...The First Time of Taking TOEFL Test Outside the window, only a few houses still had their light on. The street lamps turned the glow color from white to yellow, a warm color that could pacify the anxiety of the passerby. I looked up at the sky. The dark blue sky extended to the boundless distant place, to the other side of the earth—America—the country where I wanted to go to school. To achieve this goal, I had to take two exams, the TOEFL and SAT. I took a deep breath, thinking about my TOEFL exam. Test Of English as Foreign Language, the first barricade I need to go through, now bothered me a lot. I was forced to practice it again and again, to make sure my score was good enough to apply the American universities. But my reading, listening, speaking and writing skills could not assist me to get an excellent grade. I knew it well. So I could not stay outside for a long period of time. I needed to come inside and begin my practice once more. “It’s time”. Dad sipped his hot tea, reminding me to continue my work. “Go do your work.” His gentle voice sounded like a ringing clock, low and deep but powerful, pushing me to obey his order. “Yes”. I responded, and turned on the computer to listen to the online TOEFL course. I attempted to note down all the key point the teacher said. She then started a listening practice. As the lecture began, I worked on taking note of the key words for the questions that would come out after the lecture. Hours later, after finishing...
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...Go anywhere from here. JAPAN Princeton Economics AustrAliA TOEFL iBT Tips ® United StateS PURDUE U POLITECNICO dI MILANO HONG KONG LAW How to prepare for the TOEFL iBT. www.ets.org/toefl UCLA CANADA ENGINEERING ART FRANCE Teaching YALE Germany MEDICINE U of British ColUmBia MCGILL SINGAPORE UK U OF TOKYO KOREA TOEFL® iBT Tips TOEFL iBT Tips—from ETS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Open More Doors with TOEFL® iBT, the Key to Academic Success . . . 4 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The TOEFL® Test—The Key to Academic Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 TOEFL Scores Open More Doors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The New TOEFL iBT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 What’s New About the TOEFL iBT? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Why Were Changes Made to the TOEFL Test? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 About the TOEFL iBT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Format . . . . . . . ...
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...Young people nowadays do not give enough time to helping their communities. Agree or Disagree? As our world's civilization develops rapidly, people's lives become increasingly abundant and colorful with many ways of learning, doing sports and recreation. As a result, young people today are proven that they do not give enough time to helping their communities, and reasons supporting this statement are in the following. Firstly, young people are definitely easier to be distracted since they have lots of event to participate in, which results in their less time spending on communities activities. As students are so busy with their academic study, traveling between school and home everyday with lots of homework, thus they do not have time being involved in community. Besides, the young who have started working career also face lots of things to deal with such as regular company work as well as family affairs and dinner with colleagues and bosses, which distract them a lot and occupy much of their spare time. For instance, one of my brothers who just began working for a national enterprise told me that he's schedule was so full that he could not even provide one hour per week for community volunteer. The second reason is about young people's attitude toward community lives. Nowadays, since people, especially the young, spend a large amount of time outside home for work and relaxation, they do not have a literal sense of being in a neighbor, which causes their decreasing...
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...Independent Writing Some people think that in this quickly changing world, people are happier in the present. However, in my opinion, people were happier in the past before the world started rapidly changing. This is because when there wasn’t a lot of technology, there used to be many outdoor activities in the playground and there were more human interactions. To begin with, with the fast development of technology, young kids are always indoors playing video games or surfing the Internet on their computers. Today, most kids are always indoors in their houses and barely come out to play. For example, in the past, young kids would often go outside in the playground or the park to play with their friends. However, because of technology, they stay inside to play video games. Furthermore, since kids do not come out to play outside, they do not get to experience nature. On top of that, technology has reduced the amount of human interactions. Since people can talk to each other through their computers or mobile phones, they don’t talk to each other in person as much as they used to. For instance, during a family dinner, the amount of conversations held in person has reduced due to the family members talking to other people on the phone through texting or calling. Not getting a lot of human interaction can sometimes lead to depression and can become a serious illness. To sum up, before the rapid change in the world, people were happier with getting more out door activities...
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...TOEFL Secrets Your Key to TOEFL Success From the desk of Tom Paulson, Director of Test-Taking Strategy at TOEFL Secrets, May 5, 2002Dear future TOEFL Success Story: Congratulations on your purchase of the most advanced test-taking manual for the TOEFL. Notice I did not say study guide- there are plenty of decent study guides on the market, but that was not our objective in writing this manual. Our goal is to seek and exploit specific weaknesses in the TOEFL assessment, and then share those secrets with our customers. Let’s be perfectly honest here- you’ve worked hard enough in the past, and if you want to spend hours in a study guide to boost your score, that’s a great thing to do. In fact, we recommend at least a brief review of some of the better study guides on the market. But that’s simply not enough to do well in the high-pressure high-stakes environment of the test day. How well you do on this test will have a significant impact on your future- and we have the research and practical advice to help you execute on test day. The product you’re reading now is much more than a study guide- it is a tactical weapon designed to exploit weaknesses in the test itself, and help you avoid the most common errors students make when taking the TOEFL. How to use this manual We don’t want to waste your time. This manual is fast-paced and fluff-free. We suggest going through it a number of times, trying out its methods on a number of official practice tests. First, read through the...
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...出来的时候还从美国打电话给我，我的感激之情无法形容。UBC的M老师对我帮助太大，我只能感激自己在换到UBC的情况下还能碰到这么好而且做metrics的老师，在申请之前和之中总是给我信心，帮我很仔细地改了SOP，而且我的第一个offer还是他先告诉我的。经管的Z老师是最熟悉最了解我的人，我从大二开始给他做RA，一直到现在（我在经济系只有这一个RA），学到的东西太多，不管是metrics的理论还是编程，还有做学术的许多道理；在我最低谷的时候，每次和Z老师交流之后我就变得轻松，而且对未来有了信心；能有好的writing sample，离不开他的指导和帮助。能拿到三个都是做metrics并且都是very strong letter，这种很consistent的package对我最终的申请结果起到了关键的作用。 除此之外还有上一届的吴沛凡和贺熹学长。尤其是吴沛凡学长，总是在我低谷的时候给我信心，不厌其烦地改我几乎不成形的SOP；虽然他总是自黑，但学术能力却总让我自愧不如。在经会认识这两位学长，我深感幸运。还有帮我修改文书的同学和老师。 还有一起申请的同学。魏冬我想不用多说了，不管是去berkeley还是stern相信以后一定都各种牛逼。还要太感谢伍良杰，一起在拿到Chicago后像小学生一样天天上课复习准备托福，没有互相支持我想我估计挺不过这个难关；马上就要开始长达五年的repeated games，希望在Chicago大家都好！UBC的Z同学我是交换的时候认识的， 他是那边统计系的第一名，和经济系的double major；交换的时候就对我各种帮助，让我感觉还不太无助，申请前后我们几乎天天交流，互相看过SOP，分享各种信息，让我了解国外的本科申请econ phd是什么样的情况；神奇地拿了top 10的3个wl还有一个1st year funding wl，希望他至少能有一个转正啊！ 按道理还是要感谢父母。但是我想这是言语无法表达的，父母从我大二的时候就坚定支持我申请，尤其我爸还各种了解信息，在申请上有时候比我知道的还要多一些；最纠结的感受只能向父母表达，靠他们开导；我还能心理正常地度过整个大学和申请的过程，他们起到了最重要的作用。 还有我的室友和同学们。李昱松刘运操经常听我在宿舍吐槽，忍受我的噪音，太不容易；小贺和孙健总是各种开导我，我心情不好的时候也经常找他们发泄，但他们同时也有很多的事情和压力。还有上学期经原小课的同学们，在我最无聊最郁闷的时候想到要给你们上课，就不得不振作起来；课上各种有趣也让我轻松许多；如果以后觉得我有什么能帮到你们的地方，一定不要犹豫。 背景和申请结果 背景 GPA：总7/152，必修+限选5/152； G/T：GRE 166/169/4.0, TOEFL 30+30+23（害我不浅）+29；都是一次 交换：UBC 研究：一直和Z老师的助研，大三Z老师指导做的writing sample； 推荐信：如上 关于各种课大家可以移步urch上Profiles and Results，第二页上有我的thread。 结果： Acceptances: Chicago($$), UCLA($$), UCSD($$), Wisconsin($), PSU($$), UBC($$), USC($$) Rejections: Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, Yale, Northwestern, Columbia...
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...APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS MS/MRE Programs 2014-2015 ELECTRONIC APPLICATION & REVIEW PROCESSESS FOR MS/MRE PROGRAMS Carefully read through the instructions below before starting your online application and uploading documents. TEXAS A&M GRADUATE STUDENTS CURRENTLY ENROLLED Contact appropriate Mays Department MS/MRE Coordinator for application instructions. A COMPLETE APPLICATION INCLUDES: ⇨ Application submitted electronically using ApplyYourself online application. All deadlines are at 11:00 pm (CST) or midnight (EST). The MS Application will be available September 3rd. ⇨ Application fee • Fee must be paid via credit card when online application is submitted. US Citizens: $50 International: $90 ⇨ Transcripts • Upload a low-resolution black and white photocopy of your transcript(s) from each senior-level post-secondary institution. Also, include one copy of the transcript key from each institution. • File size should not exceed 500kb. Decreasing the dpi to 150-200 should compress file size if needed. • PDF is preferred, but additional formats are accepted (.doc, .wpd, .rtf, .xls, or .txt). • Preview your uploaded transcript to ensure it’s legible. • Applicants with international transcripts are required to submit a WES (www.wes.org) course-by-course evaluation. Official transcripts will be required if admitted. ⇨ Three letters of recommendation. • Three recommendations...
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...คู่มือเรียนต่อ สหรักฐยอเมริกา สำ�หรับนั เรี นไทย คู่มือเรียนต่อสหรัฐอเมริกา 1 WWW.HOTCOURSES.IN.TH TABLE OF CONTENTS า มค รเ ือกเรียน อเมริกา 4 ร การ ก าอเมริกา 6 การสมัครมหา ิ ยา ัย 8 การยืน อ ี ่านัก ก า 11 ักสาหรั นัก ก า นอเมริกา 15 า นการเ ิน การ 13 17 ิต นอเมริกา 19 ก่อนออกเ น า ริการอืน ากเรา 21 คู่มือเรียนต่อสหรัฐอเมริกา 2 ทำ�ไมควรเลือกเรียนที่ อเมริก�? คู่มือเรียนต่อสหรัฐอเมริกา 3 WWW.HOTCOURSES.IN.TH ทั่วทุกมุมโลกต่างมีสถาบันการศึกษาจำานวนมหาศาล ทำาไมนักศึกษามากมายจึงเลือกมา เรียนต่อสหรัฐอเมริกา? ลองมาดูกันว่าหากเลือกเรียนต่อที่นี่ คุณจะได้รับประสบการณ์ ชีวิตและทักษะด้านวิชาการที่ดีอย่างไรบ้าง สัมผัสความหลากหลายทางเชื้อชาติ สหรัฐอเมริกาได้ชื่อว่าเป็นดินแดนที่มีความหลากหลายทางเชื้อชาติ และวัฒนธรรมมากที่สุดประเทศหนึ่งของโลก เพราะเป็นประเทศที่เกิด ขึ้นจากการเข้ามาตั้งรกรากของเหล่าผู้อพยพ ทำาให้สหรัฐอเมริกา มีโครงสร้างทางสังคมที่ซับซ้อน รวมถึงมีสภาพภูมิอากาศและ ภูมิประเทศที่แตกต่างกันออกไปในแต่ละพื้นที่ สหรัฐอเมริกาจึงเหมาะ อย่างยิ่งสำาหรับนักศึกษาที่ต้องการซึมซับประสบการณ์ชีวิตในหลายๆ รูปแบบ Sharpen Your English Skills สหรัฐอเมริกาเป็นหนึ่งในประเทศที่ดีที่สุดสำาหรับผู้ที่ต้องการพัฒนา ทักษะภาษาอังกฤษในทุกๆ ด้าน ไม่ว่าจะเป็นฟัง พูด อ่าน เขียน นอกจากนักศึกษาจะได้ใช้ภาษาอังกฤษในชีวิตประจำาวันอย่างสม่ำาเสมอ แล้ว มหาวิทยาลัยหลายแห่งยังมีคอร์สซัมเมอร์ก่อนเปิดเทอม เพื่อ เตรียมความพร้อมด้านภาษาอังกฤษให้กับนักศึกษาต่างชาติโดยเฉพาะ อีกด้วย American Dream จริงๆแล้วคำานี้เป็น...
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...Toefl test is the most wonderful test Agree or disagree I completely agree that the Toefl test is the most wonerful test. Although, I believe that some minuses of the test cannot be denied , but Im sure that the test is an acceptable way to discover our ability to read, write ,speak and then to develop our abilites in academic English. When I started practising for the test, it change a lot of things in my way of learning.For example, there are some types for speaking and writing , which I had always ignored. When I started to speak and write in a more particular way, and it helped me to improve my fundamental knowledge. First of all Toefl helps people to be more organised.For example, I have a friend who hated studying. He always got falls in test . The biggest problem , which disturbed him to study is the absense of being organised. He always mixed in his minds , and it became a barrier for him to study well at school. When he started to study Toefl he became more organised nd more concentrated,because Toefl needs a lot of concentration,hardworking and ability to be organised.Toefl has changed his whole life and now he studies at Cambridge university with very high grades. In addition to my first reason I also can say that Toefl is very important for future. Knowledge,which you get at time of studying Toefl, you can use in all kinds of situations of life. For example, my uncle who studied...
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...The first thing I want to say is: shortcuts do not exsit for writing. The only way to increase your level of writing is to keep writing, day after day and year after year. The first time when I touched with writing was in the period of my primary school. I have written hundreds of essays for tests, homework, and practices for almost 10 years and I am still writing now. At the beginning of the third year of my primary school my teacher asked us to write a journal every day. For the first few days I am interested in it, but as time went through, it really drived me crazy, because the life was almost the same during 24 hours one day and seven days one week. Most of my classmates complained it is hard to write different journals every day, it was easy, however, our teacher said you can do some observations around you and your community and do not limit yourself. So I got the first key element of the writing-observation. My journal was admired by my teacher as I did good observations and I was introverted when I was a child, that is easy for me to express my emotion into the paper. Journals also made me understand that “practice makes perfert”. After years of growth, my writing skill was updated, but the standard of writing was also uping. The teacher in middle school was more strict with students’ essays than the one did in primary school. I felt unprecedented pressure from each class, especially writing class. Seldom can I get appropriate ideas for an essay even I did a...
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...WE Essays 1/292 TOEFL WRITING (TWE) TOPICS AND MODEL ESSAYS Copyright © 2002 www.wayabroad.com. All right reserved. 1 TWE Essays 2/292 WRITING TOPICS Topics in the following list may appear in your actual test. You should become familiar with this list before you take the computer-based TOEFL test. Remember that when you take the test you will not have a choice of topics. You must write only on the topic that is assigned to you. 185 You have enough money to purchase either a house or a business. Which would you choose to buy? Give specific reasons to explain your choice. 184 Some students prefer to study alone. Others prefer to study with a group of students. Which do you prefer? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer. 183 Films can tell us a lot about the country where they were made. What have you learned about a country from watching its movies? Use specific examples and details to support your response. 182 Many people have a close relationship with their pets. These people treat their birds, cats, or other animals as members of their family. In your opinion, are such relationships good? Why or why not? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer. 181 In your country, is there more need for land to be left in its natural condition or is there more need for land to be developed for housing and industry? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer. 180 Movies are popular all over the world. Explain why...
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...To have a good writing skills, a person requires lots of reading and trainings. Writings skills and reading experiences are both need to sharpen by time. If we did not have time to sit down and read, we must need other people as sources to assist our writing. I was the child who refused to read and “un-educated” child. Boys tent to learn things more physically compare with girls, and I was the kind of child. To sit down and read would be the hardest act for me. My mother was an elementary school teacher. She retired several years ago, and she known very well about how a young child should be learning. Which means I had different education than other kids. While other students were suffering by their parents’ pressure on their grades, I was...
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...reader what the topic or argument of the essay is. Experienced writers have little difficulty writing thesis sentences. This is because they have read and written thousands of them. You, the emerging writer, don’t have it so easy. So, you have to accelerate the process. You do this via thesis sentence templates. A thesis sentence template is the basic machinery of a thesis sentence, what makes it work. It is like a car minus the hood, the doors, the engine, the side panels, the wheels, and the air conditioner. On that basic structure, thousands of different cars can be built. From a thesis sentence template, thousands of thesis sentences can be constructed. The introduction for any piece of writing is very important. This is where you establish a relationship with the reader. The introduction will always be read, while the body of the paper might sometimes be glossed over (not carefully read) by graders of standardized tests like the SAT® or TOEFL®. ? HOW THE THESIS SENTENCE TEMPLATES WORK Each type of thesis sentence presented in this section is followed by two or three examples of how very different thesis sentences can be written using the template. Then you will write two or three thesis sentences of your own using the template. If you find the template difficult, just do one sentence on your own. But the more you practice, the better you will be at writing templates. Note that when suggestions for filling in the blanks are supplied, the small list...
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...Simulations of psycholinguistic phenomena show that LSA reflects similarities of human meaning effectively. To assess essay quality, LSA is first trained on domain-representative text. Then student essays are characterized by LSA representations of the meaning of the words used, and they are compared with essays of known quality in regard to their degree of conceptual relevance and the amount of relevant content. Over many diverse topics, the IEA scores agreed with human experts as accurately as expert scores agreed with each other. Implications are discussed for incorporating automatic essay scoring in more general forms of educational technology. 1. Introduction While writing is an essential part of the educational process, many instructors find it difficult to incorporate large numbers of writing assignments in their courses due to the effort required to evaluate them. However, the ability to convey information verbally is an important educational achievement in its own right, and one that is not sufficiently well assessed by other kinds of tests. In addition, essay-based testing is thought to encourage a better conceptual understanding of the material and to reflect a deeper, more useful level of knowledge and application by students. Thus grading and commenting on written texts is important not only as an assessment method, but also as a...
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...Abstract This paper describes a deployed educational technology application: the CriterionSM Online Essay Evaluation Service, a web-based system that provides automated scoring and evaluation of student essays. Criterion has two complementary applications: E-rater®, an automated essay scoring system and Critique Writing Analysis Tools, a suite of programs that detect errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics, that identify discourse elements in the essay, and that recognize elements of undesirable style. These evaluation capabilities provide students with feedback that is specific to their writing in order to help them improve their writing skills. Both applications employ natural language processing and machine learning techniques. All of these capabilities outperform baseline algorithms, and some of the tools agree with human judges as often as two judges agree with each other. 2. Application Description Criterion contains two complementary applications that are based on natural language processing (NLP) methods. The scoring application, e-rater®, extracts linguisticallybased features from an essay and uses a statistical model of how these features are related to overall writing quality to assign a holistic score to the essay. The second application, Critique, is comprised of a suite of programs that evaluate and provide feedback for errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics, identify the essay’s discourse structure, and recognize...
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