Five TOEFL Reading Mistakes And How to Avoid Them

[Applause] what's up TOEFL takers my name is Josh and welcome to the video all about the TOEFL reading section so if you're watching this you're probably preparing for the test and the reading section is pretty hard so you want to make sure that you study the right way so in this video I'm gonna tell you five common mistakes I've seen dozens of students make over the years teaching TOEFL and I'm gonna show you how to avoid them and what you should do instead okay so let's just jump right into it and let me start with a little bit about myself first of all when I was a high school student I didn't like to read very much sorry so I didn't like to read very much but a lot changed after that and I read a lot but at first I really didn't like reading that much and I wasn't interested this is supposed to be a picture of me looking very sad and having to read in high school so I didn't like to read very much but I did well in my classes because I was looking for answers to the questions I wasn't really trying to read out of enjoyment or read to understand the story instead what I would do is I would look at the questions first and then I would read four and I wouldn't really read I would scan for the answer and that's pretty much how you should approach the TOEFL reading in general is that you want to look at the reading passage like a puzzle puzzles are more interesting the reading passage follows a structure introduction a couple body paragraphs and a conclusion and if you understand the structure of how an essay is written for the TOEFL then you'll be able to answer the questions a little bit better one mistake that students make pretty often and I pretty sure it's one of the ones here yeah so let me just jump right into the first one is that you read the passage first so that's a problem because you don't have enough time okay this is the kind of TOEFL rookie mistake once you take a couple practice tests you realize that Wow 20 minutes answering about 13 to 15 questions and reading a 700 word passage is pretty difficult to do in 20 minutes so what you have to do instead is is that you have to read and look at the questions at the same time okay now there's some debate about what you can do a lot of students like to scan the passage so what that means is is that before you start to answer the questions you kind of read the most important information usually it's in the first sentence of the paragraph and the last sentence of the paragraph of each paragraph and then start answering the questions or some students just read the title of the essay and then start answering the questions it's really up to you but you really are not going to have enough time to read and then answer the questions so the reason why this works is because you the questions go in the same order as the reading so you look at the questions and you're reading at the same time okay so you're more focus first mistake don't do it okay second mistake is students don't take notes yes it's very important for you to take notes in the reading section now why do I say this this is not notes like that you would take in a class this is more like showing you how to make sure that you eliminate before you choose your answer what do I mean okay so let's say for example I have a little bit of space here so let's say for example number one I look at number one and you shouldn't answer the question immediately the first thing you should do is think which one is not correct which one can I eliminate okay so on your scrap paper what you do is is that okay I don't think it's a and then you go to B C and D and you look at that Oh B might be the answer but I know C is definitely not the answer okay C's not the answer and then okay I have B and D left okay I'm pretty sure it's B and then on the computer you put in B okay so that's really important because it organizes your thoughts another way that you should take notes is the same way but let's go back to the same question let's say for example I eliminate a I eliminate C I'm not sure if it's B or D but I need to move on I'm running at a time so what I would do is is that I would just pick one either B or D and I would circle that number and what that means is that I will go back to check my answer later if I have time okay so that's why it's important to take notes when you are doing the reading passage again buy notes I only mean this you don't have to write any notes about the content you just have to write notes about okay it's not a it's not C I'm not sure about this one okay so that helps you organize your thoughts and will help you when you go back later okay cuz sometimes you're not sure of the answer and you want to go back and check again okay let me move on the next one is you never review answers okay so this is about the way that you practice when you practice the first thing you should do is practice TOEFL like material TOEFL test you should sit down and for example if you have one reading passage you sit down for 20 minutes and you try to finish that test okay in 20 minutes and answer all the questions but after you answer the questions make sure you check your answers okay so you check your answers that's great but you don't know why you got something wrong you just say oh I got a score out of 10 oh I got a score out of 20 and then you move on to another passage nope don't do that which you should be doing instead is that you should be focused on one passage and trying to understand what you should first of all be able to explain why you're correct and then you want to be able to explain why you're incorrect you want to make sure you do those two things very important that you review and if you want to download a free test we actually have one at TOEFL speaking teacher comm you can download a free copy of the complete test that we have and that's pretty much what you will see on the TOEFL exam sit down try to do those passages and then you can kind of see not only what your level is but also what you can expect okay next one we're on practice type yeah so some people don't study TOEFL material instead they watch too much YouTube for example so you need to practice the TOEFL okay so for these two mistakes they're pretty much in the same category is that you have to watch YouTube videos you know get some advice get some information from teachers but then you have to like sit down and do it that's where the learning is gonna come from when you actually sit down with a passage and do this thing okay and then you're like okay I got that question wrong why did I get that wrong what did i do incorrect what did I do correct and when you start analyzing yourself and analyzing your strengths and weaknesses like that then you're gonna get a much much much higher score and you're gonna really improve okay so that's it five mistakes if you want some more advice please visit our website Topol speaking futurecom thank you for watching if you made it this far this is amazing because there are millions of things you can do right now but you are studying for the TOEFL and I appreciate that and I hope that you got some value out of this let me know you can email me Josh it's hopeful speaking future comm I read every single email okay I guess good luck take care of Baba [Music]

Channel: TST Prep TOEFL

Views: 235,096

Keywords: TOEFL reading mistakes, TOEFL Reading Help, TOEFL Reading Guide, TOEFL Reading Section, Josh MacPherson, vocabulary ninja, toeflspeakingteacher

Id: wT549MuFgsw

Length: 8min 15sec (495 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 29 2017