Speaking Task 1 :-
- Independent Task
- Only speaking
- Sample questions :-
- Choose a place in your home that you enjoy spending time in. Explain why you like it.
- The clock
- Read the question
- 15 seconds to prepare
- 45 seconds to speak
Lectures
- 4-6 minutes long
- One person talking
- Similar to texts in reading section
- Pictures :-
- Picture of the professor
- Important words on black board
- Some diagrams or illustrations
Conversation
- 2-4 minutes long
- One student, one university employee
- Picture :-
- Picture of 2 people at start
- No important information
- Helps to stay focused (helps you to imagine real people in real place)
Classroom Discussion
- Its not really a discussion, merely a lecture. We call it discussion because some student do ask some question or answer something
- 4-6 minutes long
- Mostly just the professor
- Questions and comments from 2-3 students
- Basically the same as lectures
- Picture
- Picture of professor/class
- Diagram or illustrations
Question Types
- Main Idea
- First question after each recording
- Main
- Topic (what)
- Purpose (why) (Especially for conversation)
- Remember the beginning of conversation
- No later details are important
- Later sections as a whole are important
- Question Format
- What is the main topic of the conversation?
- What trend in child development does the professor mainly discuss?
- What is the main purpose of the lecture?
- Why does the student go to speak with his advisor?
- Where is the main idea?
- Beginning and the rest
- The main idea is in first 10 seconds or first 20 seconds
- Especially in conversations as conversation purpose can change
- Normally it is in the beginning
- Don't ignore the rest
- Detail
- One fact or idea
- Understand the concepts and meaning
- Not usually about the numbers or years
- 2 facts or 3 facts if toefl ask multiple answer questions
- ~2 per recording
- In order to answer them correctly, Focus is everything
- Question Format
- According to the professor, what is "heat lightning"?
- What does the student say about his car?
- What point does the professor make about modern psychology?
- According to the secretary, who should the student contact?
- Use your notes to answer the Detail Question
- Understand, don't memorize
- Function
- Why something is said
- 0-2 per recording(~1 on average)
- Think about context - the big picture
- Question Format
- Why does the professor say this? (Listen again)
- What does the student mean when she say this?(Listen again)
- What does the student imply about her knowledge of European history when she say this? (Listen again) (seems like a inference but it is a function question)
- Why does the student describe her friend's appearance?
- Get in the speaker's head
- Imagine the scene
- No notes during replays
- Pay attention to asides(A->B->A)
- sudden speed change
- Question in the middle of sentence
- Signals like "by the way" or "incidentally"
- Focus on the context, not the words
- Attitude
- What are they thinking? (Similar to function questions)
- Function question don't ask about opinion but attitude question ask about opinion
- 0-1 per recording
- Both what is said and how it's said
- Question Format
- What is the professor's opinion of algae that is grown for fuel?
- What is the women's attitude towards the professor's suggestion for working with a classmate?
- What can be inferred about the man's opinion of his class schedule?
- What is the professor's attitude toward modernism?
- Using Tone of Voice
- helpful in function and attitude question
- Pay attention to
- certainty - "They are clearly quite different from coal, right?"
- hesitation and repetition
- "My friend Amy ..... Amy Mahon, who sits next to me .."
- questions
- "If there is no rhyming, then we can use any word we want, right? That sounds easy."
- stressed words
- "I don't know if me talking with these other students would really help all that much"
- Organization
- How is the lecture structured?
- 0-1 per recording
- Note : examples, stories, cause and effect, problems and solutions, comparison, etc.
- Question Format
- How is the lecture organized?
- Why does the professor describe the coastal weather patterns?(its like a function question of big topic)
- How does the professor introduce insect reproduction?
- Structural Keywords
- Compare/Contrast
- Meanwhile
- On the other hand
- Conversely
- In contrast
- Nevertheless
- Similarly
- Likewise
- Listing
- Secondly
- Besides
- Next
- Moving on
- Finally
- Cause and Effect
- As a result
- Consequently
- Because of that
- It's for that reason that
- Examples
- For example
- For instance
- Picture/ Imagine
- By the way of illustration
- Take _____/ Take the case of
- Summarizing
- Basically
- In short
- Essentially
- So that's how/what/...
- Inference
- Figure out the information that is not in the text
- ~1 per recording
- Only make a small logical jump
- Fill in the table
- Drag and Drop sentences into blank tables
- 0-1 per recording
- Ask you
- Match
- Categorize
- Ordering
- Mark yes/no
Pacing while reading
Keeping Track
- Check clock regularly
- At specific points (not every few seconds)
- After question 7
- After final question
- Answer every question
- Almost every question is equally important
- First 2-4 passages - try every question
- Final Passage : Fast questions first
- Vocabulary questions first
- Skip questions that take too long
Question Types
- Vocabulary in Context
- Choose the synonym for a word or phrase
- 2 - 5 per passage
- Mostly about vocabulary
- Can sometimes infer meaning by the context
- Detail
- Ask about one piece of information
- 2-4 per passage
- Find the fact
- often about one sentence or phrase
- Sometimes more than one answer
- Except
- Choose the information that is not in the context
- It often uses the word 'except' but sometimes it uses 'not'.
- 1-2 per passage
- Answer by process of elimination
- Should be done at last (especially for last passage)
- Inference
- Ask you to figure something out from the text
- Similar to detail question
- 1-2 per passage
- Purpose
- Why something is in the text
- 1-2 per passage
- How it relates to big picture
- word
- sentence
- example/idea
- paragraph
- Sample question :- "Why does author mention "------- " in the first paragraph?"
- Reference
- Ask what a word or phrase refer to.(often a pronoun - it, they, that, etc.)
- Its not about meaning of word. Its about what it refers to in context
- 0-1 per passage
- Find the logical replacement
- Paraphrase
- Choose the restatement of the sentence
- 0 -1 per passage
- Wrong answer choices seems almost correct sometimes, but they lose information.
- loose information(becomes to general)
- switch roles and relationships
- use tempting vocabulary
- Insert Text
- Place a new sentence in the passage
- 1 per passage
- Best way to answer them :- use connecting word/phrases.
- Pronouns(they, their, he, she, etc.)
- Transition words(Although, But, etc.)
- Time words(After, Before, Finally, etc)
- Topic words
- Summary
- Ask about passage at a whole
- Choose 3 most important ideas
- 1 per passage
- Medium Frequency
- Unless you get a categorize question
- They are 2 points question (so twice important)
- Need to see the structure of the passage
- Don't choose the less important details
- Category
- Last type of question like Summary question
- Match details with larger topics
- 0-1 per passage
- They are 3 or 4 points question (depends on complexity)
- Need to see the structure of the passage
- Find each detail and match it to topic
The 4 sections :-
- Reading 60 - 100 minutes
- Listening 60 - 90 minutes
- 10 minute Break
- Speaking 20 minutes
- Writing 60 minutes
Reading
- 3-5 passages
- 700 words
- 20 minutes per passage
- 12 -14 questions per passage
- Similar to university textbooks
- Science, history, humanities, etc.
Listening
- 6 or 9 recordings
- Group of 3
- 4 or 6 lectures
- 5 minutes each with 6 questions
- Similar topics to reading
- 2 or 3 conversations
- 3 minutes each with 5 questions
- About living on campus
Speaking
- 6 tasks
- Always the same order
- Task 1 : Independent
- Task 2 : Independent
- Task 3 : Integrated - reading and listening
- Task 4 : Integrated - reading and listening
Writing
- Integrated - Reading, Listening and Write
- 3 minutes to read, 3 minutes lecture
- Write for 20 minutes
- Compare and contrast lecture with reading
- Independent
Some Important Points :-
- iBT TOEFL scores are valid for 2 years only
- Each of the 4 sections receive a scaled score from 0 to 30
- iBT TOEFL is scored on a scale of 0-120 speaking is
initially of score of 0 to 4 and writing is initially given a score of 0
to 5. These scores are converted to scaled scored of 0 to 30
- There is no negative marking.
