<p>Dear sid.is.best,</p>
<p>I teach English as a Second Language to adults, and I thought long and hard about how to word my comment, so I want to apologize for it sounding worse to you than I had meant it to.</p>
<p>A better way to express your thought would have been “I have recently taken the SAT exam. Now I don’t want to take the TOEFL…” Your use of “give” instead of “take” is a really interesting kind of mistake because “give” and “take” are words that are closely related to each other, but essentially opposite in meaning. Teachers “give” exams, and students “take” exams. Pulling “give” out of your brain as you were typing your first message here tells me that you understand the relationship between these two words. You just grabbed the wrong half of the memory file. In a weird sort of way, that is a better kind of mistake than just misspelling “gave” as “give”, or not putting “give” into the past tense.</p>
<p>It is not easy to develop the English language skills that you will need to have in order to do as well as you want to in college here in the USA. Once you get here, please don’t be afraid to enroll in an English class with a name like “reading and writing for college” if your advisors want you to. Classes like that can really make a difference. You should also check around your college or university to see if they have a “Writing Lab”. If they do, there will be tutors available in the writing lab who can help you with your papers. These labs aren’t just for international students. Lots of US students use them too.</p>
<p>Good luck with the college application process! I hope you find the right college soon.</p>