<p>Hi,
I am going to attend UCSC from fall 2014. I got 87 marks in toefl ibt but I feel my English is not as good as I will need in UC. Currently I am in my home town where few people speak English that because I didn't get so many chances to practice it. Do u have any idea by which I can improve my speaking abilities. My native language is very different from English that because I need so much practice. </p>
<p>If there are any American visitors in your hometown, you could try to arrange a language exchange (in a public place) where you help the American practice your language for 30 minutes and the American speaks with you for 30 minutes in English. Language exchanges are mutually rewarding and free. If not, you can do skype tutoring but it might be costly. You could also do a language exchange via skype if you could find an American who was interested. If these aren’t options, reading anything in English (books, news), writing English in a journal, listening (on the computer to news, songs, podcasts, tv, movies, esp those with transcripts or closed caption), and singing English songs are some other ideas. There are also many good english grammar sites on the web with grammar quizzes and listening comprehension quizzes.
Best wishes!</p>
<p>Look up Tim Ferriss, Benny Lewis, TPR Method and Pimsleur. I’m just starting with Duolingo on my phone. It’s a free app if you have a smartphone. I can’t speak to how good it is yet. But yay for you-you are already doing pretty well with writing. Go on the many UCSC Facebook pages and find someone who also knows your native language. When you submit your Statement of Intent to Register for UCSC they will give you permission to join a closed Facebook group so you can ask around there. Good luck @coolboy - you will improve quickly when you get here. I took all my sophomore year college classes (all general education classes) in the spanish language and even though I wasn’t yet fluent when I started, you pick it up quickly when thrown in the deep end of the pool!</p>
<p>Thanks milkweed and MIMI2012, both of yours suggestions are so good. But milkweed, first two options are not possible for me, but other ideas are easy and I’ll follow them. And MIMI2012, thank you too much, because your ideas are also awesome@@@ thanks@@@</p>