How to Take Better Notes in TOEFL Speaking

all right it's test day and you've just started your toefl speaking test now you're gonna listen to a short recording and then you're gonna summarize it and the only thing you can do to prepare is make notes what are you gonna do i'm mark i'm one of the expert toefl teachers here at e2 test prep and today we'll be looking at how to take better notes so that you can ace your toefl speaking test so just a reminder of part four of the speaking test in this part of the test you're going to listen to a lecture and you're going to make notes you'll have then 20 seconds to prepare your response and 60 seconds to deliver your response and it's very strict after 60 seconds the recording will stop now before we get into the strategy for taking notes let's just review a few of the general tips for preparing for the speaking test the first thing i do want you to remember you absolutely need to build your listening habits you could listen to the radio such as abc national radio or bbc radio they are fantastic sources the more you listen every day or at least a few times a week the more comfortable you're gonna be listening on test day secondly keep on building your vocabulary the more you listen and the more you read the better your vocabulary is going to be and the more you're going to see these keywords that you need to know to get that higher score now remember you don't need to be an expert on any of the topics that you might hear about on the test the test is designed to test your english not your knowledge of the subject however the more comfortable you are and the wider the range of vocabulary you have the easier this is going to be so do check in with yourself are you reading enough are you listening enough remember when you get to university after the toefl exam you're going to do a lot of reading and listening so you might as well start now another key point is of course practice taking notes this is really important very often my students will tell me mark i can't listen and take notes at the same time i can't focus or pay attention to which i always say practice if you practice taking notes while listening you'll figure it out it might be difficult the first time the first three times the first six times but with enough practice it'll be simple and once again when you get to university this is a skill you will need and finally stick around to the end and i'll give you some homework that you can do that will definitely definitely help you with your note-taking alright now getting onto the test you're going to hear a short lecture on an academic topic it could be psychology sociology literature music it could be a wide range of topics the first thing that's going to happen is you're going to get a focus and a definition so the professor in the lecture is going to introduce the topic and then he's going to define the topic so the first thing you need to make notes of is what that focus is and what the definition is after that this is where you have to be careful a lot of teachers and a lot of advice is to focus on key words and that's not wrong but what i really want you to think about is how do the ideas in the lecture connect with each other how do they connect with the main topic and the definition and there's a few different ways that they might connect the first one and one that i think is really important to be familiar with and it's the one that we're going to focus on today is cause and effect so this is any kind of idea that is connected with words like as a result or due to because of these short chunks of language are really going to help you understand how things are connecting and that's really telling you what the key ideas are that you should be focused on because it's connecting these ideas so watch out for cause and effect another one that you could look for is something i call how it works how it works is simply taking a concept and then kind of giving you a step-by-step technique about how it works what it is supposed to do or how you can do it another final one might be a sort of problem solution relationship so imagine if we had a topic like climate change they might talk about what climate change is and then offer a number of solutions it's really a good one to think about that one connects nicely with cause and effect as well because you may have climate change as a problem and the causes of climate change or the effects of climate change so really think about how the ideas connect together and try to listen for that when you're practicing now let's look at a set of notes for a imaginary topic that you might get on your toefl test on test day so here i've just gotten type 2 diabetes all right that is our topic so i've got the topic and then i've got the definition which is the body unable to use glucose properly now my notes here uh these are my short notes i might keep them a bit shorter in the real test it's not very important that your notes say look exactly like this but just to be clear i've put them here this way then i've got the cause and you can see here insulin cells damaged lack of insulin and therefore too much sugar in the blood and not in cells so again i've just got a simple idea here and the relationship of this information is that it is the cause of type 2 diabetes and then we've got three more potential causes of type 2 diabetes poor diet and you can see i've made notes here lack of exercise and i've got a few details there and finally hormonal problems and i've noted that it's rare and you can see i've added some notes there to explain it so this is really important not only do i have the information organized but i'm also thinking about how all of this information connects together so get out your pencil and paper we're going to practice you're going to hear a lecture the kind of lecture you might hear in your toefl speaking test and i want you to take notes i want you to identify the topic and the definition and then i want you to get the causes that are mentioned and any notes you make you should be picking up the words that reference the cause of the problem that we talk about and by the way if this is your first time doing it don't worry about it if you do well fantastic if you don't do that well just practice more stick around to the end because you'll get a little tip on how to improve that score extinction in biology the dine out or termination of a species extinction occurs when species are diminished because of environmental forces habitat fragmentation global change over expectation of species for human use or because of evolutionary changes in their members genetic inbreeding poor reproduction decline in population numbers firstly many species have become extinct because of hunting and over harvesting the conversion of wetlands and forests to croplands in urban areas pollution the introduction of invasive species and other forms of human cause destruction of their natural environments indeed current rates of human induced extinctions are estimated to be about 1 000 times greater than the past natural rates of extinction leading some scientists to call modern times the sixth mass extinction this high extinction rate is largely due to the exponential growth in human numbers from about 1 billion in 1850 the world's population reached 2 billion in 1930 and more than 6 billion in 2000 and is expected to reach about 10 billion by 2050 additionally as a result of increasing human populations habitat loss is the greatest factor in current levels of extinction for example less than one-sixth of the land area of europe has remained unmodified by human activity and more than half of all wildlife habitat has been eliminated in more than four-fifths of countries in the paleo tropics africa asia and indonesia furthermore increased levels of greenhouse gases have begun to alter the world's climate with slowly increasing surface temperatures expected by the middle of the 21st century to force many species to migrate towards the poles and up mountain slopes in order to remain in habitats with the same climate conditions most ecologists conversation biologists and climate scientists worry that global warming will contribute greatly to species extinctions all these factors have increased the number of threatened species almost one in four mammal species including four of the six remaining species of great apes and one in eight bird species were considered at significant risk of extinction at the start of the 21st century in addition the world wildlife fund noted in a 2016 report that the vertebrate population overall declined by 58 between 1970 and 2010. all right so let's compare our notes now you'll see up here at the top i've got my topic and my definition i've got extinction which was the main topic and i've written die out species now remember these are just notes so i'm not really worried about subject verb agreement or word order i'm just getting the ideas down that i need so that i can remember those key ideas so you're never writing full sentences you're not worried about third person singular or correct prepositions just get the information down next you can see i've got cause environmental problem all right i would definitely recommend having a shorter word for environmental on your test you don't want to write that whole word out habitat destruction global change over exploitation these were all key words that came up as causes and then we had inbreeding poor reproduction and decline in population again be very careful when you're practicing and getting ready for your toefl the words that are here if you're looking for a good score on the toefl these words should not have been too challenging for you so make sure you're building your vocab and listening all right back to the causes the first cause they mentioned which was a keep one was human caused now you can see my notes are a little bit backwards and that's fine but they talked about human causes which were hunting over harvesting and then i've got details and you can see here conversion to crops where i believe they were saying land that is converted for crops um they mentioned that humans have caused 1 000 times more can land change than in the past again the notes just have to be very simple um and then they also mentioned how in the modern times this could be called the sixth mass extinction event we also had exponential growth in human population again this is what's causing uh extinction of species and again another detail here more than 6 billion people in 2000 10 billion in 2050 do i need that piece of information maybe maybe not i do have it written there remember if you write something down you don't necessarily have to use it i'm not sure i would use that in an answer but it was a key data point that i had showing that it could get worse the next cause was habitat loss and you can see my notes here cover that less than 1 6 of the land is unmodified now which means we've changed most of the land on the planet there was the detail about animal habitats being eliminated and it was a particular problem in africa and asia so again all of this is related to the cause of the problem which is species dying out habitat loss and the details finally we've got greenhouse gases they've altered the climate and species are migrating to the poles again the details support the cause which supports the definition then at the end i've got a few points on the effect so at the end of the lecture they mentioned that more species were being threatened including many great apes species and one in eighth of birds were at risk of extinction uh and finally there was also a decline in vertebrate populations uh over 40 years so all of these details here are the effect so throughout this whole lecture we've had a defining issue which is extinction of animals they've talked about the causes and then very briefly at the end they've mentioned some of the effects so not every toefl speaking test part 4 task will be like this but many of them will be and it is good when you're listening to any part of the test whether it's the listening test or other parts of the speaking or the writing test it is good to think about how ideas connect together and cause effect is a very common one that they talk about so based on my notes i might give an answer like this in the lecture the professor talked about extinction which is defined as the dying out of species he refers to the causes which include environmental destruction habitat destruction climate change as well as over exploitation of animals and plants and he also talks about how genetic problems as a result of inbreeding or poor reproduction can result in declines in population the main causes for some of these problems are first of all human causes and this could be through hunting or over harvesting the professor mentions how converting land to agricultural land has caused some of this decline and that humans have accelerated this and that it may even be a sixth mass extinction event because there's been exponential growth in the human population projected to reach 10 billion by 2050. another cause is habitat loss very little of our land is now unmodified we've eliminated about half of the natural animal habitats and this has particularly been a problem in africa and asia a final point that was mentioned is greenhouse gases this is altering the climate and it's making the climate warmer causing species to migrate to the poles at a very accelerated rate as a result of this we've seen an increase in species going extinct including putting animals like some of the great apes and birds at significant risk there has even been a decline in vertebrate populations between 1970 and 2010. so there you go no preparation i just had my notes and i gave that response there so that's it does it seem easy hard remember the more you practice the easier it's going to get you don't have to worry too much about memorizing any pieces of language focus on making sure that you've understood how the ideas connect together the more you practice that the easier it will be to then learn language like you might have heard me say this has resulted in or you know the professor mentions you need to understand how the ideas connect first then think about the language you're going to use to describe those connections so remember if you need some extra help with this you can absolutely contact e2 and get a one-on-one with one of our experts you can take live toefl classes with us here at e2 and you can submit your writing and speaking for feedback and as promised a little tip you can use to practice building your listening and taking skills now i'm sure many of you have come across a wonderful little website called ted.com that's ted.com and they have these very interesting sometimes spectacular motivational inspiring talks on a wide range of topics now some of these videos have wonderful wonderful talks between 10 and 20 minutes about pretty serious problems facing our planet that might be health related with obesity it could be car ownership and pollution it could be climate change all of these topics are in there and what i would recommend doing is maybe just taking a piece of paper and drawing something like this into your notebook write problem and solution in the middle and then on either side cause and effect then go find some of the ted talks we'll put links to some of the best ones in the description so check out these ones in the description of this video and go have a listen and when you're listening don't worry about key words or or every single word i just want you to identify the problems the causes of the problem the effects of the problem and the solutions and if possible the effect of the solution and by the way the effect of the solution is going to be the opposite of the problem there's a pro tip for you that's it for us today here at e2 i'm mark i'm always happy to help you out with your toefl needs and i'll see you next time [Music] you

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Id: 2UqeFgubsm8

Length: 20min 46sec (1246 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 01 2021