Research Projects
Tips for learning
Set your goals
What do you want to be in one year, five years, and 10 years from now? It is important to have a vision of what you want to be. Having goals such as “I want to use my English skill in my research”, “I want to study abroad”, “I want to have foreigner friends”, “I want to be able to find and do my dream job”, “I want to work in English speaking countries” is a good start. It is completely alright to have more than one goal. Let’s try and put down your dreams and future visions in words.
What would be the required scores to achieve the above goals? Let’s write down the TOEFL and TOEIC scores required (Short term achievement: 1 year later, medium term achievement: 3-4 years later, long term achievement: 10 years or so later).
| Studying abroad for graduate programs or enrolling in top-notch universities | TOEFL iBT 100 |
| Studying abroad for undergraduate program or to qualify for scholarships | TOEFL iBT 80 |
| The minimum requirement to study abroad for undergraduate program | TOEFL iBT 61 |
| Satisfactory for a non-native speaker | TOEIC 860 |
| The ability to communicate appropriately | TOEIC 730 |
| Possible to communicate within a restricted range | TOEIC 470 |
Important reminder to keep in mind while learning
Work on the task carefully
This material is designed to help learners to understand the context gradually as learners proceed with the given task and learners would eventually be able to have a deep understanding of the context which might be too fast and too difficult to understand at first. The important point here is to think and do the given task carefully by oneself. All the tasks in Step 1, 2 and 3 are designed carefully to have a strong and helpful connection, which means that if learners do Step 1 carefully, they would find Step 2 to be easier. If learners neglect the given tasks and skip through it, the next few steps would get increasingly difficult and they won’t be able to see any improvement in their English skills.
Read the hints carefully and use them effectively
In each of the task, 3 useful hints would be given. It is very important to not just read all the hints at once, but try and listen to the audio more carefully after reading each hint. The worst pattern would be “Read the task -> Read the example answer -> Listen to the audio once and pretend to understand” as you wouldn’t make any improvement in your English skills. As there are many useful tips to improve your listening skills in the given hints, let’s read the hints carefully and listen to the audio after reading each hint.
Listen to the audio again and again
In the 3 Step System, the number of times required to listen to the materials would be quite numerous, but as the goals set for each time listening is required are different, and as the tasks are designed to let learners think, learners won’t get bored of listening to the same materials again and again. Not only that, learners would also improve greatly if they follow the given instructions carefully, which means that your English skill would highly improve even if the learning time is shorter that other learning methods.
The “Words” and “Phrases” tabs in the bottom of the page are dictionary pages. In order to understand the context of the material as well as using it in other situations, words and phrases are two elements that are indispensable. Let’s try and memorize the meaning and pronunciation of each word carefully.。
You might encounter instructions and tasks that you have never seen before in this material. All of these instructions and tasks are needed to understand the difficult context step-by-step and to memorize them completely so that you would be able to use it effectively outside the classroom. So keep in mind to follow the given instructions in each task carefully as it would result in a 4-10 times higher learning effectiveness when compared to other learning methods.
