How I scored a 119/120 in TOEFL!
Planning to take the TOEFL this application season? Not sure where to start or how to prepare? Well, you have come to the right place! Let’s get busy!
What is the TOEFL?
The TOEFL, or ‘Test of English as a Foreign Language,’ is a standardized examination whose scores are used across many graduate schools in the United States, Canada, Europe, and some schools in Australia. Excellent scores in these exams accentuate your profile and improve your chances of getting a great grad school admission. Now, you must be wondering, even if the GRE, or Graduate Record Examination, has an English section, what’s the need to give another English exam? Well, TOEFL is starkly different from any other exam. Whereas, usually, English exams test your reading, comprehension, and vocabulary skills, TOEFL goes one step further to test your listening, speaking, and writing skills. Yes, you heard it right; it makes you write essays, listen to lectures, and speak up on different topics! Since this exam is very different from what most people are used to, you must employ a different preparation strategy to ace it. But don’t worry! I will walk you through my entire preparation journey, from how I scored a near-perfect score of 119/120 to perfect scores in the reading, writing, and speaking sections.
At this point, I need to specifically mention that I did not take the GRE during my graduate application cycle in December 2022. I only attempted the TOEFL for my applications. Because of COVID-19, many graduate schools have exempted applicants from GRE scores. Since the schools I planned to apply to didn’t require GRE scores as a part of their application, I didn’t attempt the GRE. You should also see what exam scores are required by the schools you plan to apply to before registering for any exam.
How I aced it with a whopping 119/120?
I will now walk through my preparation strategy for the TOEFL. The exam (as of 2022) had four sections: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Each section had an equal weight of 30 marks for a total score of 120. Generally, a safe score is around 110 or 120 (this is my opinion, not the ground truth). I scored 119/120 during my application cycle in TOEFL (I guess now you would deem my advice reasonable).
Generally, two weeks of preparation are enough to get a high score on the TOEFL (provided you have learned at places where the medium of instruction has been English). A critical aspect that is most often not given due importance is timed practice. TOEFL is a timed exam, and each section is allotted a specific time to complete; hence one should commit to targeted, timed practice.
Reading: The reading section is all about comprehension, vocabulary, and logical reasoning skills. You have to extract from the passage all that you can and then answer the questions to the best of your ability. Reading novels and English newspapers is a great way to improve your vocabulary and brush up your speed-reading skills.
This is what I did. Take a page from any book — take some time to read it in detail, and then write a concise summary in your notes, citing small details which would otherwise have been overlooked. There is no universal strategy to ace this section; you have to keep revising and find the best knack how to tackle it. Some people read the questions and then read the accompanying passage — absolutely fine! A huge amount of practice will help you identify your weak spots and get them to shine well till the final exam.
Listening: It may sound funny, but watching many English news videos, lectures, and movies (without subtitles, lol) helps you train your ears to listen to different accents. You might think this to be trivial, but believe me, coming from Asia, European and American accents sound very, very different. TOEFL has listening skill questions in different accents; hence, you should be sharp enough to understand them clearly. The best practice method is to listen to a lot of English content; you can also hear English songs and read their lyrics — to train your mind to understand accents. And this is something I have done myself — not borrowing it from some guidebook, lol!
Writing: Writing sections contain different question types, like analytical writing — expansion of an idea, presenting views, and counterviews. There might be some questions where a particular opinion can be expressed in a passage, and an opposing argument can be expressed in audio. Questions can be blended. It might give a reading passage and then ask you to formulate a response supporting the main idea, or you might be asked to counter it. A great way to practice this is to take up current issues and pen down your views in a timed manner. For instance, ‘Is the Internet a boon or a bane?’ or ‘Whatever happens, keep trying, Never Give Up’? You need to figure out how to place your story and articulate your arguments in a manner that seems plausible and reasonable. You can try writing blogs and posts regularly to sharpen your thinking and writing skills.
Pro tip: Always make a rough sketch of how your write-up would be before you start writing. Sketch the basic structure, what ideas you plan to include, and a rough order of the ideas presented. Many students find this section difficult — because they start writing hurriedly and find it difficult to continue or conclude it reasonably, and time runs out.
Speaking: This section tests your speaking skills — mind you, this is a timed section with a very stringent timing constraint. You are given 15–20 seconds to read a small passage that presents a particular idea. Then you are given about 45 seconds to think, formulate your response, and speak up. Hence, the critical skill must be thinking fast and articulating your thoughts in clear, concise English. A great way to prepare is to have premade templates for expanding on an idea and speaking out. In particular, this video gives great templates, and I used them in my exam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F5DufM-J4k
Other than formal practice, you can ask your friends or relatives to talk to you in English. Regular practice is the key to flawless, seamless, and confident English speech. Make sure you drop using pause words like — umm, uh-huh, and aww in your speech. You should speak clearly; if a pause is required by the situation, go ahead and take it, but randomly uttering pause words — comes across as being under-confident.
Below, I have attached some YouTube videos and other resources, which I found super helpful during my preparation.
- https://www.ets.org/content/dam/ets-org/pdfs/toefl/toefl-ibt-writing-practice-sets.pdf
- https://www.ets.org/content/dam/ets-org/pdfs/toefl/toefl-ibt-speaking-practice-sets.pdf
- https://www.ets.org/content/dam/ets-org/pdfs/toefl/toefl-ibt-reading-practice-sets.pdf
- https://www.ets.org/content/dam/ets-org/pdfs/toefl/toefl-ibt-listening-practice-sets.zip
- https://www.youtube.com/@TSTPrep
- https://www.youtube.com/@linguamarina
- https://www.youtube.com/user/MagooshTOEFL/
- Interpret your scores based on official metrics: https://www.ets.o'g/s/toefl/pdf/toefl_speaking_rubrics.'df
- https://leverageedu.com/blog/toefl-speaking-topics/
Apart from that, I suggest you explore more resources to prepare for the TOEFL. A good TOEFL score improves your chances of getting graduate school admission along with scholarships and fellowships.
What after TOEFL?
Just attempting the exam is not enough. Once you obtain scores, you must send them to the schools you have applied to. ETS, which organizes the TOEFL, lets you send out some scores for free, but you have to pay if you wish to send scores to more schools. Here are some things you should keep in mind before sending out scores:
- Double-check requirements: Even if the grad portal mentions that TOEFL scores are required, you should check out if the university waives this requirement if your medium of instruction is English. If you can prove this by producing an official document signed by competent authorities from your university, then you can try and get the requirement waived.
- IELTS: There are many schools that prefer IELTS scores. IELTS, again a similar exam that tests your English skills in a foreign language. You can try mailing the university graduate admissions team to see if they can accept TOEFL scores instead. Many times, they waive this requirement, and you can submit TOEFL scores instead. Both exams are equal in all aspects, but giving both of them is undoubtedly a challenging and stressful task. Hence you should make sure that a majority of schools you want to apply to accept the exam scores that you wish to attempt.
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