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Tommasa Gaetz
Any good test preparation teacher should know the test they help students prepare for, and that means actually taking the test occasionally. So on November 22nd, I did just that. I took the TOEFL in order to share my experience and thoughts with students.
The third strategy of going to the questions immediately is something I did not used to believe was a good strategy. Over time, though I have seen it be successful, and my test last week was a good example of this. Going to the questions first was four minutes faster than reading the whole passage first.
This was also a good reminder of how much information each listening passage presents. Conversations change topics completely within only 2 or 3 minutes. Lectures explain ideas that could take a half hour or more in just 5 minutes. You have to really be listening carefully to hear everything that is said. Be ready and pay close attention!
Something very interesting happened before the break: a few people finished their listening sections and started their breaks five or ten minutes before me. (I used all of my available time, analyzing how the questions were written so I can create similar questions for students.) These people probably hurried through both the listening and reading sections, spending even less time than they are given. So when they came back to do the speaking section, they were the only ones speaking. Listening to them talk, I could hear that they were uncomfortable. Many other people were still working on the listening section, but those who started the speaking section had to talk out loud in a small, crowded, mostly silent room.
But the opposite problem happened to the people who finished their reading and listening sections later; they were speaking while most other test-takers were trying to write essays. But at least those people had the opportunity to write their essays in silence. The people who finished early had to write while other people were speaking, which is, again, hard to do.
The writing section was even more interesting. On both essays, I did the same thing that I had done in the speaking task; I answered the questions badly, but I made it clear that I was a native speaker by using many idioms and difficult vocabulary, referencing a lot of American culture, and generally writing the way an unskilled American teenager might.
Hey lucas, ur blog was very nice. just want to ask u a few thing, i performed horrible in 2nd and 3rd speaking question but i think rest went good. i think i got a little overwhelmed by the fact that, i messedup my listening section coz i was not prepared to handle a situation, where the last listening question, being the toughest, the person adjacent to me was trying to give his speaking answer in loudest possible voice. i missed listening to most of the crucial part in it as i got totrally distracted. i think i got so nervous after it and it was reflected in speaking section. Now my question to you is: does answering couple of questions horribly give me very low score even if rest were good.??
I am so disappointed today coz this is my second time giving toefl and i had score excellent in all three sections except speakign in which i score 22. required score for me is 26.and now i dont think i will score htat good in llistening as well.i hope to get more htna 19 though.
Hi Lucas
Thank you so much for your valuable information.
I have a question about speaking task.
Does the question remain on screen while I am responding on microphone or disappear?
Best Wishes,
Maryam
As I understand from your post, it is preferable to sound natural and confident during speaking rather than following fixed format that everyone uses. Here is my question about task 1 and 2 : should I explain only one reason but develop it in details and elaborate it with some sorts of descriptions and context? (I recorded myself in order to speaking preparation and It does not sound natural when I try to provide 2 distinct reasons in 45 sec!! )
Notes can really be tricky! I recommend getting all of the details on paper than you can without sacrificing understanding, but for some people that means taking very, very few notes. It was great to hear your experience and thoughts on that. Thank you for sharing that.
Another problem for me is in the reading section. I always get some quetsions wrong, especially the last question where we are asked to pick the three major points. If i got some right and some wrong, so i get partial points or doe sit all count as incorrect? And am i allowed to refer back to the reading passage when answering this same question? I am taking the test tomorrow and i am a bit nervous! Do you have any advice on how to be positive and confident? Thank you so much Lucas!!
I read your blog posts about the listening and reading practice questions and I was hoping if you could lead me to similar blogs or websites or even books for practicing the speaking questions. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I would like to thank you for the information provided about TOEFL exam. I was so scared when I was preparing for it. I only had 6 days. I do not study the day before the test so they were 5 days. I am also pregnant, 7 months, so studying was overwhelming.However, the amount of information that I received through this blog and other blogs in Magoosh helped me alot; both in preparing and kowing what will I face in the test.
I felt that I did very bad in the reading section and was so disappointed at myself. But I decided that I am here to have fun. Otherwise, I will be even more exhausted than the other regular days in my pregnancy.
I relaxed and enjoyed the prompts to the degree that I was laughing at one of them. and did the same with the other parts especially the writing section.
I was shocked to see that my lowest score was in writing. But my advice to the new test takers is to focus on the content and the ideas presented in the text and prompt and relate them to each other in you essay. It seems that I forgot to relate the ideas in both parts for which I ended up with this score.
Hi Maisaa! I am also 7 months pregnant, have a husband, 8 years old son, a dog and a house to take care of! Also, I am working full time while studying for the toefl test. I can not express in words how grateful I am for your post. It gave me a lot of confidence and happy feelings! Thank you so much!!!! I do have a question for you. Did you take extra breaks to go to the bathroom? Were you able to have water with you?
Hi Lucas. I gave my TOEFL today. I got 4 reading passages. Very lengthy but overall it was good. My main worry is about listening and speaking. In the listening section I left 4 questions as time I ran out of time, because the student behind me was speaking loudly and I got distracted and lost concentration. Does this effect my listening score? Coming to speaking I attempted Q3,Q4,Q5,Q6 nicely but the first too independent speaking question were not that good. My personal evaluation was: Reading: good, speaking: OK, writing: Excellent, listening: Bad
I also took the test on Dec 12th and my scores are R 24, L 28, S 24 W 24. Unfortunately, I have to retake the test because I need to get at least 26 in the Speaking section. Do you have any advise for me?
Hi Mr Lucas,
Thank you for your collaboration.
I sat for the Toefl Ibt and I got 5/30 in the listening part. I am so sad about that and I want to know if it will be possible to get more details about that. What shall I do? Could I ask for a recorrection?
For the other parts, I got good marks.
If you think carefully about what happened on test day, I think you will identify a weakness that you can strengthen. Then, with practice, you will be able to score much higher in a retake. ? I hope that helps at least a bit.
The TOEFL essay is not graded by how correct your facts are or what your opinions are. Whether Bush was a good leader or not is an opinion. The test grader will not deduct points (or give points) based on an opinion. Your language skills are most important. If you explained the example well, transitioned to it neatly, and connected it clearly to your thesis, then the example will help you. ?
As for spelling, it counts a little but not much. You can get a perfect score with some spelling errors. ? Just try to avoid making mistakes as best you can. If there are so many errors that your writing becomes hard to read, then it will certainly affect your grade, but 3 or 4 typos are not a big deal.
If you have time to practice listening to British/non-American accents in the next several days, I say go for it. But if there are other general skills you feel you still need to improve, you may be better off practicing those general skills; understanding non-American English does not seem to be a major focus on the TOEFL at this time.
Sorry to hear that you had to speak under distracting, frustrating circumstances, Shekhar. If I understand correctly, you had 4-10 seconds of silence at the beginning of your recorded answers, before you began actually speaking.
This may or may not hurt your score. If your actual answer is good once you start speaking, some scorers may not consider the delay to be a serious problem. But then, there are other scorers who might reduce your score a little, perhaps for sounding slightly unnatural.
First of all, thank you for a GREAT TOEFL prep course. It was smack on the point for me and the practice questions were very similar to the ones on the TOEFL itself (except maybe for the reading which was somewhat more difficult on the test itself).
I am a native English speaker and have a postgraduate degree. All of my tuition was done in English; however, I am obliged to write the TOEFL iBT in order to apply for overseas postgraduate study as my home country has 11 official languages.
I have been practicing (my test is in ten days) but my natural inclination is to write essays in the third person using an academic tone given my background training. Do you think I will be penalised for doing so?
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