TOEFL Mentor

(Continued from Page One)

Reviewed by Dr. Rick Goulden (email)

There are some other nice touches here: (a) the written dialogue can be hidden for strictly aural practice, or it can be read as one listens; (b) when one selects 'play dialog,' a QuickTime slidebar comes up on the screen which shows the progress of the conversation; (c) the dialogue can be rewound and there is also a built-in volume control; (d) the audio is clear with just a hint of background static in places (the acting, however, is variable in its credibility). The advance and rewind buttons allow you to rehear parts of the dialogue. The bottom of the page has 'back,' 'main menu,' 'sub menu,' and 'next' buttons. These are useful and help guide the user through the material. After examples of the various question types have been given, there are helpful testing hints which give an idea of the kinds of other questions commonly asked; e.g., questions which focus on the second speaker or on the activity which logically follows the conversation, etc.

While the organization is nice here, there were places where I found myself at odds with the material. One dialogue which is meant to act an as example of 'paying attention to context' didn't make much sense to me: when one speaker notes, "You've lost weight!" the answer is: "I'm afraid I've too much to do." Huh? In the example of 'similar-sound' questions, I felt that both A (the correct answer) and B (an incorrect answer) were logical choices: woman: "Why don't you join me for a leisurely walk in the park?" man: "What a pleasant way to end the day!" question: "What does the man mean?" A: He will go with her. B. He wants to end the day leisurely. For me, B implies that it is pleasant to end the day leisurely. The last glitch was a typo; under 'inflection,' the written text has: "Who me? Noway! [sic]" And a minor annoyance: when you click an answer, you can't get rid of the response box except by moving on.

DESCRIPTION: Part B: Longer Conversations
Unlike Part A, there are no helpful hints regarding strategies for this section. I found the question itself a bit opaque: "After you hear a question, read the four choices given and choose the one that is closest in meaning to the question you heard." This sounds like one is supposed to paraphrase the question! The example about photography is rather stilted. The speaker begins, "Have you ever thought about how boring life would be without photographs?" then gets a description of different kinds of cameras. For me, this doesn't follow logically from his opening line. Furthermore, the line that archaeologists use "photos from a certain time" is rather strange; photography is only c.150 years old, and most archaeology is concerned with history or pre-history before that time.

DESCRIPTION: Part C: Talks or Lectures
Nicely designed. Although it is not especially relevant to the goal of preparing for the TOEFL, I found the example talk somewhat flawed as an anthropological lecture, and there were some minor errors in the text, e.g. "affluent" pronounced with the stress on the second syllable; "the fresh caught [sic] fish was [sic] smoked"; "they caught salmon and eel with harpoons, nets, and wires [?].." Frankly, I'm not sure whether 'fresh caught' is acceptable; I'd prefer 'freshly-caught' fish, myself.

PRACTICE: Parts A-C
Once one has gone through the description, it is easy to use the practice section which is organized in a similar manner. Selecting the correct answer prompts a dialogue box which explains why the answer is correct, which is an important feature for helping students learn how to answer the answers and prepare for the TOEFL. Unfortunately, the explanation for correct/incorrect all comes with the correct answer; I find the explanations to be too short and abstract (with a lot of "not stated/implied in the conversation" or "contradicts the statement" without explaining how) to be as useful as they could be if more detailed explanations appeared with each incorrect one. Nonetheless, they are helpful, albeit unevenly so. By and large, the three practice sections are well constructed and test a variety of question types, although there are a few places where I found problems with the content. For example, in Part A question 1 (and elsewhere), the correct answer dialogue box doesn't really explain why the answer is correct, it simply repeats the question and the answer that was already chosen: "The best response to the question 'What does the woman imply?' is (A) 'She'll give the man a ride.' Therefore, you should choose answer A." [I did! So why is it correct?] In a number of other questions, I found the dialogues or the answers to the dialogues were sometimes vague or confusing. For example, in Part A question 11, the speakers are talking about "a bill from school in the mail." The correct answer is: (B) "tuition payment" but not (C) "a bill in the mail." But one can't be sure that it's a bill for the tuition (it could be a library fine...), and one can equally argue that they are, in fact, talking about a bill in the mail.

2. STRUCTURE

DESCRIPTION The description of the test and the kinds of things tested is well done, especially when coupled with the massive amount of material given under 'Practice' and with the helpful testing hints. But what does this mean: "Be aware of the types of errors that frequently appear... For a complete explanation of grammar points and types of errors appearing in this part of the test, go to Structure on the main menu." I did this, thinking perhaps I'd missed something, and found myself back where I had begun. Something seems to be missing here. Perhaps the intention was to direct users to the 'Practice' section.

PRACTICE In the practice section, there is an impressive list of grammatical topics that one can choose from: 26 in total. With each topic, there is also a tutorial button which gives a nice overview of the specific grammar points involved and a description of the kinds of errors which commonly occur in the test. A lot of work went into putting this section together, and it provides a concise overview of the major grammatical points of English. Under each topic, one can practice the two kinds of questions: fill in the blank, and find the error.

Unfortunately, only correct answers are explained; incorrect choices are not. Since one selects a particular grammatical point to work on, it is relatively easy to figure out the answers (viz. they're the ones which deal with the topic chosen). However, both the 'Grammar Review' topic and the 'Tests' themselves mix topics, so students have the opportunity to work with relatively guided exercises in the practice section or to practice more randomly-selected questions elsewhere. In the case of 'missing elements' (e.g. missing subject, missing auxiliary, etc), I found it problematic to judge where one should click since the word one clicks on is itself correct. This complaint would equally apply to the TOEFL itself, however.

Again, there were a few places where I disagreed with the correct answer or with the explanations given, as well as a few places where editing glitches were present (e.g. on page 2 under 'Subject-Verb Agreement,' the explanation box repeats itself). For example, under 'verbs,' one looks for the error in: "United States agriculture should have been starting...." The explanation for the correct answer reads: "After the modal verb 'should' the simple present tense of a verb is used." This could be misleading, since it is the base form which may be used, although perfect tenses, progressive tenses, and perfect progressive tenses are all possible after modals; e.g., should have gone, should be going, should have been studying. Similarly, on page 4 under 'Articles,' the explanation why it is 'the' islands of Bahama reads: "The definite article 'the' is used before the name of an island." As in 'the Hawai'i'? In this particular case, we do not have the phrase 'the Bahama Islands' where 'the' is used because it is a plural name; in fact, we need 'the' because the noun 'islands' is specified by the prepositional phrase 'of Bahama.' Besides, this phrase 'islands of Bahama' sounds odd to me in the first place. To balance this complaint, however, the use of articles is very nicely summarized in the tutorial, which makes me wonder if these two sections were written by different authors. I won't list the other disagreements I had here, since these are relatively few relative to the bulk of the material which is strongly-constructed. Besides, having written TOEFL questions myself, I am more than familiar with the difficulties of constructing such exercises and the pitfalls that await the unwary within.

3. READING

DESCRIPTION The description is an extensive practice of reading in itself. The listing of the ways in which particular questions are phrased is an excellent addition; e.g., Main Idea Questions: What is the main purpose of the passage? What does the passage mainly discuss? With what topic is the passage mainly concerned? Which of the following does the passage mainly discuss?. Similarly, the discussion of types of questions (main idea, specific detail, inference, etc.) are useful, especially with the accompanying sample text and sample questions. It is nice how each question is analyzed as to type and as to why the answer is correct. There are also good notes on vocabulary and how to study it, followed by a respectable listing of prefixes to help students guess meaning, although I have a couple of quibbles with pg. 19 "anti- 'before, opposite'" which I would prefer to see separated as 'ante-' and 'anti-' meaning 'before' and 'opposite, against' respectively. I agree that, in 'anticipate' the prefix 'anti-' means 'before,' but this is exceptional rather than the more general distribution of these two morphemes. Similarly, I would add 'dis-' to the listing of 'di- dif-' and would fill out the list with a few missing items, e.g. poly-, peri-, super-, hypo-, intro-, mal-, etc.

PRACTICE The reading practice has a good layout, with the text accessible at the top of the screen and questions below so one can refer back to the reading while answering the questions. As elsewhere, there are places I am uncomfortable with the content. To cite an example, on pg. 39 one finds the question: "What can be inferred about high-speed scanners?" The text reads: "Laser beam programmable controls include information storage and retrieval, laser surgery, holography, high-speed scanners, and laser printing." The answer is: "They can identify library cards." I don't believe this answer can be inferred from the text. This is only answerable by knowing what a high-speed scanner is, and TOEFL reading questions are not meant to test one's knowledge of the subject matter. On pg. 47, one finds the question: "The word 'diversified' in line 15 ["The uses of the silk are diversified..."] is closest in meaning to?" The answer is (C) 'multi-faceted.' While the answer works for me, I can't see how a student can guess meaning from context here; more importantly, however, I question whether this usage of 'diversified' is correct. Shouldn't it simply be 'diverse'? Nonetheless, the problems I encountered are few, and I'm sure any educated reader would find fault in a variety of places for a variety of reasons with any text writing, and further, that we would likely disagree on these faults!

TWE

Although there is no opportunity for students using a cd rom to write a test and have it scored, Mentor provides a nice explanation of how to write an essay, focusing on opinion/persuasive writing. This includes a good description of how to prepare, what to pay attention to, how to outline, etc. with lots of modelling and sample writing. This section also describes how the scoring works using examples of writing at each score level, and practice topics are provided at the end of the section. I did find one punctuation error, however, on page 25: Sample Students [sic] Essay. Picky picky.

PRACTICE TESTS

Each component (listening, structure, and reading) has two tests. These are nicely laid out, with a timer showing the amount of time left. In the listening test, students have the chance to read the questions before clicking 'hear dialog,' which gives them the opportunity to listen for a purpose and to predict what the conversation might be like before the timer begins counting down from 12 seconds. When done, one can also review one's wrong answers. The dialogue comes up in written form with the answers to the question, highlighting the correct answer and showing what your answer was. There is also an 'explain' button which explains why the answer is right. The tests are good, although the longer conversations and talks must be very hard for a non-native speaker; they involve having to remember a lot of detail, especially numbers, dates, etc. The structure and reading tests are equally well-composed and provide similar feed-back when done. The student can also click on the button 'score sheet' which displays the scores for each of the six tests and provides cumulative totals for test 1 and test 2. Furthermore, these scores are converted into the TOEFL scoring system, and they can be saved to file or printed out.

Conclusion

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.