有没有想过在TOEFL的故乡考TOEFL是什么光景？机缘巧合，一位朋友恰有如下的经历，愿和各位分享。颇为出乎意料噢。欢迎大家看后提出自己的感想。没有事先翻成中文真是抱歉。Let's go.

The whole procedure took four awful hours and I feel I am mistreated by ETS.

I am very lucky that an America friend of mine is going to down town that noon, so she takes me to the place. Or it will take a lot of trouble to get there by public transportation.

when I arrive the place, I am told to wait in the basement. I find there are over two hundred people waiting there, some are still reading the toefl books. We wait until 12:30 that a woman comes in and tell us to go to the classrooms on 6th floor according to our ticket numbers. Then all the people flood to the small door and then all wait in front of the elevators. I find my room easily and have my admission ticket checked by a supervisor. I am about the 10th to sit in the room. I am very surprised that there are NO desks, I should sit on the chair which has a board stretch from the arm for me to put the test paper. I have never be treated like that in China when taking a test. China is much poorer than America, but we at least have a desk so that we can sit comfortably to do the test.

Now I could relax a bit and what I should do next is only the test itself. I find it rediculous that some one is still doing the toefl exercises and some one is still listening the tape to practice his comprehension, shouldn't they save their energy for the test? But the check-in procedure is so slow(over 40 minutes) that I finally find it is such a good way to kill the time and avoid being nervous.

When all the test-takers are sitting in the room, the supervisor begins to play the tape recorder. The recorder is very small and can't stand, so the supervisor has to put it on a chair and let it lean against wall. Thus the sound is not good and some people ask if the supervisor could put the recorder on the desk. The supervisor said definitely: NO!

The test begins. The listening comprehension part is not very difficult. When the first part comes to question no.30, I think I can have a little rest and then do the second part. But it continuously reads no. 31, I go on to the next page and find there are 10 more questions. I suddenly realize that it is a long test. I am very angry that I was cheated. When I asked ETS, they stated very clearly to me that there is no long test or short test,there is exactly only one test form. I had to concentrate on my test. The second and the third section are also longer than usual. It takes 1 hour and 50 minutes to finish the normal test and it takes 2 hours and 40 minutes this time, plus the more than 40 minutes check-in procedure and over 30 minutes to fill the form, the whole test takes 4 hour to finish. That's why they began the test at 12:30 at noon which the form, the whole test takes 4 hour to finish. That's why they began the test at 12:30 at noon which will never happen in China. I feel very hungry when I begin doing the third section because I have no time to eat lunch and only have a small piece of cake. I didn't expect the test will last such a long time and the maybe nervousness also took much of my energy and made me felt even more hungry.

The articles of listening comprehension are not difficult, but the questions are not as easy as they were supposed to be. I finish my third section only 1 minutes ahead of time. I am very happy that I finally finish it all. My back aches after I have remained one uncomfortable posture for four hours.I am tired, hungry and thirsty. The supervisor takes back the test paper and says we can go and "enjoy you computer test next time!"

摘自中国教育热线