Beating the TOEFL

Recently I needed to take an English exam to apply for grad school. There are quite a few options but I chose the TOEFL simply because it is the most famous test with most preparation material available. If you are in the same situation, you should seriously consider to take the IELTS test instead. Both have advantages and disadvantages.

For TOEFL, especially if you have not much preparation time (less than 1 week), I found out that following a few tips will help you a lot in succeeding:

1. In the TOEFL, 10 % of your success is based on your actual English skills, 90 % is based on your preparation on the specific tasks in the TOEFL. The good news: All tasks in the TOEFL follow exactly the same patterns all over again. Prepare exactly for these tasks. Don't spend even a second trying to improve your overall English skills or practicing tasks that are not part of the actual TOEFL test.

2. The TOEFL consists of four sections, Reading, Listening, Speaking and Writing, all worth 30 points of your score. Focus on 2 sections you are weak in and spend most of your time practising these ones. E.g. my weak parts were reading and speaking.

3. Use the following instructions for each of the sections:

- Writing: 

This section consists of a few texts that you need to understand in order to answer multiple choice questions. Don't read the full text, you won't have time for it! Instead, read only the first sentence of each paragraph and the first and last sentence of the last paragraph. Now you will be able to understand the big picture of the text and can start attacking the questions. For each question, you usually will need to read 5-7 lines.

- Listening:

Nothing special here, just practise tons of example tasks (see my literature recommendations in the end).

- Speaking:

Most people say this is the most difficult one. It contains of 6 different questions. My personal advice here: Watch these videos made by a US teacher and you will get a decent score. There are videos for each of the 6 questions. As for preparation, write down the templates this guy suggests in his videos and master them.

- Writing:

There are extremely helpful templates that you can memorize and use in the actual test. Again, watch the videos for this. Important detail: Your essay should have at least 350 words for question 1 and 450 words for question 2 in oder to get full score.

4. Most importantly, use the right material. It doesn't make sense to practise tasks that don't show up in the acual test. The best material I found was the following. You can find it all online or in your local library.

Must have

- As so often nowadays, free online ressources tend to get more useful than official books. For the speaking and writing sessions, definitely watch these videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/NoteFulldotcom . More ressources are available on the according website.

- The Princeton Review - Cracking the TOEFL iBT 2009 Edition. By far the best book I've found, with excellent tips for reading and writing section.

-  ETS - TOEFL iBT: The Official ETS Study Guide. Some useful tips, but you'll mainly want to use this for the original practise tests. (you should avoid Kaplan's well-known book, as it doesn't use original TOEFL tasks and is therefore useless in most parts)

Nice to have

- Barron's TOEFL iBT Internet-Based Test, 12th Edition. Get the CD with 7 full TOEFL tests to practice. Note that Speaking Questions 4 and 6 as well as Writing Question 1 are NOT original, skip those questions!

- TOEFL Vocabulary AudioLearn. Might be helpful for memorizing the specific words for Reading and Listening section.

5. Stay calm. Even if you have little time, you will be able to get a reasonable score if you stick to the above advice. So no worries and start practicing today! Good luck :)