Hello! This is Jooyoung Kim, an audio engineer and music producer.
It’s been a long time since I wrote my last article. During this time, I concentrated on studying English to get a good score to apply for Ph.D. degree programs in the Audio Engineering field. I knew that my English skills were not good at all, so I began to study in earnest in May 2025.
Last year, I tried my best and took four tests, but they were not good enough to qualify me. Because the test format changed after January 2026, I had a hard time adapting to these types of questions.
The upper photo shows my first trial score. It was really horrible. I got a huge shock, so I studied intensively after receiving it. The second trial is shown below.
As you can see, every score drastically rose, except for the speaking part. There were two more trials last year; however, they were not as good as the second test I took. Although, my speaking score was in the 13β15 score range during the 4th test.
I truly felt that speaking using templates, which many people do, did not fit me. Thus, I decided to attend a private academy taught by native English-speaking teachers to improve my speaking skills. Although it was operated by a church (the Seventh-day Adventist Church) and I am not a Christian, it wasn’t a TOEFL prep academy, and it was reasonably priced.
I went there every Monday to Thursday at 7 AM, and it really did help me overcome my fear of speaking in English. However, I felt extremely nervous during the first and second tests this year, so I got disappointing scores when I took those two tests.
But eventually I hit every threshold (audio engineer joke… :))! However, I’m so bummed that those seven tests (four tests last year and three tests this year) cost about 2,100,000 KRW (around $1,300β$1,400)βan amount that could buy me pretty good used audio hardware in Korea.
Not all of these books are related to TOEFL, but most of them are. I was just throwing them away π
For Koreans who are struggling with the TOEFL test, I really recommend memorizing vocabulary and practicing grammar with an app named ‘Malhaboca’ (or ‘Sayvoca’), which significantly helped me improve my English skills.
Because of concentrating on the test, I couldn’t take care of this blog, publish my own compositions, or continue my own audio hardware DIY project. I am also planning to post some plugin reviews, which is one of the things I haven’t been able to do. I believe that I can keep going with those things starting today!
That’s all for today. Stay tuned for my next post!
