy environment in classes. Kaplan also offers test sessions simulating the real TOEFL iBT. Anyone who takes KAPLAN - TOEFL iBT should take advantage of this TOEFL iBT test practices. KAPLAN offers this simulating tests every two weeks if you enroll in TOEFL course. Teachers will grade you like in the real test. The International advisor, Mark, at KAPLAN-Seattle is a warm and caring person. Not to mention, Emily, the program manager who is very sincere and warm. 7. I also had private tutoring sessions with American tutors who graduated from Washington University-St. Louis almost every day for a year in 2004. I also took pronunciation classes at universities for several years. One of them was an actor and singer in Broadway, NY. Later, he went on to get his PhD. in English literature. Actors and singers need to pronounce words clearly. He is very encouraging and enthusiastic about teaching students to pronounce words clearly. He always said to me, “Enjoy your words.” If anyone is interested, let me know. He is teaching at Webster University - St. Louis. 8. I also took all speech communication classes at universities such as public speaking, speech and presentations for media, story telling, and so on. Most of my teachers graduated from the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor. I would like to stress that all my courses are not easy though. As I remember, I had to give speech and presentations to real media groups in pubic. All panelists were people who worked in radio and TV stations. I believe that I made good impressions to them since one of them stood up and praised me immediately after I finished. One of them asked my group to have an interview in his radio station the next day. 9. Jack Rose, the author of the TSE book. I took his TSE seminar twice, both in LA and Las Vegas. He taught how to track the organization of the answers of the TSE exam questions. Question 1 &2 are opinion questions. He taught what and how to say them correctly in time limit. He conducted real classes so I had opportunities to practice with a group of students with his guidance. I tried to contact him earlier this month but I could not reach him. He gave good tips how to handle stress and timing in the exam. His career was a high school teacher for over 20 years so he has had good experiences about guiding and teaching in classrooms. He discussed about test anxiety which has had a big impact on students with the time pressure - test such as TOEFL iB and TSE. If anyone knows where he is, please let me know. Thanks. I would like to take this opportunity to thanks all members who gave tips. The list will add up and I will take another ten pages to mention them all. My background: I studied English since I was 4 years old. My pharmacy school in my home country did not translate English text books so I studied in English. I worked for multinational pharmaceutical companies such as GlaxoWelcome (British), Schering AG (Germany), Lek (Israel), Great Eastern Drugs(Philippines), and Hoechst (Germany) in different times for over twelve years. The language used in my work was English. I gave a lot of presentations during working. Moreover, I completed a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Science - Management Information Systems from the University of MO - Louis and completed all speech communication courses at Webster University and almost complete Animation & Graphic certificate program from a college here is Seattle. Overall, I have lived and have been educated in the USA for over 10 years. I also owned a pharmacy for over 10 years in my home country. I traveled to Germany, France, UK, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Netherlands, Austria, Czech, Singapore, Myanmar, and Laos. I’ll post about the TOEFL iBT materials later. Bye for now. I wish you would be patient with your journey. Knok :tup: