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- "澳城大國際旅遊與管理學院研究生余燕伶（右二）與學院師生合照"
My name is Yu Y.L, and I am delighted to be a student of the FITM. The internationalized learning environment at CityU has broadened my horizon, and has endowed me with a pleasant and heuristic learning experience.
I got the chance to learn and to participate in the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC). The TOEIC is an examination appropriate for those who intend to work in international environments. Recently, more world-acclaimed enterprises in Hong Kong and Macau have taken TOEIC performance as an index for applicants’ screening, so that a good TOEIC score undoubtedly enhances one’s professional career competitiveness. My school, City university of Macau, is the TOEIC Test Center of Macau, and the FITM, under the leadership of Vice Rector Aliana Leong, makes great effort in encouraging the students to learn English. The process of the TOEIC, the professional foreign teachers and free pre-training courses provided by FITM benefited our English proficiency greatly.
As a student taking courses under Chinese instruction, I decided to make some breakthrough in English learning by attending the training course at CityU in January this year. During the four weeks of training, my tutor provided me not only patient and professional academic instructions and experiential answering techniques, but also constant encouragement and inspiration. He kept telling me that, “With determination will come success.” Thanks to the professional training which gave me confidence, I attended the TOEIC held by CityU this February and made a full mark of 990! I was so surprised and at the same time, proud of this achievement. After the test results were announced, I was asked by many about my breakthrough in English and my excellent TOEIC score. Here is some of my experience that I would like to share with everyone:
The first and most important thing I would like to share with my fellow students is “determination.” There is no short cut in language learning. I suggest listening to English news everyday, whether you could fully understand everything or not, for this would make you familiar with the language sense, pronunciation and rhythm of English. Daily reading of English essays is also necessary, even reading a short paragraph before bed would be helpful for acquainting yourself with English writing structures. I also suggest that one should use English in all possible occasions like e-mail, texting and phone calls and apply daily learned vocabulary.
Besides the daily effort, some answering techniques are also necessary in getting a good mark in TOEIC:
1. Try to be familiar with question types by practicing. TOEIC mainly examines English use and comprehension in working environments so that reviewing previous TOEIC questions would be very beneficial. You may alternate between listening and reading in reviewing. Make sure you finish a set of listening and reading practice tests every day, strictly following the set time for listening and reading. Otherwise, you would find the questions difficult and the time insufficient during the real test.
2. Learn to summarize and to find regularities. Be clever in summarizing new words in the process of reviewing. Words you meet frequently are exactly high frequency words in the TOEIC which you must memorize and comprehend. In the process of listening practice, correct options in the first part of the questions are rather obvious to find, most of the wrong options hardly have any relation to the pictures. The second part is rather difficult, you must catch the interrogatives and tenses of questions for they are the keys to correct answers.
3. Take advantage of productive use of time and keep questions in your mind while listening. At the beginning phase of listening, there is a long period of time for the introduction. You may want to skip the “directions” if you are familiar enough with the question types and save your time for the question. The first thing you should do is read the questions of the listening part but not the options. While reading, you may think, “Is this question related to details or generosities?” “What is the most possible scene for the question to occur?” For example, once you see “ticket,” you may deduce that scene being at a cinema, a theater, an airport or a train station. As for the reading part, you better read the questions first and then search the answers in the essay according to the questions. This is better than reading before question scanning because you would still have to read the essay and search the answers later.
I hope my experience would be helpful for you. There are many ways to success. Mastering English is a very long way but we may strive to succeed together. “With determination will come success！”
