Pegah is a Physical Therapist and she needed to have a high TOEFL score to be qualified to work in America. For her, like for many others, it was a long struggle with the TOEFL speaking section.
A year ago, she bought Jaime Miller’s Advanced Speaking Guide and… asked for a refund the same day. The reason was that she thought that the information in the program didn’t have enough value for her. This year, she gave this program another try, took some occasional lessons in addition to self-studying and received feedback from a tutor who used Jaime Miller’s framework.
No magic here. Her hard work and specific, targeted feedback paid off. She wrote up a whole story about the day she received her results with a speaking score of 27!
Please read her unedited story below:
“Hello Ms. Jaime!
I hope you are doing great. I took the test and received my result. But before I tell you what I got let me I start telling you a short story from yesterday.
It was Monday, I knew I will be getting my score either on Monday or Tuesday and I also promised myself to not check my score while I am at work. (I work as a PT aide at a physical therapy clinic).. I didn’t want to show my frustration to the patients and my coworkers… So, I was almost feeling my heart in my throat since I woke up yesterday and thought what is going to happen if I fail and not get 26 again!! Finally.. It was 6pm, I was at work… Was waiting to get off at 7…. My phone was in my scrub’s pocket. I heard I have an email…. Something was telling me this email is from ETS… I opened the email and saw YES!!! my score is now available on the website… I felt like I can’t stand on my feet anymore. They were numb and I couldn’t hear anything else except whatever my brain was telling me. Everywhere just became silent.. I told to myself “ok Pegah, go ahead and check the score, you failed this again. Just go to check with what score you failed 23?24??”
I went straight and sat in front of the computer at work. My fingers were shaking, I kept thinking about how to control myself to not cry until 7! How am I able to help another patient with the feeling of failure?!! I opened my account. Clicked on view my score, and then the last click was choosing my test date! Jaime, do you know what I saw?!?!? YES 27!!!!!!!!!! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT????? 27 !!!!
Isn’t it so exciting? Jaime, I screamed so loud ” I PASSED” Jaime I jumped up and down in front of all patients and all my coworkers! They all hugged me and congratulated me. AND NOW I am done with Toefl I AM DONE! I can start a new life. Start studying for the physical therapy board exam and become a PT soon!!!!
Jaime thank you so much for everything. Thank you for the great advice you gave me in our private lesson, your Advanced Speaking Guide and, at the end, getting clear feedback from a tutor who listened to my recordings! I only had 2 days to work on the weaknesses that I found out about in the feedback. I applied all those while I was practicing.
I only wrote this email to say thanks a lot to you and your awesome team dear Jaime. I wish you all the best.”
After that message, Pegah also emailed us with some pieces of advice for other students. Here’s how she practiced with the Key 6 of the Advanced Speaking Guide:
“Before I started practicing first, I spent 1 hour listening all your sample responses everyday, just to try to imitate your speaking tune in my speech. I practiced only Task 3 almost with 20-25 differently questions in one day. The next day only Task 4, and so on. But 2 days before test regular practicing like Task 1, Task 2, Task 3, and Task 4.
Two hours before test I warmed up my tongue and my brain by speaking about different Task 1 responses. I used lots of emotions in my responses in the test, I even had a small sarcastic laugh in one of them :)) I hope all your other students get their desirable score Jaime.”
Success in Numbers: Pegah got feedback (which is part of the Understand How to Fix Fossilized Errors program) and self-studied for around 370-400 hours over 10 weeks.