Reading Passages on History

by Strictly English TOEFL Tutors on January 30, 2009

If you’re looking for a way to improve your reading of history passages, then I suggest that you check out this website.  It has some brief TOEFL-like articles that you can read.

To learn more about the Reading Section of the

The Reading Passage for the 20-Minute Essay

by Strictly English TOEFL Tutors on January 29, 2009

I know it’s hard to believe, but sometimes TOEFL makes things EASY for you!  After you finish listening to the lecture for the 20-Minute Essay, the reading passage returns. This helps you a lot. If you can locate the reading’s three main points, then they will help you to figure out what the listening was saying. So even if you didn’t understand the listening, all you have to remember is that it talked about the same points as the reading. Once you locate those points in the reading, they might help you to figure out what the listening was saying about those same points.

Bad Subject/Verb Agreement Can Cost You Points

by Strictly English TOEFL Tutors on

If you have consistent subject verb agreement problems in your writing, it could lower your score up to 33%. So be careful. Make sure that every singular subject has a singular verb. For example: “he writeS” or “the sun burnS”. This is a very simple grammar point, so make every effort to remember to use your “S”s!

How to Organize the 20-Minute Essay

by Strictly English TOEFL Tutors on

The twenty-minute essay requires you to summarize a reading and a listening on the same topic. The reading offers three points and the listening usually opposes those three points one at a time.  The best way to organize your essay, then is it have four paragraphs.

Paragraph one: Introduction
Paragraph two: Point one
Paragraph three: Point two
Paragraph Four: Point three

Long and Short Reading Sections

by Strictly English TOEFL Tutors on January 28, 2009

TOEFL will either give you one hour to answer three reading passages or 1 hour and 40 minutes to answer 5 reading passages.  If you have 5 passages, you are only graded on three of them, but you don’t know which three. The other two passages are experimental passages that allow TOEFL to see if the questions are good TOEFL questions or not. If you get a long Reading Section (5 passages) then you will not have a long Listening Section.  Strictly English suggests being prepared for a long Reading Section. That way, you’ll be able prepared for one if you get it.  One way to prepare for a long reading is to read at homefor 1 hour and 40 minutes without stopping.

Podcasts can help with Listening

by Strictly English TOEFL Tutors on January 10, 2009

iTunes has a great FREE podcast if you want to practice listening. it’s called ESL Podcast. 

What I suggest you do is download some of the episodes to your iTunes.  Then click on the little “i” button in the DESCRIPTION column. That will open up a window in which you will find the transcript of the listening.
Play the listening and read aloud the transcript at the same time you’re listening. Try to match your voice to the speaker’s voice. This will help you to learn how to speak with a more natural rhythm in English!

Reading Section: Paraphrase Questions

by Strictly English TOEFL Tutors on

When answering paraphrase questions in the reading section, it helps to know how to break the original sentence down into smaller grammatical units.  For example, a really long sentence like “Since 2004, Jon, who is my teacher at Strictly English, has been winning awards, from the National Council on Education, for his excellent teaching” can be broken down into smaller parts:

Since 2004, Jon, who is my English teacher at Strictly English, has been winning awards, from the National Council on Education, for his excellent teaching.
Although this sentence appears long, it has a smaller “sentence” (what we call an independent clause) inside it: Jon has been winning awards for his excellent teaching and three smaller “ideas” in it:

Since 2004
who is my English teacher at Strictly English
from the Nation Council on Education
Now you can focus on one idea at a time and make sure it matches the paraphrase.  For example, an answer choice will be wrong if it says “before 2004″ or “in 2004″ because “since” does not mean the same thing as “before” or “in”.   You don’t need to look at the rest of the answer choice if this first part doesn’t match!

Listening for the Main Idea

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The TOEFL likes to trick you by beginning a lecture with a topic that the lecture is NOT about. For example, a typical lecture will begin by summarizing what the class was supposed to read the night before. Or, it will begin by talking about the previous lecture. 

After three or four sentences, the professor will say something like, “But in today’s class, I want to discuss . . .” or “Although this is interesting, there are other possibilities too.”
It is important for you to realize that the real ”main topic” of the lecture is going to be whatever the professor talks about after he says “but” or “although,” NOT what he first talked about when the lecture began.

Speaking Task Five: Use Modals

by Strictly English TOEFL Tutors on

Because Speaking Task Five asks you to summarize the possible solutions to a problem, you should use the modals “can,” “could,” and “should” in your answers.

For example:
Instead of saying: ”The man wants the woman to buy a new car.”

you can say, ”The man thinks that the woman shouldbuy a new car.”
This English is much more natural sounding and more appropriate to the task.

Long and Short Listening Sections

by Strictly English TOEFL Tutors on

Be prepared for a long Listening Section. Every TOEFL test has either a long Reading Section or a long Listening Section. If you have only have three reading passages, then you know that your Listening Section will be “long”, so don’t be surprised! The “long” listening is because TOEFL adds experimental questions that it wants to test to see if they are well-written questions or not. Instead of 2 conversations, 2 class discussions, and 2 lectures, you will have 3 each. You won’t know which 6 will count for the test, so try and do your best on all questions!

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