How to Prepare for TOEFL?

If you grew up learning any language other than English, then taking the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL is a must required step in the process of getting admitted into a U.S. college or university. However, now a days, almost all U.S. schools accept IELTS as a proof of English proficiency.

The TOEFL test may sound bland due to it’s goofy acronym, but in real it demands four and a half hour exam to evaluate your English proficiency which will make the difference between admission and rejection from your dream school.

So, how much TOEFL preparation time do i need?

Well, there is no definite answer — study really hard two weeks before test might suffice. Given that during you have a good command of English vocabulary, you do not struggle while listening to any English scripts, you understand what you read in English and most of all you can express your thoughts in English. Please keep in mind that language cannot be mastered over night; TOEFL test involves all aspects of the language — speaking, writing, reading and listening. If you do not have a basic foundation of English, then there is too much to cover in two weeks to do exceedingly well in TOEFL.

The Basics about TOEFL:

There are four sections — speaking, writing, reading and listening in TOEFL and each is given a score between 0 and 30. It is usually taken on a computer over the internet (that’s why known as IBT) except for those countries which have very limited access to internet.

The TOEFL test is designed to assess all of the skills you need to communicate effectively in academia, and academic vocabulary and grammar are embedded in this test. The reading and listening section mostly test your receptive skills and speaking and writing section test your productive English skills.

Reading:

The reading section is designed to test your ability of comprehending something while you read. You will be asked to read three or four passages and answer questions to some set of questions. Usually there are 36–56 questions depending upon the number of passages which are to be answered within 60–80 minutes.

Listening:

In this section, your ability to understand the English language in an academic environment. You will listen to lectures and other classroom interactions, and then answer 34–51 questions within 60 to 90 minutes to complete this section.

Speaking:

There are six activities in the speaking section which are divided into two section: integrated speaking and independent speaking for gauging your ability to express yourself in English. The integrated speaking section requires you to respond to questions based on written or verbal content, while the independent speaking section requires you to speak on a topic that is familiar to you. The total time limit for both is 20 minutes.

Writing:

The writing section is also classified into two parts: integrated writing and independent writing. In the integrated part, you will be asked to read a passage and listen to an audio, and then will have to complete a writing task based on what you read and listened to. In the independent writing part, you will be given a prompt and have to write an essay that agrees or disagrees with the statement or question. The total time limit for the writing section is 50 minutes.

How to start your preparation:

The best way to start your preparation is by taking a full length practice exam. ETS provides a free practice tool with real TOEFL iBT questions from previous exams. A full test will require around 4 hours to complete. Once you are done with the mock test, take a look at your results and about the time that you took to complete each section. Identify your weakness, list them all and prepare your test prep plan accordingly.

Mastering the TOEFL:

A good command of English vocabulary is extremely important to crack all the four sections of the TOEFL. And, if you do not have a good command over vocabulary and their usage then it is quite difficult to prepare well within a short period of time. So, if you do not know those spare some time to master the vocabulary and then prepare for the main test. While studying the words, GradBunker suggest the following:

• Always take notes — write the synonyms and antonyms
• Use the words in your speaking and writing scripts

Image Source: e2languageblog

Reading Section:

Reading seems to be the easiest part, but when you have to read three to four passages and answer all the questions in a timed environment, the challenge is huge. So, when you prepare for the reading section make sure you do the following:

• Improve your reading and comprehension speed. If you do not have a strong knowledge of English sentence structures and academic vocabularies, it will be difficult for you to comprehend what you read. Read newspapers, magazines, articles etc. in English. Do not just read them, make sure you understand the context, ask your self what you just read about, make a summary in your mind.
• Understand the 12 different types of reading questions. Some questions such as “Inference questions” and “Negative Factual Information” are tricky, and those trickier questions need extra attention during the main exam. So, knowing the question pattern is a cardinal part of your preparation — you need to be well acquainted with all types of questions and master the tricks to solve them all.
• Practice comprehension — try to extract the key information from any passage while you read. You might not be asked to do this type of exercise in the real exam, but it will improve your comprehension ability. Practicing comprehension will not only help you crack the contents of the exam, it will also make you efficient and fast.

Listening Section:

This section tests your ability to understand academic related lectures and discussions. Because in academia, you will be attending classes where the sole medium of communication is English. You will also participate in and contribute to seminars and class discussion. Therefor, it is crucial to develop your listening skills and score well in this section. To develop your listening skills you should do the following:

• Listen to variety of academic topics including biology, history, ecology, anthropology etc.
• When listening to the audios, listen for important nouns, transitional words, main ideas, and key relationships. You do not need to take not while you listen, but you should be able to extract the right information and main idea from the lectures while you listen.
• If you struggle with one exercise, keep listening to the same one till you understand it properly.
• Aside from practicing listening materials, listen to English podcasts.

Writing Section:

You can not develop your writing skill overnight. A good English writer already has years of experience writing and using English in their daily life. While you learn writing we suggest you to do as follows:

• To learn to write well, you need to be a good reader first. While reading the sample scripts you need to learn how the paragraphs are formed with different sentence structures, what type of words are used, and how the ideas are included and connected. You do not need to memorize the scripts, but you should be able to reproduce similar passages. Be familiar with several type of topics, the more you read , the more your writing skills will be improved.
• Do brainstorming, it’s important. Even if someone asks you to write what you did today, you have to think for sometime, put them in a regular manner and then deliver. So, pick a topic, brainstorm your ideas and write it down — at least 10–15 lines daily.
• Understand the different types of question patterns that will appear in the independent writing section.
• Learn to express your opinion clearly on an issue.
• Learn to write a good introductory and concluding paragraph.
• Write 3 main body paragraphs. Each body paragraph should have a main idea and relevant examples with details to support the main idea.
• Learn the usage of transition words to connect your ideas.
• Use a variety of words and sentence structures correctly and appropriately. While using words make sure you put them in right context.
• And, spend a hour daily to practice writing, if not possible at least write a single page on a single topic everyday.

Speaking Section:

You will interact with your fellow students outside of the lecture hall, mentor students in the LAB, will have team projects to prepare with your peers, and obviously need to communicated your ideas and thoughts with your supervisor, university administration and local community. That’s why you will see that there is a specific requirement that you need to meet about the speaking section. Honing your speaking skills will ensure a good score in the speaking section which will make your journey smooth towards academia. GradBunker is advising you to do as follows while you prepare particularly for speaking section:

• Practice is the key — the more you practice speaking, the more you do well in this section. Always speak up — don’t put the words inside your mind. Make sure your response is loud and lucid; always pay attention to your pronunciation, intonation, grammar, organization and fluency. Record your response while you practice, analyze them, find your mistakes and work on it.
• Listen to the sample responses carefully and learn how they have prepared the answer for any particular question. You do not need to memorize any scripts, but you need to learn about the patterns that you should follow to prepare your response so that you can get a good score.

Now, it is you who will decide how much time you need to prepare yourself for getting a good score in TOEFL. Remember, a good score in TOEFL will smooth your journey towards academia. Master the section, gauge your performance and then sit for the real exam.