1917 Film Review I have written two reviews of the film, one in an objective formal writing, the other is informal I will appreciate corrections ! 1917 Film Review (Neutral tone) : A war film that is based upon one of the stories of the World War I, when two of the British soldiers were commanded to complete a mission which was delivering a message to the leader of one of the British army divisions , consists of 1600 soldiers, to prevent them from moving further into the enemy’s territories or forming anymore attacks since the enemy had their attack pre-planned and they were willing to completely wipe out that British army division. The main actors’ performance is quite realistic, and the cinematography is astonishing. The war scenes describe the battles of WWI with the maximum detailing and realism. The film also points out the hierarchy of army orders at that time which was one of the largest difficulties to manage, since there was no real-time communication between divisions and army leaders, which made the army divisions working like isolated islands and made no real collaboration among them. 1917 Movie informal review : In my opinion, this is one of the best movies ever came to big screen telling us one of the stories of World War I. I have really enjoyed watching it from minute 1 to the latest minute. The story is all about 2 soldiers from British army who were ordered to deliver a message to an army division leader to stop the attack they were about to make on the German enemy, because Germans had planned it already as a trap for them and they would completely remove that British division, which consisted of 1600 soldiers, from the map. The performance of the actors were so awesome and the way of filming is totally fascinating. The war scenes from the movie were highly violent very real like it’s the war is really happening in the movie. One more point, the way of messaging through the army at that time was pretty hard job, like it had them sending 2 soldiers passing through enemies territories to deliver a message to a division to stop the attack, can you imagine how hard it was ?! I would give this movie 10/10 score

Why am I stucked at the intermediate area of English ? I need to move out of the intermediate English to the advanced. I just want to understand what is going on the movies when I watch them without having to get Arabic subs. What should be my next step ? Travel to English country ? or studying certain books ? Reading novels ? What exactly will make my English significantly improve ?

About the TOEFL test - my fresh experience Hello everyone ! I have just finished the TOEFL test and I would like to share my experience for Italki community and for those who are going to take the test. Actually, the test is not an easy job to do, it requires that you are totally familiar with the English language. It tests your ability to "easily" understand, not just to understand, the language. Also it tests if your mind can think in English or your mind is just converting your native language into English. What makes me say that is the type of questions and the time to answer each of them. Firstly, I will talk about the type of the questions. TOEFL test has 4 sections in which it tests your ability to read, listen, speak and write. For the reading section I had 3 reading passages each of them has 7 paragraphs. I had almost 56 questions in the reading section for the 3 passages and the time was approximately 1 hour and 20 mins. Each paragraph of a reading passage has may be 3-5 questions. The problem is that when you come to TOEFL reading section you will be surprised with scientific subjects which are not easy to understand. Your job is that you have to get the clue of the context and take notes on everything. Taking notes for me was distracting thing while all TOEFL preparation courses recommend that you take notes on everything in the test. Personally, If I can go back with time and test again, I wouldn't take any notes except for summarizing an idea not for details. Anyway, the time may seem sufficient for such jobs, but the truth is that it's not until your mind can really think in English. Questions are in a multiple choice phase and most of them are indirect and must be inferred. A huge vocabulary collection is a very important thing for getting prepared for this test. You may study science, arts and history related vocabulary in addition to the normal vocabulary collection for life situations. About the listening section, you will listen to lectures and conversations, both are spoken like they are really made in normal life. For preparing yourself for this section I recommend that you listen to TED Talks https://www.ted.com/talks/browse this will help you be familiar with such lectures and it will let you increase your vocabulary database saved in your mind as well. Also you have to watch movies and TV shows like Ellen, the daily show and Dr. Phill's show. When you can really listen for such shows without the need for subtitles you are qualified to take the test, To be continued.