Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Very useful book September 12, 2008
Excellent book for preparing the famous TOEFL. So clear, many good excercises, very useful CD-ROM and after all, it so good to have the Cambridge support.
 Big book, no depth February 9, 2008
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
I am an ESL teacher and I teach courses in TOEFL preparation. In my opinion, most of the sections of this book do not accurately represent TOEFL test questions. The authors do not seem to have had an in-depth understanding of the writing and speaking scoring rubric, or an understanding of how the listening and reading questions are composed. I do not recommend this book to anyone planning to take the TOEFL test.
First, in the reading section, while their are many good examples of academic text, the actual questions and answer choices in the book are not composed the same way as the real TOEFL questions. Therefore, a student using these questions to practice is often practicing skills that are not tested on the real test, or is wasting time trying to answer questions that would never be asked on a TOEFL test. Worse, in many cases the answer choices do not contain a clear, correct answer, regardless of what the answer key claims. In some cases, the answer choices are too vague or, I believe, simply incorrect. Also, the authors have divided up the section into the different types of questions that can be asked, but with little rhyme or reason, as they have lumped questions into the inference section which are clearly not inference questions (and not considered inference questions by the test makers), and ignored some other types of questions.
The listening section is slightly better, but the book does not come with the listening CD's, so the student will not be able to use this section. Nevertheless, there are quite a few places in the listening where the questions do not accurately represent TOEFL questions, although to the inexperienced eye the format appears similar.
The speaking section is quite sparse and offers little useful advice to the student. There are no samples available on CD of how different score levels will sound.
I did not use the writing section at all, so cannot comment on the exercises there, but the explanation of the scoring rubric and the sample papers shown in the book do not reflect an understanding of how TOEFL papers are actually scored. You will find much better samples that give a much more accurate idea of what a high or low scoring essay looks like in the book published by ETS.
Finally, the book is loaded up with "supporting skills" exercises, which seems like a good idea, except that often the skills practiced will not be found on the actual test. Moreover, the questions and answer choices in the exercises are so carelessly done that there are many instances of answers which don't make sense, choices that are too similar and too vague, and questions which don't use the skill one is supposedly practicing.
And one more thing - the book is overly large and not at all user friendly. It's hard to find anything in it, and sometimes the exercises that go with certain materials are located at the end of the unit instead of directly after the material.
One of the few good things about this book is the ETS scoring rubrics and scoring instructions provided in the front of the book, which allow you to figure out your TOEFL score. Also, it is useful to have actual computerized practice tests that reflect the testing conditions and can give the student practice with the real test format.
Other than that, I really don't like this book and would never willingly use it again for a TOEFL class.
 I cannot recommend all of staffs. January 20, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
It is well-organized.
Beginning practice is excessively useful. Also, Listening, Speaking, and Writing practice are helpful.(If you wanna practice Listening, you have to buy extra audio CDs... but it surely is helpful. It contains different types of accent such as British, Australian.)
However, as for reading practice, I cannot recommend this 'cause it's totally different from real the iBT TOEFL test. I cannot accept this book's practice style.
In conclusion, people who want to improve;
1) Listening
2) Speaking
3) Writing(including Grammer practice)
this book helps you.
the perfect READING and LISTENING prep November 26, 2006
This book really helps you develop skills and specific ways
of studying and expressing yourself literally.It even helps in expanding your awareness. Really helpful,really nice.Really tidy step-by-step guide,
makes me feel secure I got the tools for success.Just one other thing--
the CD is good,listening practices are perfect and everything,but I got a virus from it,from the .exe file on my PC so I decided not to use the send-your-response-to-a-teacher feature .And there is no other way you can measure your speaking and writing skills before you go to TOEFL.
listening practices June 29, 2005
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is a pretty good book, I would say (although, I can't compare it with other ones). The book has 4 sections for each of the testsections. Each section has tiny steps and explains everything. After each step you take a small test to see if you understood everything. I got bored with all the explanations and examples, so I only did the tests and reviewed the sections, where I had problems.
It comes with a CD-Rom, which is very good, because you can practice either the computer test or the written Test. The only problem is the listening section is not on the CD-Rom. You have to buy it extra on CDs (which I couldn't find and actually don't want to spend extra money for). So if you have big troubles understanding spoken English, you'll have to get an extra training book. That is the big minus when buying this product. Everything else is great.
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