How to Succeed in the TOEFL Speaking Section #askhadar

Hello, Hadar.

I'm Bahar, I'm a new follower.

The reason I'm sending this video is,

I have a question for you, and I want to

raise my confidence in speaking skills.

My problem is with TOEFL questions.

I understand the passage, a reading passage,

and I totally understand audio.

But when the questioner tells me that I have

60 seconds to answer, I totally mess up

the words, the paraphrasing structure,

and the tense of the verbs.

And eventually, I lose time.

What should I do?

Thank you for your time.

Okay.

Hey, Bahar.

Thank you so much for this great, great question.

Now, let's begin with the fact that even I get

stressed out, if I need to organize my thoughts

and execute them in less than 60 seconds.

Sometimes it takes me time just to understand what

I'm trying to say within a minute of speaking.

And by the way, it has nothing to do with English.

It happens to me in my native language as well.

So, I can understand the pressure.

And between you and me, and everybody else

watching, I find that it's totally unfair to

test someone's speaking skills by putting them

in this type of pressure.

But we're not going to talk about that right now.

We're going to talk about how to prepare so you

can succeed in the test.

Now again, remember that if you don't succeed,

it says nothing about your English skills

and your fluency.

It really says all about how you can manage your

speaking under stress in a second language.

Which is usually not the case when we communicate.

But again, I showed my resentment to this

exercise already.

So, here is the thing.

I always say that: to get better at something,

you need to do more of that something.

That's it.

So, if you need to get better at speaking in this

timeframe of one minute about different topics,

it's not about improving your grammar, it's not

about learning more words, and it's definitely

not about improving your pronunciation.

It's all about how to organize your thoughts

really quickly and express them really quickly

in under one minute.

So, what I would recommend for you to do

is to download a list of different questions,

either from test websites, or if you just type in

"conversation topics" or "questions for English tests".

You can find a ton of lists online.

And then every day you want to practice

reading the question without preparing

in advance, thinking about it for 10 seconds.

And when you think about it, you want to

organize three ideas.

Right?

You want to organize the opening; the main

thing that you want to talk about - maybe think

of one or two examples; and then closing.

Right?

Opening, middle, and closing.

That's what you want to think about really quickly.

And then, to practice speaking while timing

yourself, okay?

Cause the skill is to do it in under one minute.

And the more you do it, the more you become

confident at your ability to do that in under one

minute, right, without getting all stressed out.

And that alone can do a lot to your

performance in the test.

Because a lot of it has to do with confidence.

Right?

You know, the video that you just sent me,

is a video of under one minute, where you

expressed a clear idea.

You were clear, your grammar was great,

your pronunciation was great.

Everything was great. Right?

I would totally pass you.

So, without knowing that you are being tested, it's easy.

So, you need to develop the skill of doing

something under pressure, preparing for the test.

Until you build that confidence in you that

it's possible for you.

Right?

So that when you get asked a question or when you get

to that part in the test, you're like, "I got this.

“This is not scary to me, I can totally do it.”

“I've done it. I know I'm able to do it again."

All right?

So that's the mindset and confidence aspect.

Now, back to the technical aspect of organizing

your thoughts clearly, that's a skill too.

Everything is a skill, right?

So, this is something that you'll be practicing

by doing it at least once a day,

again and again and again.

And if you want to get really fancy,

you can record yourself, listen to it,

give yourself some notes.

Try to implement it again, so you can

record it again.

And then the next day, think of the notes that

you've given yourself the previous day, right?

Maybe you didn't have enough examples,

or maybe your grammar was inconsistent, or maybe

you weren't very clear.

And try to focus on that in addition to, you know,

all the other things that you're focusing on

when answering the question.

But like I said, you want to get better at something -

do more of that something.

Bahar, I have no doubt that you can pass it

with flying colors.

You got to believe in yourself.

I have full faith in you.

And I can't wait for you to write back to me,

telling me that you have passed the test.

You have my support, you have the community support.

Good luck.

And I hope this helped.