Thanks Torsten, Amy!
I’ve just plugged in my $0.5 coin into the smilies thread
About my iBT - i was slightly confused in the beginning with the first reading passage (a long one) with only 20 minutes available, and I made a major mistake that started reading the entire text without reading the questions first. Actually, the questions there are designed in such a way, that you can read the passage and answer them simultaneously. I believe there will be two or three errors in this part
The next two passages were combined with 40 minutes available, and, I hope, they answers are correct - I have even got some spare minutes in the end to review some…
Listening section was also something awful - roughly the half of the recordings was pretty easy, while some questions in the others asked about the details that i simply didn’t pay attention while listening thus, the answers appeared to be ambiguous… note taking didn’t help in this case, because I remembered well what i have jotted down while had certain difficulties to recall anything else so, the listening for “basic idea” and “main details” does not always help…
In the speaking section i really don’t remember what i have said, and what it was about, however I remember that on the 4th or 5th question, where I had to listen to a conversation and talk about:
- problem being discussed
- two possible solutions
- choose a solution I prefer
I spend the whole time discussing the problem and the first (bad) solution, while I had only 4 seconds left to identify the second solution and indicate that i prefer it… so tried to plug in some information in these 4 seconds, but am not sure it was effective so the only hope, is that the rater will understand that if I was able to speak so much about the problem and one of the solutions - I am also capable of speaking about the solution I prefer… or he will not…
Finally, the writing section was OK - I have written both essays twice as long as it is needed for “effective reply”, for I have read in GRE prearation book, that statistically, the longer the essay - the better
however, in the independent task I have initially chosen the certain position on the issue (the students must choose the subjects based on their interests, rather than their further career opportunities), while in the concluding paragraph i wrote something like: “i’d like to emphasize, that both options are to be considered thoroughly in order to come up with an effective decision”. However, throughout the essay I have prooved my initial position and combined it smoothly with the final sentence the the conclusion is logical… but if one only reads the introduction paragraph and the conclusions - he will notice the flaw
To sum up, I expect the following minimums:
- reading: 85%
- listening: 60%
- speaking: 60%
- writing: 90%
this will probably result in the score of minimum 90 out of 120… so, bye-bye MIT…