Five steps toward improving your TOEFL speaking score.

RJ, one of my Online TOEFL students, often pauses and has hesitations when she completes independent and integrated speaking tasks. Currently, RJ is trying to solve these fluency problems, but she is not able to think quickly enough. Therefore, she pauses, thinks about what she wants to say, and then begins speaking.  RJ even admitted that she also pauses and hesitates when speaking in her own language.
Obviously, these delivery problems will cause her to score lower on the speaking section of the TOEFL exam. Based on some of these speaking and pronunciation issues, RJ sent me the following e-mail:

I have one more question. I stay little behind on time brcause I take time to think about what I want to say. Now some of my friends have brought my attention that I speak that way (with some hesitation) even in my native language if I need to think before answering. Basically I need to learn think faster and need to put in words.On other hand, for day to day talk either at work or with my friends I speak fluently in English because they ask me things that I dont have to think about. so do you have any suggestions/comments about that?

To help her, I put together a video focusing on five things that RJ can do to help her become more fluent:

Good luck!

Michael Buckhoff, mbuckhoff@aol.com

http://onlinetoeflcourse.com