As a student who transferred from a regular middle school to an international school after junior high, English has always been my biggest weakness. My English grades in middle school weren't great—sometimes I didn't study well because I disagreed with the teaching method that required memorizing texts word-for-word, with not even a single punctuation mark allowed to be wrong. My English score on the high school entrance exam was mediocre (I can't remember the exact score). However, because my parents had me learn English with foreign teachers since I was young, my speaking ability was actually pretty good compared to other students from the regular education system.
After transferring to an international school, English really wore me down. We had a course called English Literature, taught by a bald foreign teacher who used English to teach literature. The course involved a lot of reading, and I couldn't understand anything at all. First, my vocabulary was extremely limited—I didn't even know the word "shadow," which made it impossible for me to understand what he was teaching. Second, because the teacher was American, he spoke quite fast, so even when I knew the words, I couldn't grasp the meaning at that speed. What made it worse was that there was already a student in our class who could score 110 on the TOEFL (that person is a real academic genius, and now has a 119). As the only student who came purely from the regular education system, both my family and I were very anxious, so we went looking for TOEFL tutoring institutions.
After being assessed by those tutoring institutions, they all thought my level wasn't up to TOEFL standards yet and suggested I study for the TOEFL Junior instead. I wasn't very willing, feeling that studying for TOEFL Junior would be a waste of time. However, one institution said they happened to have another student in a similar situation, and if I was willing, we could form a class together to study TOEFL, with the teacher speaking slower to accommodate our abilities. So I joined.
After finishing one semester, my school's college counselor suggested I take the TOEFL once, mainly to familiarize myself with the test environment and process. So I followed the advice and took the test. That exam marked the beginning of my TOEFL nightmare. Guess how much I scored on reading? 3 points! When that number appeared on the screen, I couldn't believe my eyes. After the test, when my family and teachers asked about my scores on the first two sections, I pretended to be surprised and said, "Oh? You can know the scores right after the test?" to avoid the question. Back at school, I told my best friend at the time about it. He didn't believe anyone could score that low, so he immediately opened a practice test, guessed through it in one minute, and got 9 points. I was truly at a loss for words. From then on, for a long time, I had a strong resistance to the term "English reading" in my heart. However, as I mentioned before, my speaking was always okay—out of my total score of 47 on that first test, I got 21 on speaking!
After this blow, I continued studying TOEFL at the same institution. The teacher knew my reading was very weak, so they started focusing on improving my reading. After another semester, I took my second TOEFL test. This time I got 13 on reading—still terrible, but much better than 3. Most importantly, I got 24 on listening, 22 on speaking, and 21 on writing, with a total score of exactly 80! After this test, I regained hope for my TOEFL. I thought, if I could score 80 with such low reading, wouldn't 90 be easy once I improved my reading a bit? While this logic made sense in theory, it actually marked the beginning of another nightmare.
First, I received news that TOEFL was going to undergo major reforms. I thought, if I don't get a good score before the reform, wouldn't all my previous efforts be wasted? No way—I must get a good score before 2026. Plus, I still need to study for the SAT later, so I really need to get my TOEFL done early.
The next semester, I switched to another tutoring institution because most of my classmates were studying there. After arriving, the teacher discovered that my vocabulary was simply inadequate—I needed a long time just to memorize level 2 vocabulary. The other students in my class were already memorizing level 3 (actually, I personally think level 3 is much easier than level 2, because my previous institution had us memorize what was essentially level 3 vocabulary from this book). The teacher also thought I was a problem student, and there was an extremely annoying kid in the class who constantly mocked me for having such limited vocabulary and such low reading scores. But at that time, I still firmly believed that as long as I worked hard, I could change their opinions.
I really worked hard to memorize level 2 vocabulary, but I found it genuinely difficult. By the end of the semester, I had just finished one book. Then summer came. Because this summer was the transition period from our school's curriculum to AP courses, there was no homework. So the main goal of this summer was TOEFL. I signed up for an intensive training camp lasting 14 days, with the test right after completion. The admissions teacher told me this would be most effective. So I believed it. Because the institution was far from my home and there weren't any good TOEFL institutions nearby, I booked a hotel room next to the institution. During those 14 days of intensive training, I worked really hard, exceeding the daily tasks every day, but my practice test scores were extremely unstable. The training ended, and it was time for the test. The night before, I tossed and turned, unable to sleep, afraid I would do poorly the next day. On the day of the test, I was trembling. But when the scores for the first two sections came out, my worst fear came true: I got 14 and 22, even lower than before. I was devastated and even began to suspect I had a reading disorder. Soon, the full results came in: 79, one point lower than last time. When I learned this result, I was completely broken: after all that effort and time, I got a score lower than before. At that moment, I felt my future was completely dark.
After that, I fully realized how poor my reading was. My sister-in-law recommended a teacher from Beijing she had worked with before for one-on-one tutoring. The teacher was good, but the price of 800 yuan per hour was really hard to swallow. I studied reading one-on-one with him and took the test twice during that period. The first time, I felt my reading was terrible and didn't listen well during listening. I only got 78. But this was the only time I ever scored above 25 on speaking. The second time, I did everything carefully, but still only got 82.
School started, and I entered with frustration. Because all the courses this year were AP courses, all taught in English, and subjects like physics were quite difficult, not to mention humanities like world history, I felt overwhelmed by all the long English passages. Perhaps it was my own psychological suggestion that I was bad at reading and couldn't learn well, but my initial grades were a mess. My college counselor called me in for a talk, and I poured out all my frustrations. After listening, she comforted me, saying to forget the past, treat it as if I had learned nothing, and just maintain a calm mindset. Moreover, TOEFL scores don't determine your college admission results, so there's no need to be too anxious. I don't need to keep studying TOEFL now—just focus on learning AP courses well, and my TOEFL will improve. After hearing this, I began to study AP courses with a calmer mindset. AP learning was really painful, especially Lang and World History. Each practice session took a lot of time, and the error rate was still very high.
December arrived, and I planned to take one last test before the reform in February. Actually, I didn't have much hope for this test, so my mindset was quite relaxed. I hadn't even completed a full practice test from the start of school until the exam. I just did a few speaking tasks and a few reading passages before the test. But during this exam, I felt unusually smooth. When doing reading, I actually had a lot of time left. Listening also felt fine, though I didn't finish recording task 4 in speaking. After the test, the first two sections were 24 and 24. I felt I should be able to break 90 this time. Although speaking wasn't great, my speaking had never dropped below 21. Sure enough, the final score was 94. While this score still ranked last in our class, it's actually not low for applying to American universities, and it's sufficient for applying to summer programs at this stage. I know I'll definitely need to take it again after the TOEFL reform, but for now, my focus will be on AP and SAT.