Hello and thank you very much for visiting my site, which we would like to improve with your comments and input. If you would Bookmark our Home Page now I am sure we will have exactly what you need during your next visit as we keep expanding this resource site.
While pursuing a busy professional life as a humble consultant, I have been thinking of somehow reaching out and connecting with people around the world in English, young and old, and perhaps I can of some value to people while making new friends along the way. We have smart phones, Twitter and Facebook we did not use to have even ten years ago and why not!
A little bit more about the site owner. I am a Japanese male in the 40’s with two master’s degree from US universities (MA from University of Maryland College of Journalism and MBA from Darden School, University of Virginia). For record, upon Darden admission, I scored 670 for TOEFL and 680 for GMAT. I also took GRE before entering University of Maryland (perfect math, but reading and logic were hard as I still remembered).
Thus, I personally studied hard to prepare for these required standardized tests to achieve high scores and I understand how aspiring people from all over the world feel about pursuing undergraduate/graduate-level education at world-class universities, especially in the US as I went through myself.
With technological progress, we have new tools and resources to improve our language skills and you should be open to experimenting with these to find something you feel fit. I have also my own experience and opinions when it comes to learning English as a second language. I am not a professional English teacher but English has been a big part of my life and I have made it my motto to study something you are passionate about or interested in English to improve English and your passionate subject matter as opposed to studying just English itself, which is in my opinion boring and not highly motivating nor effective.
While I loved studying English from early on (In Japan, we all start learning English from the 7th grade though it is lowering the starting age from 2011 Academic Year starting April), I basically self-taught English with lots of effort until age 22 when I met some remarkable people and role models like Kelly Ito, who became the first native Japanese ever to be a professional radio newscaster in the US. I never traveled to an English-speaking country until age 20 when I crossed the US on Greyhound bus, NY to LA.
Since graduating from the University of Maryland, I can say I have been making a living with my English skills in some way or another. Of course, besides earning some money, without English skills, it would have been very difficult for me to learn new things, make new friends from other countries and cultures and simply enriching my own life.
You might ask, why the sitename? I was not sure whether I should include TOEFL, a registered trademark, in the sitename as it is too predictable. When I was looking for an available abandoned sitename by browsing a list, the site name reminded me of the early days in the US where people over there just loved American Football and a new season just started when I nervously started the first semester.
I am from Japan where Ruby Football is more popular and I was totally confused about all the moves, strategies and rules of American Football. While I enjoyed company with new friends, whenever they asked me to talk about American Football, I was frozen with my ability to speak in English and my lack of understanding about American Football.
If you are taking TOEFL and plan to study abroad, which should be a pretty good guess, you will experience the same uneasiness more or less. However, this will be an important part of your learning and adjusting to a new culture and you will be fine, becoming a stronger and also hopefully a better and broader-minded person. Studying to improve TOEFL score is generally time-consuming, painful and stressful for everyone, but you should see beyond that and just imagine what you are going to gain by that. Good luck for your TOEFL and beyond and thank you very much again for visiting! If you would, please sign up with a free newsletter. We treat your privacy tightly and never spam.
Ichiro “Vic” Shiraki