How I scored 30 out of 30 on TOEFL Speaking

- Hey guys.

Welcome to my channel.

The topic of today's video is your favorite,

language exam called TOEFL.

And I'll remind you that you need TOEFL

in order to study in the US or Canada.

There are some companies that require TOEFL,

and there are some changes, recent changes to this exam,

that started in August 2019.

And a lot of those changes apply

to the speaking part of TOEFL,

which I found one of the hardest parts.

Because you can practice reading at home,

you can practice listening at home,

because the computer can check you.

But when we're talking about speaking and writing,

you just need to check everything yourself.

You need to listen to yourself,

you need to try and find mistakes that you're making,

or you would need to hire somebody

who would give you feedback.

And good news is TOEFL test is now shorter.

So they shortened it from 3.5 hours to three hours,

and the reason behind that was

there are less people taking TOEFL these days.

There are several reasons, I think,

that are behind this fact.

Because, for example, British immigration system

no longer accepts TOEFL if you want to apply

for a British student visa

because there was a lot of fraud around the exam.

But American system, Canadian system are perfectly fine

with your TOEFL test.

So TOEFL is now easier.

But there are some changes that I wanted to talk about,

and I wanted to talk about speaking part today,

and I want to give you speaking part templates.

Because they're gonna be so helpful.

When I came to my TOEFL test,

I was really, like, my main concern was the speaking part,

because I was like, "Maybe I wouldn't have those thoughts."

Like they would ask me a question

and I wouldn't know what to talk about.

But those templates actually helped me a lot

to structure everything in my head.

So I'm gonna share those templates,

and these templates are applicable to the new TOEFL test.

So if you're interested, continue watching.

Speaking now consists only of four parts:

personal choice,

campus announcement,

general to specific,

and I'm gonna explain what this means in a moment,

and academic lecture.

You're gonna receive templates

for all of them in this video.

Before I go to templates themselves,

and before I go into explaining the questions,

I also wanted to tell you that

please don't forget that there's also writing part

and there are templates for writing part.

There's also reading and listening.

And my team has created a course for you,

TOEFL Crash Course.

Because what you need in order to prepare for TOEFL

is get those templates, practice exercises,

and learn the life hacks of TOEFL.

Getting ready for TOEFL doesn't have anything to do with

brushing up your grammar or learning new words.

It has to do with cracking the techniques.

And the course that we've created together

with LinguaTrip specialists, together with a girl

who passed TOEFL and scored 119 out of 120.

So we put those techniques into that course,

so if you're about to take TOEFL,

highly recommend this course.

The link will be below.

The course consists of 14 lectures

and it lasts for two weeks,

and I think two weeks is actually the maximum

for you to prepare for TOEFL.

It took me ten days to prepare, because again,

you're not learning English,

you are just preparing for TOEFL.

You're just cracking the exam's techniques.

And you would also have access to our live stream

where you would be able to ask specific questions,

like if you were struggling with something,

if there are some things that are unclear for you,

you will have access to that live stream

during the course.

Again, the link is below.

I hope you will start your preparation today,

and my team is super happy to help.

All of my knowledge that helped me pass TOEFL

is already in that course.

The link is below.

Personal choice question.

In this question, you will be given

either two opinions about a thing

or you will be given advantages and disadvantages of a thing

and your task here is to choose

whatever suits you personally,

and talk about why you've chosen something.

So template here is really basic.

So first, you need to state your point.

You can say "I agree, I disagree with the idea"

blah blah blah, or you can say

"In my opinion, this idea is better."

By the way, if you don't want to write this down,

the PDF is below, just hit it and download it,

and you'll have everything.

We prepared everything for you guys.

"I believe that..." I'm just giving you a couple here,

but when I went to the test,

I just learned one template for each question.

Because I don't have so much memory space

to remember three different templates for one question,

and I'm only getting that question once,

so it should be fine.

You say "I agree, disagree with the first opinion"

then you go into argumenting why you agree with it.

And the transition is "I feel this way for several reasons."

So what you need to learn again,

or whatever you choose from here,

"In my opinion, the idea number one is better,"

and you name that idea.

"I feel this way for several reasons." That's it.

And then easy, first reason,

example,

second reason, example.

This is it, this is your first question template.

The last but not the least here.

You can finish with something.

If you wanna finish, you can say

"This is why I think so."

Because if you still have time in your recording,

and you wanna say something, you say

"this is why I think so"

or you don't even have to bother.

People who check your TOEFL are just looking for

whatever I've given you before,

but what happened to me during the exam,

I saw that I still had like seven seconds,

and I'm like "Oh my God, seven seconds is a lot!

Maybe I should say something!"

And I was like "uhhhhhh" and then the recording stopped.

Didn't affect my score, but if you want to avoid

confusion like that, because I was totally confused,

I was like "Oh my God, what are they gonna think

about my speaking part?"

So if you wanna avoid that, learn this phrase.

Again, it's gonna be faster with the other templates.

But what I want you to remember:

you pick up one phrase, and you only learn 4 phrases

for this part. For example: "I believe that

cars are better than airplanes,

I feel this way for several reasons.

First reason, you can enjoy the view.

Second reason, you spend less money.

This is why I think so." That's it.

Of course you need to get deeper into the problem

that is discussed in this question,

but you're ready, like learn this template

and you're good to go.

Another quick tip from me if you are unsure of some words.

If you heard something for the first time,

if you're like "Oh, I remember this amazing fancy phrase

that might sound very American and I wanna use it,

but I'm using it for the first time"

don't do that during the exam please.

Only use phrases that you're 100 percent sure of.

You're gonna be penalized more

for using a phrase in a wrong context

than for using very basic phrases.

So always stick to basic phrases,

don't try to be sophisticated without

understanding what's going on, okay?

Second task is one of my favorite.

It's called Campus Announcement.

Why I like it, because it brings me back

to my student life.

You're gonna hear a real announcement,

well, 'real' exam announcement,

around 45 seconds, usually 100 words,

and then you're gonna hear students talking.

And when you hear students talking,

there is normally some background noise,

they're probably in a cafeteria,

or outside, and they're discussing this announcement,

and a student would give you a couple of reasons

why he likes it or she likes it,

or maybe he doesn't like it.

In this task, you will be required to summarize

those two reasons that the student noticed.

Sometimes they also ask you to

summarize the college announcement.

So my advice for this task is to write

every detail that you think is important down.

So you will have your piece of paper,

you will have your pencil.

Write down whatever numbers that you hear,

like they might say "In August 2020,

we're gonna open new campus, which is..."

And you're writing 'August 2020, new campus.'

"We're gonna open it, ten minutes' drive from here."

And you're writing 'ten minutes' drive.'

"And there's gonna be a bus shuttle..."

and you're gonna be 'bus shuttle'

"...every five minutes..."

And you're writing those, like, small details.

You don't have to write every single word.

But try and practice that at home,

because that's really important.

When completing this task,

when you start your speaking part,

you say "The campus announcement talked about

a new campus opening soon, blah blah blah."

Then "according to..."

This would probably be the student.

Or "According to Jane, this is a bad thing"

or whatever, she would tell you what she thinks

and you're gonna restate it.

"And there are two reasons...

that the student...

or he or she mentions".

And I'm sorry here, something really important.

You need to be in one tense, okay?

Because there are mentions,

college announcement talks about.

It's good that I made this kind of mistake,

because I just want your attention here.

You need to stay in one tense.

So "The campus announcement talks about blah blah blah,

according to the student, it's a bad thing to happen,

and there are two reasons that the student mentions.

First reason is that students would

have to spend more time transferring

from one campus to another.

Second reason is that they already have a great campus,

and she doesn't understand why the university

needs to invest so much money into building new things

instead of giving out financial aid to students."

I'm just coming up with those things,

but you're gonna hear them in the recording.

That's it.

Again, if you still have time,

you can say "This is why Jane..." or whoever "...thinks so."

But if you don't have time,

don't even bother to finish your speech.

Because with emphasizing the second reason,

you're actually done with the task.

Task number 3, From General to Specific.

What's gonna happen in this task,

you're gonna have a text about a specific phenomenon.

I don't know, cities in the US, how they are structured.

Second, you're gonna hear a professor or a lecturer

talking for approximately a minute and a half

about one particular city, for example San Francisco,

like the way it's laid out, how the streets are named, etc.

Then they will ask you a question

regarding the lecture that you've heard,

and you will have 30 seconds to prepare

and 60 seconds to talk.

Again, super useful to have all of those templates

because while you're pronouncing

what you've already learned,

what I'm giving you here,

when you're pronouncing this, you can

actually think of the answer itself.

You can actually think of the information.

And again, when you're listening to the lecture,

please write down all the details

so you can look at your piece of paper

and read from it as well.

And also do the same for the article

that you're reading at the beginning of the task.

So, the first phrase that you're gonna start with

"The article discusses" or "addresses" or whatever.

The PDF is below, so you can have more options.

"The article discusses a typical layout of American cities.

From that article, we learn that the streets are named

First, Second, Third, and then they're crossed

by other streets that are named blah blah blah."

So you're just paraphrasing whatever it was in the article.

You can also use the phrase "The reading states that."

Maybe it states something about

how people came up with this rule.

Then we go to the lecture.

For this part, explaining what was in the article,

you spend 10 to 13 seconds maximum.

And then you transition to the example

that was given by a professor or a lecturer.

And you start this transition by a phrase

"Professor" or "Lecturer" or whoever there is,

"provides an example of a typical American city layout

by talking about San Francisco."

And then you go deeper into explaining what he said.

"First of all, he mentions that San Francisco

was built in the eighteenth century

and the rules were followed really carefully,

blah blah blah."

"In addition, he says that there are 14 streets

in San Francisco that go from the ocean to Silicon Valley,

and they are crossed by blah blah blah."

Everything that you've written down,

like all the details, try to insert them here.

Most of your score for this task

comes from this, from explaining

what the professor said.

Because this is the core part of your task.

And you should spend around 37 seconds on this part.

And this is why I say it's really important

to have all the details, and the more details

you will be able to mention,

the better you will be able to structure your answer,

the more points you're gonna get for this task.

And spend 3 seconds here on your conclusion.

"The example clearly illustrates

a typical layout of an American city."

That's it, 3 seconds, your answer is complete.

Task number 4, Academic Lecture.

The lecture's gonna last for 1.5 to 2 minutes,

and it's gonna discuss an academic concept or a term,

and it's gonna be illustrated with 2 examples,

and they're gonna be kind of opposite examples,

like before and after, or maybe cause and effect,

and mostly the lecture will talk about those examples.

So the introduction of a concept itself

is like 3 to 5 sentences,

and then the lecturer or professor

goes into explaining the examples.

I think when I was passing my TOEFL,

I had something about reptiles.

They had an example of two different kinds of reptiles

and how they give birth to their babies,

and he was talking about like laying eggs in the sand

and protecting your kids from, turtles' kids,

from birds, and the other example was some other reptile

that would just lay eggs and go away.

I had to summarize two of those examples.

So basically, I'm gonna teach you how to do that.

You're gonna get something very similar.

Again, the topic can be completely different,

but the structure's gonna be the same,

so the template is super useful.

"The lecture is about..."

And you mention the specific subject here.

"The lecture is about how reptiles give birth..."

"Which is laying eggs in the sand." Whatever.

So you give details here.

Then you go into the examples.

"First, the professor states that..."

"First, the professor states that

there's a type of reptiles that take care of their eggs.

For example, Mediterranean turtles." Or whatever.

And you talked about the first example.

By the way, this is 3 to 5 sentences,

and the same for the second example.

So your parts have to be kind of similar.

"Second, the professor notes that

there's another type of turtles,

and that type doesn't care about its babies.

For instance..." And you see how I'm using

different introductory phrases and words?

Because you need to sound different,

and by learning this,

you're gonna sound different every time.

"Instance, Atlantic turtles..."

I have no idea about the turtles,

I'm just giving you examples.

And again, this is 3 to 5 sentences.

Again, here you don't need to finish exactly,

because the task is to summarize those two examples,

but you can always say "These are two examples

that the professor discusses in the lecture."

Or whoever it was, okay?

When I say 'professor,' you might have a lecturer,

or you might have just a student presenting something,

so make sure you replace this.

That's it.

Let's summarize your strategy for the speaking part.

That was it, by the way, 4 questions, that's it.

New TOEFL, you're ready.

First, learn the templates.

They're gonna be so helpful.

They were the most helpful thing for me

during my speaking part.

And writing templates were the

most helpful thing for me for the writing part.

And you can find the writing templates in our course,

in our TOEFL course.

Second, write things down.

All the important details should be written down.

The third advice is actually practice taking notes at home.

Because you need to be like a journalist,

like you see them sometimes on the news like

writing things down very quickly.

Practice taking notes in English.

Fourth, enroll in our TOEFL course.

And this is from me.

Because it's gonna be super useful

in structuring everything you already have in your head

and adding some more methods

that are gonna be helpful during your exam.

Again, all the useful links are below.

Thank you so much for watching this video.

Watch my other videos about TOEFL,

get ready for your exam, and ace it!

And ace it means score from 100 to 120.

All the best, see you soon.