Master TOEFL Speaking Task 1 - 2020 Edition

hi I'm Dennis with best my test comm welcome to our new series on the TOEFL speaking section as you probably already know the TOEFL changed on August 1st 2019 the entire TOEFL test changed including the speaking section so that's what this video series is about we're gonna help you we're gonna tell you what change and how to best prepare for it there used to be six questions on the test and now there's only four questions on the speaking section this video in particular we're going to talk about speaking task one and if you've already been preparing for the TOEFL that's good news why well because the old speaking task two is now the new speaking task one it's the same questions just the first question now the timings the same so that means you're gonna have fifteen seconds to prepare your answer and then forty-five seconds to talk sound good alright let's get into it alright let's get into the important part here's what we're gonna walk through in this video we're gonna talk about the four common question styles on the TOEFL speaking task one and then I'm gonna give you two speaking templates for TOEFL speaking task one and then I'm going to show you four speaking sample answers and then finally we're gonna wrap it up with a TOEFL rubric like how the TOEFL task is graded so first let's look at the four common question styles on speaking tasks one all right the first style is agree or disagree and in this question you're going to read a statement and then you're gonna have to give your opinion whether you agree or disagree with it for example you might read something like this do you agree or disagree with the following statement higher education means a better career use details and examples to support your explanation all right moving on so the next question style is called preference and it's similar to agree or disagree you're gonna say which of two choices you prefer so for example you might read something like this some people like to finish watching a TV series in a short period of time others like to watch one or two episodes per week or per month which do you prefer use details and examples to support your explanation all right so the next one is a little bit more complicated and that's the three choices question style and it's more complicated because instead of two things you have three things for example you might read something like which one would you like to choose for your final project giving a presentation writing a paper or creating a video last but not least and this one's the most complex and it's the most complex because you have to give two sides of an issue or a topic and this is called advantages and disadvantages so for this one you might read a sample a question such as some students work while attending University discuss the advantages and disadvantages of having a part-time job at school all right so out of these four question styles you're most likely going to see preference or the agreed disagree question style so you really want to focus on these two and make sure you can nail them but you can't neglect the other two because they show up as well and they're a little bit more complicated so you want to spend some time with them now this is the new TOEFL and these are the four question styles on the new TOEFL but I've got a bit of bad news for you and that is sometimes questions from the old TOEFL show up as well so you might see two styles from the O TOEFL as well and these are if imaginary and description so if imaginary gives you a hypothetical situation and it wants you to explain what you would do or what you would choose so you might read something like this if you had a small amount of money would you spend it right away or save it use details and examples to support your explanation and the last one is description so description or explanation question will ask you to describe a serpent a certain type of person especially the good qualities of a person they might these questions might ask you why something is beneficial or useful important or significant you for example you might read something like should using cell phones be permitted while driving use details and examples to support your explanation so I suggest you go through a few examples of these questions as well because you might seem on the TOEFL exam okay six questions that's a lot to prepare right yes but no and if you think about it all six of these questions they're asking you for the same thing what are they asking you they're asking you to give your opinion about something and then support that opinion with details and examples right it's all the same thing so you can prepare for them in more or less the same way which brings me to our next point in the video the speaking template so you're gonna start by giving your main point your main idea your opinion in one or two sentences and then you're going to go on to the first supporting point and you're going to talk about that for two to three sentences and then you're going to talk about the second supporting point also two to three sentences and then if you have time you'll give one short concluding sentence that's the speaking template that's it okay now let's look at some speaking templates okay for a first template we're going to use the following example question do you agree or disagree that daily homework is necessary for students use details and examples to support your explanation so you'll start off and you'll say I agree or I disagree with the idea that daily homework is good for students for two main reasons and then you'll say the first reason is that and here you'll go into your first reason the second reason is that and now you give your second reason and then you conclude by saying overall I think and you sum up your opinion again of course this is just one way to make your answer you can use other phrases and sentences as long as the structure is the same for example you might say to me I definitely think that daily homework is necessary for students and there are two reasons for this first of all and here I'm going to give my first point on top of that and here I give my second point and then to sum up I believe that and here I'm going to restate my opinion if you can follow the structure and speak for 45 seconds with fluency you will usually get a good score on this task we'll talk about the grading criteria later on in this video okay so before we get into an example answer I want to give you one big piece of advice and that's this do not talk like a robot you don't want to sound like a robot you want to sound like a natural fluent speaker and the number one way to do this is to speak with passion to care about the topic that you're thinking about that you're talking about so you when you have an opinion it means that you care about something so make a strong opinion and care about what you say and that's going to help your fluency so let's look at the question do you agree or disagree that daily homework is necessary for students I'm gonna I'm going to give you a sample answer for that personally I disagree that daily homework is necessary for students for two main reasons the first reason is that people tend to resist what they're made to do so if we give home students homework every day they're more likely to receive doing that it would be much better if students actually studied subjects that they were interested in so that they actually wanted to be studying the second reason is that there are plenty of scientific studies that show too much home homework actually harms learning if a teacher gives a student too much homework they will learn less so I think there's a balance between too much and too little homework but daily homework is definitely too much for these two reasons I really disagree that daily homework is necessary for students so that's my sample answer now if you can't speak that fluently that's okay but what you want to do is you want to slow down and take more time on your main idea and the first two points and then you can just skip the conclusion the the main idea your opinion and the first two points are much more important remember that okay so now let's look at each of the four question styles in detail we'll talk about some sentence patterns and we'll go over some sample questions together let's get into it okay let's get started with an agree or disagree question style at the top there we've got two sentence patterns the first is I agree that or I disagree that and the second is I agree with the idea that or I disagree with the idea that now be careful here you'll see this throughout this video series I'll help you pay attention to your prepositions that's one of the most common mistakes that ESL speakers make so here just make sure that you're saying I agree that and then you put the issue the topic or you can say I disagree with the idea that and then you put the issue or the topic let's look at a couple examples I definitely agree that higher education means a better career or you can say I certainly agree with the idea that higher education equates to a better career now as you can see we added the words definitely and certainly and that's totally fine to do you can say definitely agree certainly disagree completely agree absolutely disagree you can use a lot of different adverbs there alright so let's look at a sample answer first I'm going to read the sample question the example question and then I'll go through a sample answer here we go do you agree or disagree with the following statement higher education means a better career use details and examples to support your explanation I absolutely disagree with the idea that people with a higher education usually have a better career first of all there are plenty of people who have a bachelor's or master's degree but can't find a job or if they do it's a minimum-wage job meanwhile there are people who go to a trade school with a clear path to a fulfilling career they learn a useful hands-on skill and build a life around it secondly a lot of what people learn in college is not useful it may be interesting but that doesn't mean someone is going to pay you for that skill my brother studied art history and now he works in sales to sum up I think a higher education doesn't always equate to a better career all right next up is preference and as you can see on the screen we've got four sentence patterns for you the first one says I prefer two and this is v+ so that means verb + object i prefer to swim i prefer to attend you add a verb there the next sentence pattern I would rather same idea at a verb or verb in an object Dan and then you add another second verb or object we'll get to an example in a second to me the next one is to me X is certainly preferable to Y now here X and y you're adding nouns you can't put a verb here you can't put an adjective here you got to put a noun here and the same with an last sentence pattern I prefer X over Y or I prefer X to Y okay so let's look at some examples to me I prefer to watch all TV episodes at once you see right after 2 we've got a verb there the next one to me I would rather binge watch TV episodes than watch one or two episodes per week next one to me eating at home is certainly preferable to eating outside now a minute ago I said you got to put a noun here right but eating at home that's a gerund and that is acting as a noun it's a verb acting as a noun the next one last one I prefer having a higher paying job with longer hours to having a lower paying job with shorter hours ok so again same idea there the the verb have is acting as a gerund as acting as a noun there alright so let's look at a sample answer to the following example question do you prefer indoor activities or outdoor activities use details and examples to support your explanation personally I prefer outdoor activities to indoor activities for me it's really important to get outside to breathe some fresh air to feel the Sun on my skin it's also really healthy for the mind and body after even a short time outside I feel very connected to the natural world secondly in the modern world we spend way too much time inside we're inside reading a book surfing the net or scrolling on our phones this is bad for our posture our eyes and our mental health so in a nutshell indoor activities are more preferable to me because I value my health more than my comfort all right next next question style let's look at three choices and for this one we've got two sentence patterns for you the first one you can start by saying this is a good question this is a great question I love this question just a bit of an intro sentence to make your answer sound more natural and then you can say if I had to choose I would choose and then you start saying what you would choose the next pattern you'd say something like well all the options sound great I would choose and then there you add what you would choose it's pretty straightforward so let's look at two examples of this sentence pattern in action first one this is a good question if I had to choose I would choose to create a video for my final project while all the options sound great I would choose to give a presentation for my final project and note in that sentence pattern the good and great you can change that to any other adjective that is positive you can change it to good - great - excellent incredible amazing any of those would work alright let's look at a sample answer for the following example question which one would you like to choose for your final project giving your presentation writing a paper or creating a video this is a great question if I had to choose I would choose to write a paper for my final project first of all I think that writing a paper would give me plenty of time to gather my thoughts if I gave a presentation I might freeze up and be able to give all the information that I had planned secondly I really like to write and I've taken several writing courses so I believe that I would get the best score by writing a paper likewise I've never created a video so I wouldn't feel confident doing so in order to get my final grade so because I want to gather my thoughts and give the best presentation possible I would choose to write a paper for my final project style for this is advantages and disadvantages and this is probably the most difficult of the four speaking styles and that's because you got to show both sides of the issue or topic as you can see on your screen we've got four sentence patterns for you the first one there are certainly pros and cons of there are certainly benefits and drawbacks of there are certainly advantages and disadvantages too there are certainly positive aspects and negative aspects associated with this topic now as you can see there they're all kind of the same idea but they're using different vocabulary pros and cons advantages and disadvantages etc now again where it says certainly there you can change that to definitely completely totally something like that if that's more natural to you alright so those sentence patterns I just talked about those are more four steps for starting your answer right but once you get into it you got to distinguish between the Pro and the con between the advantage in the disadvantage and here's how you can do that one advantage is that and you talk about a pro you talk about an advantage and if you're talking about a disadvantage you can say on the flip side or you could say however a major disadvantage is that alright so let's look at a couple examples with these sentence patterns there are certainly pros and cons of studying a foreign language at an early age there are certainly advantages and disadvantages to working a part-time job while attending school there are certainly benefits and drawbacks of taking a year off between finishing school and going to university all right now let's look at a full answer to the following example question some students take extra private lessons outside school hours what are the advantages and disadvantages of private tuition certainly benefits in drawbacks of private tuition one advantage is that students may learn at their own pace in a classroom a teacher must adjust the pace of the curriculum to suit that of the average class pupil if taught after class a student may take their time with problems which can enhance their performance at school on the flip side a major disadvantage is that private lessons add substantially to a student's workload students already have a lot of homework and tests to prepare for at school private classes would almost certainly add to that which would increase stress on a student and that's not good all right so we covered a lot so far and the most important bit is coming up in a second but first I just want to review real quick now we've covered the speaking styles on the tests we covered sample answers we've given you some templates some sentence patterns and even some common mistakes to watch out for now I know that might sound like a lot but if you think about it's really just one thing that this task is testing you on and that's giving your opinion and then supporting that focus on that you can do it a little bit every day you can do it alright let's get into the most important part the grading rubric all right so this is the rubrics table for the TOEFL independent speaking task there's only one independent speaking task in the TOEFL now so that's good news this table that you're looking at comes directly from the ETS rubrics and you can download it there's a link here on the screen and there's also a link and that's in the description below now I'm not going to go through the ETS description you can read that on your own but I am gonna summarize it in a more digestible way for you so there's four main categories and the first one is general description and what this means is you need to answer the question directly you don't want to go off topic and your answer needs to be easy to follow for the TOEFL Raider make sure you answer the question the next criteria is topic development here you need to make sure that your ideas are fully developed and connected and that means using transition words the TOEFL graders are specifically looking for transition words on how well you can connect your ideas using these words make sure your each of the ideas is also having enough details and examples to support your opinion all right next up is delivery here you need to speak in a calm clear and natural manner remember what I said earlier about caring about what you're talking about that's important your pronunciation and intonation should allow the TOEFL raters to easily understand everything that you say now this one's very important and this is often what makes a difference between a 26 and above or below a 26 on the TOEFL speaking section so if you need to get higher than a 26 on this part of the test make sure you spend extra time perfecting this part all right last but not least we've got language use and here your response needs to use a mix of sentence structures in a natural way you also want to make sure that you're using correct vocabulary now this is really important I see a lot of students make this mistake they want to impress the TOEFL rater so they use vocabulary that's very advanced but they don't use it correctly and what does that mean that means they lose marks they don't gain marks so the takeaway here is to use vocabulary appropriately if you're in doubt use a vocabulary word that's a lower level but that you know you're using it appropriately that's a much safer way to get a higher score on this part of the test congratulations you've made it at the end of the video look I know it's been long we just want to do a really good job of preparing you for TOEFL speaking tasks one and if you look at this video watch it again there's a lot of information in there everything you need to perform well on this task as usual if you guys want more even more practice you can go to WWE test comm and on the site we've got over a hundred and forty sample questions for this speaking task alone plus the other speaking tasks so check out the website there's definitely more resources there for you to practice with if you've got a question leave it in the comments give the video a thumbs up and until next time I'll 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: YFXnKVszOeI

Length: 23min 53sec (1433 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 29 2020