TOEFL preparation involves getting a good study plan. You should base your plan on your current TOEFL score or practice test score. In addition, you should base your study plan on what target score you need. This includes specific subtotal scores. As you begin completing the lessons in your study plan, you will be completing speaking and writing practice tests. To help you improve your speaking and writing language use, consider the following tips.
TOEFL Preparation Tip: Keep sentences parallel
Parallelism shows that you can control and balance the grammar within your sentences. For example, notice the parallelism within the following sentences:
Infinitives: A roommate who is honest can allow me to have complete trust, to be able to leave my belongings unattended, and to know that my roommate will not hide his feelings when he is upset.
Dependent clauses: Because I want complete trust, because I want to be able to leave my belongings unattended, and because I do not want my roommate to hide his feelings, I prefer a roommate who is honest.
In addition, you can use parallelism to highlight or unify ideas within a paragraph. In this case, several similar-sounding sentences in grammar, readers or listeners will assume, are also similar in ideas.
TOEFL Preparation Tip: Model paragraph with parallelism
In the below paragraph, the writer uses several yes/no sentence questions to explain the problems that may occur when living with a dishonest roommate.
First of all, the most important characteristic of a good roommate is honesty. Think about the following questions about roommate who is not honest. Do you want to live with a roommate who will lie to you about whether or nor he will help you pay the rent at the end of the month? Do you want a roommate who will use your electronics and clothes without your permission? Do you want a roommate who will go into to your bedroom to sift through your personal belongings when you are at school? Of course, no one wants a roommate who does any of these things, which illustrates why honesty is so important.
To illustrate, my friend Tomas, who attends the University of Mississippi in Oxford, had a roommate who stole money from his wallet while Tomas was at school taking a midterm exam in sociology. While he was gone, his roommate went into his bedroom and searched through Tomas’s dresser drawers until he found some cash that Tomas was hiding. Tomas asked his roommate about the incident, and the roommate lied about not having taken the money. Fortunately, suspicious that his roommate might have been snooping around in his room, Tomas had installed a secret camera in his room. Sure enough, Tomas saw on the camera when his roommate had gone into his room and started searching through Tomas’s drawers until he found the cash. Had he been living with an honest roommate, none of this would have happened.
TOEFL Preparation Tip: Show syntactic variety
Using a combination of simple, compound, and complex sentences will help show the TOEFL iBT human raters that you have good control of your language use.
Simple: First of all, the most important characteristic of a good roommate is honesty.
Compound: Tomas asked his roommate about the incident, and the roommate lied about not having taken the money.
Complex: If he he had been living with an honest roommate, none of this would have happened.
Compound/Complex: Honest roommates who live with me will not enter my room without permission, and they will pay the rent on time.
Generally, use simple sentences to emphasize a single idea. Use compound sentences to combine two main points not important to stand alone. Furthermore, use complex sentences to combine main ideas with support ideas.
TOEFL Preparation Tip: Fronted present and past participles
Also, you can use fronted past and present particle phrases. These sentence style choices will show that you are using a combination of basic and advanced grammar during the speaking and writing tasks.
Fronted past participles + subject + verb: Tired after having run a marathon, Kent decided to go to bed a couple of hours early.
Kent, tired after having run a marathon, decided to go to bed a couple of hours early
Kent, who was tired after having run a marathon, decided to go to bed a couple of hours early.
Kent was tired after having run a marathon. He decided to go to bed a couple of hours early.
Front present participles + subject + verb: Deciding to postpone the exam, the professor spent most of the time during class clarifying any terms and concepts with which the students were having difficulty.
The professor deciding to postpone the exam spent most of the time during class clarifying any terms and concepts with which the students were having difficulty.
The professor who decided to postpone the exam spent most of the time during class clarifying any terms and concepts with which the students were having difficulty.
The professor decided to postpone the exam. She spent most of the time during class clarifying any terms and concepts with which the students were having difficulty.
TOEFL Preparation Tip: Appositives, negative and hardly negative adverbs, and prepositional phrases of location
You can use appositives and negative and almost negative adverbs at the beginning of the sentence. Further, you can use prepositional phrases of location at the beginning of the sentence. These sentence style choices will help you to score higher on the TOEFL speaking and writing tasks. However, make sure that you use these structures appropriately and correctly.
Appositives + subject + verb: A woman of integrity and intelligence, Susan was voted the most likely to succeed in her high school.
Susan, a woman of integrity and intelligence, was voted the most likely to succeed in her high school.
Susan, who is a woman of integrity and intelligence, was voted the most likely to succeed in her high school.
Susan is a woman of integrity and intelligence. She was voted the most likely to succeed in her high school.
Negative adverb + aux + subject + main verb: Never have I seen a more productive worker than John.
I have never seen a more productive worker than John.
John is the most productive worker I have ever seen.
Almost negative adverb + aux + main verb + subject: Rarely ever do I come to class late.
I rarely ever come to class late.
I usually come to class on time.
I do not come to class late often.
Preparation phrases of location + aux verb + subject + main verb: Next to a desk was an antique old lamp from my father.
An old antique lamp from my father was next to an old desk.
TOEFL Preparation Tip: Keep sentences concise
Every word you write or say should meaningfully contribute to the ideas that you are presenting. Therefore, you should avoid redundancies, the “be” verb overuse, and hedges and conversation fillers. Also, whenever possible, reduce your clauses to phrases and your phrases to single words.
Do not be redundant.
Obviously, you do not need to say something twice. Nor should you repeat synonyms right after a word.
Redundant: The reading passage discusses and explains macroeconomics.
Revised: The reading passage discusses macroeconomics.
Avoid overusing the “be” verb.
In some cases, you can recast your sentence so that you do not need to use the “be” verb. In these cases, your goal should be to use an active, descriptive verb stating the action.
With “be” verb: The soccer team was victorious.
Without be verb: The soccer team won.
With “be” verb: The audience was electrified by the soccer game.
Without “be” verb: The soccer game electrified the audience.
Eliminate hedges and conversation fillers.
During your TOEFL speaking and writing tasks, you may be tempted to use hedges and conversation fillers. Words like “I think,” “It is my opinion that,” “Um,” “Ah,” and “You know” do not help you to advance your ideas. Simply put, these unneeded words disrupt your presentation of ideas, even weakening your argument in some cases. Conversation fillers can act as pauses and hesitations during your speaking responses. Therefore, try to reduce them as much as possible.
Conversation fillers: Uh…studying with a group..you know…is better than studying alone.
Without conversation fillers: Studying with a group…is better than studying alone.
Hedges: It is my opinion that I think one solution to reduce air pollution in my city is to make public transportation mandatory during commute hours.
Without hedges: To reduce air pollution, my city should make public transportation mandatory during commute hours.
Minimizing hedges and conversation fillers will give you more time to spend on developing arguments. Forty-five seconds is a limited time to answer a TOEFL independent speaking. Therefore, you need to make every word and every second count. That way you are showing the TOEFL iBT human raters that you have good topic development and delivery.
Reduce clauses to phrases and phrases to words.
Another TOEFL preparation tip is to reduce dependent clauses to phrases. Furthermore, consider reducing some of your phrases to single words.
Adjective clause: The professor who is a graduate of Harvard University regularly gives seminars on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
Adjective clause reduced to an appositive: The professor, a Harvard University graduate, regularly gives seminars on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
Adjective clause: Kent’s boots which were made of lizard skin cost him $250.
Adjective clause reduced to a single word: Kent’s lizard-skin boots cost him $250.
As you begin completing TOEFL speaking and writing practice tests, consider these TOEFL preparation tips. Keeping your sentences parallel, having sentence variety, and being more concise will help you to improve your language-use. It may be hard at first to incorporate these techniques. However, as your practice, you will improve. Make sure you are regularly recording your voice so you can evaluate your performance according to these TOEFL preparation guidelines.
Good luck!
Michael Buckhoff, mbuckhoff@aol.com