Monday, September 24, 2007

Preparing for the University: How long does it take?

As an ESL teacher in the United States, I have worked with thousands of international students over the years, whose main goal is to enter North American universities to get a college degree. Unfortunately, a number of these students never reach their goal, in part because of unrealistic expectations on how easy it is to pass the TOEFL and deal with the rigors of academic life. In this poll, 35% of respondents believe entering the university is possible within the first nine months of language training, but from my experience, the timing is longer due to many factors including the students' natural ability to learn, how much the student actually integrates into the community, personal motivation, and the types of courses a student takes. In other words, it is generally much more difficult than students think, and students often feel undue pressure from parents or sponsoring governments or schools to pass the TOEFL If learning how to order a burger from a restaurant is your goal, then this can be accomplished quickly. By raising your language to the level of participating in academic lectures is something very different. What do you think?

Randall

2 comments:

  1. I'm preparing for TOEFL now. I'm not going to university, it's like my personal goal or a pole in lerning enlish. And I can say, that the most difficult par is understanding of spoken english. This why I'm here and want to say THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!

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  2. I think it is difficult to say how long it takes to preparing for the University. It depends on the the level and personal ability and method and motivation and the learning time. I envy the young student who has enough time and efforts to learing English.Now I am a home maker and there are always so many thing to do and could concentrate on learning.So I want to persuade young student please make good use of your time and try your best in learing English.

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Thanks for posting a comment. I appreciate your interesting in sharing your ideas.

Best,

Randall

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