Master TOEFL Integrated Speaking task 2 - 2020 edition

hey this is Dennis with best my test comm and welcome back to our TOEFL speaking section series today we're going to talk about speaking tasks - if you're looking for speaking tasks one you can click the link down in the description it'll take you to our video on that on speaking task one so today we're gonna talk about all about speaking tasks - we're gonna cover the structure of the test and then we're gonna go over an example question together I'll give you some answer templates I'll also give you some expressions used to to express your opinion some sentence patterns to express your opinions and finally we'll finish up with the most important part which is the grading rubric alright let's get started with the structure all right speaking tasks - on the old TOEFL this was speaking task 3 and now it's speaking task 2 this is an integrated style question that means you're going to read a passage and listen to a conversation so first up is the reading passage this is about 100 words and you have 50 seconds to read it usually it's a campus announcement or a letter published in the campus newspaper or an article published in the campus newspaper now they all deal with a change either a change that just happened or one that is proposed to happen soon after you read that you're gonna listen to a conversation it's between two people a man and a woman and one of them is going to give a very clear opinion about the change or the proposed change and then that person is gonna list two reasons why he or she holds that opinion after you listen the conversation then you're gonna see a question and it might look something like this the woman expresses her opinion about the announcement state her opinion and explained the reasons that she holds that opinion after you after you hear that question you're gonna have 30 seconds to prepare and then 60 seconds to answer the question does that make sense okay now you understand the structure of speaking tasks - let's walk through an example together now remember you only have 50 seconds to read the passage and during that 50 seconds you want to take notes but you don't want to take too many notes some students they spend way too much time taking notes on very little details that are not important so from the reading what you want to take away is the change number one thing you want to know about is the change and then if you feel confident take notes on one or two details but that's it okay so in a minute we're gonna in a second we're gonna put on put a reading passage on the screen and it's gonna be on the screen for 50 seconds just like a test so you can use it right now as an example as to mimic a test alright here we go you okay so you just finished reading the passage now this isn't in the conversation but first let me show you my notes from the passage so I wrote down the change r1 r2 that stands for reason one reason to the university wants to reduce heating costs by turning down the temperature in buildings after 5 p.m. on workdays and all day on weekends and they think this will not have a negative effect on student studies okay now if that seems like a lot to you no big deal that's okay focus on the change the change is the most important part and if you have any time or brain power left and feel free to feel free to take down additional notes now before we listen to the conversation let me show you my note structure for that so I'm gonna make a little table I have male and female at the top man or woman because I know it's probably gonna be one of those two and then I have reason one reason two on the side on the left side and then as I'm listening to the conversation I'm just gonna fill in the chart when I hear the first reason I'm gonna write that in if it's the man talking I'm gonna write under him if it's the woman under her pretty straightforward okay so let's go ahead and listen to that conversation now listen to the two people discussing the passage you just read what on earth is the university thinking you're talking about their plan to put us in the freezer after 5:00 every day yes and don't forget weekends don't they realize that those buildings are used after hours as well my study group meets there for example can't you move to the library there are not enough rooms reserved for group meetings in the library can you imagine what would happen if all the study groups met in the general study areas the noise would disturb everyone trying to study in silence I get your point lots of people would be stuck without a meeting place especially in the middle of winter what do you think is the solution well for starters they should pay a company that specializes in energy efficiency to help them make these buildings more energy efficient I am sure they will be told to replace those old windows if they can control he lost through windows and walls by using better insulation they can save a lot of energy you mean invest in new technology and building material now to save energy later exactly you okay so that's speaking tasks too and it's it's pretty simple it's pretty easy as long as you pay attention it can really get those two reasons out of the conversation that's the most essential part now because it's pretty straightforward some students get a little bit cocky and during their 30 seconds of prep time they get lazy they relax they don't really do much that's a bad idea you really want to take those 30 seconds to prepare your notes and prepare your the structure of your answer right and we'll go through that now all right here are my notes on the conversation so as you can see I only wrote something down underneath the female underneath the woman so she disagrees pretty straightforward the classroom is used for group meetings the library doesn't have enough meeting rooms the solution improving insulation and reducing heat loss through windows and walls so when I'm taking notes what I want to be able to do is afterwards when I'm prepping for the question is that I can go through them really quickly and really refresh my memory on what I heard and then from the notes I know that the I know that that's the woman who disagrees and I know why she disagrees but sometimes it's difficult to write down all the details during the conversation so do your best and try to write down as many as you can without sacrificing your listening comprehension I'm gonna say that again because it's more it's important you must comprehend what you hear before you can take notes on it so make sure you understand and then with whatever listening and brainpower he's got left take notes and focus on those two reasons all right the bottom line is you need to organize your thoughts clearly within your 30 seconds of prep time don't waste it don't relax use it all right so now let's move on to the answer part and have a detailed look at how best to answer this question all right so to get a high score on this task you must your answer must cover all of the following you must say what the campus passage is about you must say what the student main opinion is and then you must give the two reasons for that opinion your answer has to have all three of those things so here's an answer template that we recommend it's going to cover two scenarios one is for when this area is for scenario where the student agrees and the others for when a student disagrees here we go so agree the man or woman agrees with the announcement or the letter of the article whichever is appropriate which is about and there's a blank there and the blank you put in the change what is the proposed change there are two reasons why the man supports the announcement one reason is that and there you go give your answer another reason is that and there you add the second reason therefore the reasons are why the man believes that whatever is a good idea okay so the disagree is pretty similar you're really just gonna you're gonna change agrees to disagrees with right the woman disagrees with the announcement which is about the topic there are two reasons why the woman opposes right that's an important word opposes the announcement one reason is that and there you list her first reason another reason is that and there you list your second reason and therefore in conclusion you can say therefore these reasons are why the woman believes that whatever the topic is not a good idea okay just to remind you it's more important to focus on the opinion and the two reasons so if you don't have time for a conclusion that's okay focus on those two reasons and the main opinion all right let's try to answer this question using a template the woman disagrees with the announcement which is about the university's plan to reduce heating costs they want to lower the temperature in classroom buildings after 5:00 p.m. during the week and for the entire weekend the woman disagrees with this plan for two reasons one reason is that even though there may not be classes in the building's students still use them for group meetings the alternative is to use the library for these meetings but there's not enough dedicated meeting space to accommodate all the after hour group activities another reason is that she feels there's a better solution to reduce heating costs instead of lowering the temperature the university can invent invest in improving the overall energy efficiency of the buildings by improving insulation and reducing heat loss through windows and walls therefore the woman believes that lowering the temperature in classroom buildings after five o'clock every workday and on weekends is a bad idea alright notice that in this template we use agree with disagree with support and oppose to report the opinion there are other words and phrases that we can use to express our support or opposition for example we can say be in favor of or to approve of for expressing support let's take a look at two examples there are two reasons why the woman is in favor of the change the woman approves of the new rule to reduce paper waste likewise you can use you can be against something you can be an opposition to something you can be opposed to something instead of oppose something so here's some examples there are two reasons why the woman is against the announcement there are two reasons why the woman is in opposition to the announcement there are two reasons why the woman is opposed to the announcement all right look I know it's a lot of information I'm sorry sorry not sorry but I just want to talk to you about these things because there are very common mistakes that students made for example I've seen students saying something like the ax man agrees for the campus announcement or the man is in favor for the announcement or even the man opposed to the letter published in the newspaper prepositions can be tricky so the correct way of saying these things should be the ax man agrees with the campus announcement the man is in favor of the announcement the man opposed the letter published in the newspaper or the man is opposed to the letter published in the newspaper it's really important that you that you use the correct preposition I cannot overstate that all right I hope you now have a you know how to report an opinion using different expressions but if you want to just keep it simple use the word support and oppose in your response there's nothing wrong with that in fact it's better to use a simple expression correctly than a more advanced expression incorrectly so my advice to you is just follow the template and practice as many questions as you can keep it simple alright we're almost done with today's lessons let's look at the most important part the grading rubric alright so here's the rubrics table for the TOEFL integrated speaking tasks you can download it from ETS there's a link here on the screen and there's also one below down below in the description so I'm not going to go over the ETS description I'll leave that for you to to look at but I am going to kind of talk about it in normal everyday simplified English so the first criterion is general description and here you need to answer the question directly make sure you answer the question some students they having a great elaborate answer but they forget to answer the question so keep it simple stay on topic and make sure that it's easy for the TOEFL rater to follow very important all right the next is topic development so here the key word is transition make sure using transition words correctly adequately and appropriately you want to make sure you have at least two or three in your answer so that your idea flows smoothly from one idea to the next so and remember that the examiner expects you to answer the following thing your answers should talk about what the reading passage is about the students may an opinion and there are two reasons for that opinion make sure your answer has all three of those things next up is delivery and here you want to speak in a calm clear and natural manner and top tip remember natural comes from caring so if you can care about the topic you're going to sound more natural more fluent your pronunciation and intonation should allow the TOEFL raters to easily follow what you're saying now this this criterion in particular often separates scores on the speaking section that are higher than 26 and scores that are lower so if your if your goal is to get above a 26 spend extra time here and make sure that you're speaking in a natural fluent way all right last but definitely not least is language use you want to make sure that your sentences use different structures you don't want to speak the same way all the time that sounds like a robot that's not natural you also want to make sure using correct vocabulary like I said a moment ago advanced vocabulary is great if you can use it correctly and it's terrible if you can't use it correctly so make sure that you are using words that you are sure you know how to use otherwise you might it might backfire on you all right so that's the criteria for getting a high score on speaking tasks - all right you made it to the end congratulations well done so just a quick recap we talked about TOEFL speaking tasks to the structure of it we gave you an example answer a template to use to answer the question as well as many useful expressions and then we cover what I think is the most important part and that's the criteria for scoring well on this test on this task I hope you found this video useful if you want some more practice for speaking tasks too as well as the other questions on the speaking section go to our website ww-wait Escom we've got plenty of questions there and we're adding more all the time in our next video we're going to cover speaking task 3 now it's an integrated question as well but it's more difficult and it's more difficult because it's an academic question it talks about an academic topic so make sure you check out that video all right if you've got any questions please leave them in the comments and get to you as soon as we can please keep watching and see you guys in the next video

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Keywords: yt:cc=on, TOEFL, TOEFL lesson, TOEFL lessons, TOEFL questions, TOEFL speaking, TOEFL question, TOEFL score, TOEFL strategy, TOEFL tips, TOEFL tricks, BestMyTest, TOEFL practice, TOEFL practice test, TOEFL test, TOEFL reading, TOEFL listening, TOEFL writing, TOEFL speaking test, TOEFL listening practice test, TOEFL writing practice test, TOEFL reading practice test

Id: YSviqER8oUs

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 01 2020