Directions on How to Submit a TOEFL Essay for FREE Correction on Strictly English’s Website
Video on TOEFL 20-Minute Essay (Integrated Essay)
Here is Strictly English’s first instructional video. It covers the TOEFL 20-Minute essay, or what is technically named “The Integrated Skills Essay”. This video tells you things about the 20-Minute essay that other schools and books are not telling you about the essay’s format!
Want to learn how to write a more powerful TOEFL essay, begin by watching this video!
Good Words from a Chinese Student!
Here’s what one happy student wants to say about Strictly English!
当你还在为考托福（TOEFL）发愁时，当你有足够的单词量却不能在做听力时听到细节而踌躇时，请来Strictlyenglish家教（TUTORING）。Jon会用他科学而独特的教学方法帮你在最短的时间内提高托福（toefl）成绩。 多亏他的帮助使我的成绩在一个月之内从63分提高到了81分。Strictlyenglish家教辅导一定会让你取得一个理想的成绩。
Japanese Links to Henry Louis Gates Jr. Articles
Improving TOEFL Comprehension via 360 Research
Since TOEFL is a Test of ENGLISH as a Foreign Language, you can greatly improve your TOEFL score by improving your English comprehension. One way to do that is to initiate a 360-review of an academically-oriented or politically-focused news story. 360-Research means looking at the story from all possible angles. For example, you could:
1. Read about the story in respected American news papers such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Huffington Post.
2. Read about the story in respected English-Language magazines, such as The Economist, The New Yorker, and Slate.com.
3. Listen to radio reports about the story on NPR.org or on respected radio shows like On Point, Talk of the Nation, Here and Now, or The Diane Rehm Show.
4. Watch videos about the story on youtube.com or on your local Public Television station.
5. Look up key ideas relevant to the story
6. Follow the story on Twitter.com
7. Read about the story in your own language.
This last point is very helpful. Because it is hard to understand the more subtle ideas in news stories, it is often good to read about the story first in your own language. That way you’ll understand the story, which will improve your comprehension of the story in English. Once you understand the story in your own language, then you’ll be able to focus on how the English is conveying the same idea. This is particularly helpful when the entire story focuses on one central idea or quotation. For example, do a search in your own language for Judge Sotomayor’s statement that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” In Spanish, one blogger translated this as una latina inteligente podría tomar mejores decisiones que un hombre blanco que no ha tenido las mismas experiencias vitales”, and if you search the web in Spanish for “Sotomayor,” you’ll find every hit mentions “latina inteligente”. So when you read “wise latina” in English, you’ll quickly figure out that WISE must mean INTELIGENTE, since you’ve seen “latina inteligente” 20-30 times already.
Here are some links to get you started for a more recent story: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
PBS: (click on the STREAMING VIDEO link)
RELEVANT LINKS:
Definition of racial profiling.
article about racial profiling.
Definition of 911 calls.
Definition of sensitivity training.
Article on how diversity training doesn’t work.
Do this once a week on a new topic, and your English will improve much more quickly!
GOOD LUCK!
How TOEFL Scores are Broken Down
The entire TOEFL has a perfect score of 120, and although 30 points are alloted to each of the 4 sections (Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing), these sections are not scored initially from 0-30. The Rater uses a different scoring system, called the “raw score”. No one but ETS Raters know how this raw score is exactly computed nor how it is then converted to the 0-30 score you receive.
For both the Reading and the Listening sections of the test, you only receive the final score, ranged between 0-30. Meanwhile, you receive sub-scores for both the Speaking and the Writing along with the 0-30 score.
The Speaking section is broken down into three subsections:
1. Speaking about familiar Topics (which indicates how well you did on Tasks One and Two)
2. Speaking about Campus Situations (which indicates how well you did on Tasks Three and Five)
3. Speaking about Academic Course Content (which indicates how well you did on Tasks Three and Five)
These three sections are rated as being “weak” “limited” “fair” or “good”. To receive a 26 on the speaking (which Canadian Nurses and North American Pharmacists need for their licensure), you need to score a “good” in all three subsections of the Speaking.
The Writing section is broken down into two subsections:
1. Writing Based on Reading and Listening (commonly called the 20-minute essay)
2. Independent Essay (commonly called the 30-minute essay)
These two sections are rated as being “limited” “fair” or “good”.
A CALL FOR BETTER TOEFL iPHONE APPLICATIONS!
I’m rather surprised that the only iPhone applications for sale are vocabulary builders. With so many sections of the test: (Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing) and with each of these sections testing a different language or reasoning skill (pronoun identification, paraphrasing, copy editing, spelling, logic, as well as the ability to infer and summarize), it shocks me that no one has taken the initiative to make applications that help improve these other skills. TOEFL is, after all, a multiple choice test. You would think that an iPhone app based on picking multiple choice answers wouldn’t be that hard to design. And it isn’t. The problem is, as usual, time and money. Creating the content for just one application could take a team of 10 English teachers working 10 hours a day for 10 months. Add to this the cost of developing the application itself, and you have a big hurdle to jump.
But Strictly English is not afraid to take on this challenge! We are currently in negotiations with iPhone application developers to design a series of applications that will help strengthen your TOEFL skills.
Until Strictly English releases these applications, though, TOEFL Students will only have the small array of vocabulary applications currently on the market, which haven’t been well-received so far. Early reports indicate that the vocabulary builders are not selling very well, primarily because students would prefer to learn new English words in relation to the student’s original language. For example, what spanish speaker person wants read “distress or uneasiness of mind caused by fear of danger or misfortune,” in order to understand the English word “Anxiety” when he/she could just know that “anxiety” = “ansiedad”. Hence, these TOEFL vocabulary building apps have it wrong from the start.
But let’s look a little closer at some of these applications anyway:
1. Kaplan TOEFL Vocabulary (by TestPrepWiz): At the time of this writing, the application is not running on the new 3.0 upgrade. I’ve contacted the developer and they are working to fix this problem. In general, though, this program is nothing more than a digital set of flashcards. And with only 350 words, it doesn’t cover much vocabulary. It does have a test mode, which is probably its best function.
Kaplan Vocabulary
2. TOEFL – GMAT Vocabulary Builder (by Clickgamer.com and Unigate): This application is not helpful for TOEFL vocabulary study mainly because there is just one long list of words. The user cannot know which vocabulary words are TOEFL words and which words are GMAT words. Now it is true that all TOEFL words are also GMAT words, but it is NOT true that all GMAT words are also TOEFL words. GMAT vocabulary is much harder than TOEFL vocabulary. Using this application would be much better if you could chose a list of TOEFL vocabulary words ONLY, and not study the GMAT words. It’s games are cute, but it’s hard to know what to do, and the “help” page doesn’t explain how to play. Look at this screen shot of the game “Bubble”. Since the balloons rise from the bottom of the screen, your eye focuses on the word EXPANSION, but this is not the word you’re trying to match. Instead, you have to look at the top of the page to find the definition you’re trying to match. It is written in small print and does not catch your eye.
3. TOEFL Vocabulary (AudioLearn): By far, this is the least dynamic of the three programs. As you can see form the screenshot, it is a solid stream of text, which just blurs together. In addition, all the text is read aloud in a monotonous stream. Click here download and to listen.
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GUEST TIP: The College Admissions Essay
Although Strictly English works exclusively with TOEFL preparation, we often get questions about how to write the College Admissions Essay. Here’s a good blog entry sent to us from Adam R. Goldberg, Educational Consultant.
How to Organize the 20-Minute Essay
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.
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