TOEFL Sentence Simplification Tips & Tricks

greetings toefl candidates imagine you arrive at your toefl exam and you open up your reading test and you come to this question now you might feel a bit of panic a bit of fear what is this question what kind of information is it trying to find my name's mark i'm one of the expert teachers here at e2 language and today we'll be looking at how to answer sentence simplification questions by the end of this lesson you'll have a better understanding of how the questions are designed and how to avoid all the mistakes that people make when trying to answer them let's take a close look at sentence simplification this question is specifically testing your ability to identify one sentence from a list of four and it must mean the same thing as in the text it is also making sure that you understand paraphrasing now the easy part is that these questions are very easily identifiable you will always see the following at the beginning which of the following best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence today we'll look at the four simple steps that you need to take to answer these questions very straightforward first you read the question then you read the relevant sentence carefully after that you read the answer options and finally you eliminate incorrect answer options and select the correct one now let's jump back to the text that i showed you at the beginning but we're only going to look first at the question let's have a look together which of the following best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence incorrect answer choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information and today you'll see examples of what that will look like next we're going to take a look at the sentence take a moment if you want to pause the video go ahead and read the sentence by yourself all right if you read that great we'll take a quick look at it together the sentence says since the study also calculates how much critical infrastructure such as hospitals fire stations roads and power plants coral reefs protect from coastal flooding comma governments are better able to make decisions as to how they can direct their efforts in order to save lives and avoid economic losses let's take a moment to look at exactly what this sentence is giving us it is a two clause sentence you can see here everything up until that comma after flooding so the first half is talking about a cause all right since the study calculates you might also see because the study calculates any time you see a word like because or since you might be looking at a cause and effect relationship so that first sentence from since until flooding that is showing us the cause coral reefs protect from coastal flooding the second part governments are better able to make decisions as to how they can direct their efforts so they learn something from the study cause effect they make better decisions often you might see something like as a result or consequently and that could work here as well coral reefs protect from coastal flooding as a result governments are better able to make decisions as to how they direct their efforts so understanding how these two ideas connect you'll be better able to find the paraphrasing in the possible answers let's take a look at that next all right now if you want you can pause the video take a look at the four options there see if you can figure out which one is the correct one all right hopefully you've taken a look at that let's take a look at these together starting first with a decisions about how to protect both the people and the economy should avoid taking into account the value of critical infrastructure b critical infrastructure decisions must be made according to the findings of the study see government decisions have improved critical infrastructure and protected the environment or d governments can make decisions about environmental protection more easily by considering effects on safety and financial impact now we're going to take a look together at the wrong and the right answers and the most important thing to do is not just to be happy if you got the right answer but make sure you really understand why the right one is right and why the wrong ones are wrong so remember the more you practice these questions the easier it's going to be to identify the correct answers and the incorrect answers in the future let's take a look at a a is incorrect this one reverses what the text says that means that this sentence is telling you the opposite of the sentence in the text now one thing you can look out for here is words like avoid or not these are often indicators that they're showing something that is opposite to what you've read you can very easily find these kinds of words like avoid uh prevent not they come up quite frequently this one says decisions about how to protect people should avoid taking into account the value of critical infrastructure and the text is saying the opposite they are saying because of the value of this infrastructure governments should be thinking about it when they make decisions as i said keep an eye out for words like not and avoid they will come up frequently the test designers love these words let's move on to b b was also incorrect critical infrastructure decisions must be made according to the findings of the study now there's a few issues here one of them is simply that word must there is nothing in the text that is saying that governments have to do anything the other problem here is that it does leave out a lot of essential information so they talk about the infrastructure and they talk about the study but they don't mention any of the environmental issue which is coastal flooding and how that can be affected by focusing on protecting the economy or saving lives again it's another key word to watch out for must also words like should or might these can be very very important single words that you can focus on that'll help you better understand what to look for in the test let's take a look at c now c is wrong because it's reversing the cause and effect relationship they are suggesting that government decisions have already had an effect government decisions have already improved the infrastructure and protected the environment but the sentence in the text is saying that it's the other way around if we think about protecting the environment and think about critical infrastructure we can make better decisions so the cause is protecting the environment and thinking about critical infrastructure and the effect is making better decisions let's move on to d and i'm sure as you figured out d is the correct answer let's take a look governments can make decisions about environmental protection more easily by considering effects on safety and financial impact so that's the correct order now i would just say watch out for two things here it is the correct cause and effect but in this sentence they have the effect first governments make better decisions that's the effect of considering effects on safety and financial impact so in the sentence in the text it came in the order of cause and effect but here in d it's the opposite order it goes effect better decisions cause considering safety and financial impact the relationship of cause and effect is very important in sentence simplification questions but you may also see it have an impact on some of the other questions in your toefl reading test so just some tips and tricks to remind you first of all try to understand the overall message of the passage the better you understand the whole text the easier these questions are going to be secondly try to understand how the ideas connect is it a cause and effect relationship how do these two ideas connect so that's a lot of information you guys but remember practice makes perfect so for more practice sign up for free at e2language.com and if you're looking for more help check out the toefl mini mock test we'll help you look at your reading and see what you're getting right and what you're getting wrong and that's sentence simplification i'm mark and i'll see you later you

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Id: lQj5-nlAhes

Length: 11min 3sec (663 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021