CALL@Chorus Review: TOEFL Mentor

TOEFL M	Chorus « CALL

TOEFL Mentor

Reviewed by Dr. Rick Goulden (email)
ESL Department
Okanagan University College

The TOEFL Mentor CD is a nice piece of work and is a welcome product for students hoping to prepare for the test. It's unfortunate that the subtitle of the cd, however, refers to 'the TOEFL test,' a redundancy that would be caught, hopefully, by those marking the TWE!

Getting into the program and figuring out how it works presents few obstacles, even for the computer neophyte. Once inside the program, the student sees a menu which is clear and easy to follow. The menu has two sections. At the bottom are three information buttons: (i) about the TOEFL; (ii) how to use the Mentor program, and (iii) test strategies. Above these, one can immediately see how to access the listening, structure, reading, and TWE components of the Mentor. The first three of these four test components provide a choice between 'practice' and 'test,' while the TWE component consists of a 'description' and 'strategies.' Each of these choices is made through the click of a button.

1. Facts about TOEFL This section is nicely organized, informative, and easy to use. It is full of useful bits of information for prospective TOEFL writers. I ran into my first glitch here, though; at first, I expected an information window to open when I clicked on a question; it took a couple of tries to realize that the info was provided in the box below. Call me simple, but perhaps the instructions should include: "Please click on the topic you wish to read [and the answer will be given in the box below]."

2. How to Use This Program Similarly, the information provided here is quite useful, but the presence of a scroll bar and the words "page 1 of 1" is misleading - there is no page 2. This could be cleaned up by removing these labels.

3. Test Strategies This section gives suggestions to help students with test strategies, and it is an excellent inclusion in the program. Perhaps an elucidation of *study* strategies would also be useful here. The topics listed at the top fill the box, so there's no need -at least on my machine- to have a scroll indicator on the right; as I found above, there's nowhere to scroll down to. I also found some minor problems here with typos. In the 'Note to Students,' we read: "Even if *the they* [sic] are not planning to take the TOEFL test [sic], however [sic], the program can be used to improve grammar, listening, and comprehension skills." Which begs the question, how do the last two differ? In the 'Introduction to Encomium Publications' [sic] TOEFL Mentor,' we find: "The Listening Comprehension, Structure and Written Expression [no comma] and Reading Comprehension sections of the TOEFL Mentor..." Elsewhere, a comma is used after the penultimate of a conjoined series, but not here. This particular punctuation inconsistency is found elsewhere on the cd. Picky, I know, but since the goal of this program is to improve students' grammatical skills, inter alia, it is important that it be consistent in its punctuation usage.

Having read through the information sections, I turned my attention to the practice sections.

1. LISTENING COMPREHENSION

The practice section for Listening Comprehension consists of three parts: (A) short conversations; (B) longer conversations; and (C) short talks or lectures. Each, in turn, has a 'description' button and a 'practice' button. Again, this is nicely organized and easy to use, and the inclusion of descriptions of how the test works along with practice is well-designed.

DESCRIPTION: Part A: Short Conversations
This section provides a good description of what to expect and where students should focus their attention, e.g. the use of contractions, informal vocabulary, etc. There is also a discussion of the types of questions one might encounter on the test: inference, idiom, similar sounds, etc. Each type of question is addressed in turn, with a sample dialogue and questions. When one clicks on the correct answer, it beeps and the message 'correct' comes up in green (good touch; incorrect answers are red). However, no explanation for why an answer is right or wrong is given here even though the introductory description says such will be the case (it is the case in the actual practice section, however). Too bad, because it would be useful as part of the explanation re: what inference questions are all about.

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

Screen Capture:
(Click for larger image)

Welcome Screen (83K jpg)

Publisher:
Encomium Publications
3639 Wilshire Avenue
Cincinnati, OH 45208
Phone: 1-800-234-4831 or 513-871-4377
Fax: 513-871-4312
Email: info@encomium.com
Web Page: http://www.encomium.com

System Requirements:
Windows:
IBM Compatible PC, 486/66 MHz, 8 MB RAM, 14" VGA Monitor, 100% compatible Sound Blaster sound board, Headphones or speakers, 4X Multimedia CD-ROM drive

Macintosh:
Macintosh II or better with System 7.0 or higher, 6 MB RAM, 13" Color Monitor , 4X Multimedia CD-ROM Drive, Headphones or Speakers optional, QuickTime extension

Version Reviewed:
1.0

Price Info:
$96 each, with discounts available for multiple site licensing.

Availability:
Commercial software available from the publisher.

Demo:
A free demonstration program can be downloaded on the Web.

Quick Summary:
All in all, I would recommend TOEFL Mentor as a useful tool for preparing for the test. It is easy to use, has loads of useful information, and provides lots of opportunities to practice and learn. Although some editing could improve the glitches scattered throughout, the problems I encountered with the content are ultimately minor relative to the bulk of the work.