TOEFL Speaking - How to Take Notes

hi guys welcome back to tuffle with yuba in toefl speaking taking good notes is really important because your score depends considerably on how you take notes today i'm going to show you how you can take notes that make you score really high in toefl speaking i am going to show you what you should write down how you should do it and why you should do it like that if you want to get out the most of this video guys get a piece of paper and a pen because this will be a bit more interactive today and if you want to get more tips about the truffle and if you want to download templates subscribe to this channel so that you don't miss the next video i hope you already guys let's get started why should you have a specific note taking strategy of course in terms of speaking you could just write something down and you could do this in some way the problem is that this won't help you the idea behind taking notes in toefl speaking is that these notes support you later when you are answering the questions so you need to take notes in a way that helps you speaking later that helps you answering the questions in a good way and this means two things the first is you need to write down the right content and the second thing is you need to write down this content in the right way this means that we need to ask ourselves two questions the first question is what what do you need to write down and the second question is how how do you need to take notes in order to get the most out of them we are now going to have a look at each task in the toefl speaking section and i'm going to tell you what you should write down in each task and how you should do it so that you have notes that support you in the end that help you get a high toefl speaking score let's start with the first task in terms of speaking task number one is the personal choice task let's imagine that you get an agree disagree question this means that you get a statement and you have to say whether you agree or disagree with this statement and you also need to explain why you have this opinion if you don't know what the toefl speaking task is about have a look at my video where i talk about the speaking template that i used in terms of speaking because in this video i explain each task in detail i put the link in the description below for you guys and i will also link it at the end of this video so if you like check it out let's first have a look at the what what should you write down in task 1 interval speaking to answer this question we first need to have a look at what you need to say so as i said for example if you get an agree disagree question you need to say whether you agree or disagree with the statement and you need to provide two reasons to support your point now the question is should you write all this down no you should not you should not write all this down because the problem is that in task 1 you only have 15 seconds to prepare your answer and guys 15 seconds is not much time so it's definitely not possible to write down whole sentences or a lot of keywords and it's also not necessary so what should you write down should you write down whether you disagree or agree with the statement no you don't need to do that if you read the question you know whether you will agree or disagree you know that you don't need to write down i agree or i disagree that's not necessary this will just cost you a lot of time and you don't have that time in task 1 in terms of speaking you should only write down two words and these two words stand for your two reasons that you want to provide in order to support your point so this means you should write down one keyword for your first reason and one keyword for your second reason now you may say but i won't have any problems to remember my two reasons i can remember this perfectly for 15 seconds and i can remember this perfectly when speaking that may be true however the problem is that when you start speaking you will see a timer on the screen that tells you how much time is left and this may make you very nervous and in this moment it may be that you totally forget about your two reasons because you were just so nervous so in this moment it's really good having these two key words as a support you should see these two words as a life belt that help you in such a situation to give you an idea how much time you have to prepare your answer in task 1 in the toefl speaking section we are now doing an exercise together i will give you an agree disagree question and your task is to write down two reasons that support your point so get a piece of paper now and grab a pen and let's go you have 15 seconds to write down your two reasons and here comes your task children should have smartphones do you agree or disagree that's it the time is over guys so put away your pen i would love to know what your experience was did you find it hard or did you find it easy do you say 15 seconds is absolutely enough time to think about this question what was your experience like so please tell me about that in the comments below and i would also love to know which two words you wrote down on your piece of paper so tell me about that as well in the comments below i'd love to hear about that so now i'm going to show you my two words that i would write down to answer this question and these two words are communication and education let's have a look at how these two words i wrote down help me answering the question i decided that i agree with the statement i think children should have smartphones and i want to provide two reasons for that and the first reason concerns communication the idea behind this keyword communication is that i want to say okay look in our world today it's very important to communicate using your smartphone because a lot of communication takes place via social media and i think that it's important for children to learn how to communicate using these apps let's have a look at the second word education my second reason is that there are a lot of educational apps and if children have smartphones they can use these apps they can use these apps to study better to get better grades that's why i think children should have smartphones as you can see i only need two words in order to construct what i want to say you can just have a quick look down at your notes and you know okay that's what i wanted to talk about everything's there i can calm down and everything's fine let's go on with the second task in toefl speaking the campus announcement in this task you will first read an article and the article is normally a campus announcement that talks about a change and it provides two reasons for this change after that you will listen to a conversation normally between two students that talk about this change you read about in the announcement one of the students will talk about his opinion he will either say i agree with the change or i disagree with the change and then he will provide two reasons that support his point let's have a look at the what question what should you write down in task 2 and toefl speaking so first you read the article and of course the article talks about a change and the two reasons so you should definitely take notes of that when you're listening to the conversation between the students you should also write down three things first write down whether the student agrees or disagrees with the statement and it's totally sufficient if you use a symbol i would really recommend you using a symbol because this is really convenient for example you can write down a plus if the student agrees or a minus if he disagrees you will see the plus or the minus and you will immediately know whether he agrees or disagrees with the statement after that write down two key words regarding the two reasons the student provides now let's have a look at the how how should you take notes in task two interval speaking i'd recommend using a table so this means that on one side you write down everything that concerns the campus announcement and on the other side you write down everything that concerns the student and the idea behind this is the following sometimes the student will directly challenge the reasons provided by the announcement and if this happens it's very very useful to have a table because you will directly see what the student refers to and to illustrate this we are doing an example together now let's imagine that the campus announcement states that from now on the cafeteria will not offer a meet on fridays anymore the announcement provides two reasons for this the first reason is that this is good for the environment because producing meat requires a lot of resources and in the end this is bad for the environment the second reason the announcement states is that this is good for people's health because they say eating meat too often is not good for people's health so what you would now do is draw a table and on the left side you write down what the campus announcement states so first you write down the change in our case this is no meat on fridays and then you write down the two reasons that the announcement provides so the first reason concerned the environment and the second reason was about people's health now you listen to a conversation between two students who talk about this change and one of the students talks about his opinion and the student is not happy at all with the change in fact he is furious because he loves meat and he also wants to eat meat on fridays and he gives two reasons for his opinion the first reason he provides is that this is no solution to protect the environment because people will continue producing meat if the cafeteria stops offering meat on fridays this won't change anything and the second reason he gives is that eating meat is not unhealthy at all he says that people have been eating meat for centuries and it's only natural that people eat meat let's go to the other side of the table first you should write down whether the student agrees or disagrees with the statement so obviously the student in our example does not agree with the statement so you just put a minus there and then you write down the two reasons that he provides it's totally sufficient writing down one or a few words in our example his first reason was that this measure won't protect the environment he says that this is no solution for environmental issues due to the production of meat and his second reason was that eating meat is not unhealthy so you write down these two points in the table now let's have a look at the table and let's see how this way of taking notes helps you in terms of speaking in task two when you start speaking and when you have a look at your table what happens is that you will see okay these were the two reasons from the announcement and the student provides two direct counter arguments to these reasons you will exactly know what you need to talk about and this is why this table makes task 2 and toefl speaking so much easier for you if you get a task where the student does not directly challenge the reasons given in the announcement that's no problem at all you just draw a table you write down the keywords and when you are answering the question you have a look at it and okay it's in table form but it doesn't matter but if you get a question where the student directly challenges the reasons given in the announcement it will make your life a lot easier of course when you are starting the speaking section you never know whether the student will directly challenge the reasons given in the announcement or not so that's why you should always use this table because it just gives you a nice overview of what's happening there let's go on to task number three general to specific in this task you will first read an article the article talks about a specific topic and then you will listen to a lecture that also talks about this topic the thing is that both passages talk about the same topic but they do it in a different way and your task is to talk about the information each of the passages provides and then to combine the information guys this task is really challenging for two reasons first normally the reading and the listening will talk about a complicated topic so that's really a challenge and the second reason is that you need to combine the information from both passages and that's really hard and that's why it's really important that you take good notes let's first have a look at the what what should you write down in task three in toefl speaking the reading mentions three things that you need to talk about later so you should definitely take notes of them the first thing is the topic what is the reading about the second thing is the definition the reading will define the topic normally this is a concept and normally the definition is a bit more difficult so make sure that you write down the definition so that you understand it and so that you can use it later when talking about it the third thing is the detail normally the reading will provide one to two details regarding the listening you should definitely write down the topic and you should write down one or two examples that the lecturer gives now let's have a look at the how how should you take notes in task three in toefl speaking this task is really challenging guys and you should take notes in a way that helps you overcome the difficulty of this task and the difficulty of this task is combining the information from the two passages in order to understand how you should take notes in this task you first need to understand what you will need to talk about in this task if you already watched the video about the speaking template that i used in terms of speaking you will know that your answer to this question consists of three things the first thing is you must talk about the information the reading provides the second thing is you must talk about the information the lecture gives you and the third thing is you must provide a conclusion and in this conclusion you must refer to both passages and combine the information and put that in your conclusion let's do an example together imagine that the reading talks about a concept and that concept is empathy the reading talks about what empathy is that means it defines empathy and then it talks about why empathy is important for people let's imagine that the reading defines empathy as the capacity to understand and feel what another person is experiencing so this is the definition and you should now write down a few key words so that you can reconstruct this definition later when you need to talk about it the reading then provides two details regarding empathy the first detail is that empathy is important if we want to get along well with other people and the second reason is that empathy is also important for long-lasting relationships so you should write down these two ideas and now comes the listening the listening talks about the same topic but the listening talks about empathy in a different way let's imagine that the listening talks about the importance of empathy in business so this means the listening text topic and puts it in a different context what you should now do is draw a line after what you've written down about what the reading said so on the one side you have the information regarding the reading and on the other side you have the information regarding the listening and since the listening talks about empathy in business you can now just write down in business on the other side after that the lecturer provides two examples regarding empathy in business the first example is that empathy is important where a business person has to work in a team because he has to get along well with the other colleagues and the second reason he provides is that empathy is important for good work relationships so what you're doing is you just write down a few key words regarding these ideas the context in which the lecturer puts the topic and the two examples he gives so up to now you can do two things you can talk about what the reading states and you can talk about what the lecturer says but there is still a part missing and that's our conclusion and this is the not we have to crack now so you need to provide a conclusion where you combine the information from the reading and the listening and this is why we took our notes in this way now this way of taking notes comes in really handy because what you can do now is you just have a look at your notes and you can take your pen and you just circle the things that you need for your conclusion to combine the information so let's have a look at our notes the topic is empathy and they both talk about that so in the conclusion we should mention the word empathy we make a circle around empathy and since we have to combine the information from both passages we have to say in the conclusion that we can derive from those passages that empathy is important in business so in business should definitely be in your conclusion and now you should also say why empathy is important in business empathy is important in business because people needed to work in a team and people also needed to build relationships so what you are doing is you combine the information that is given in the reading which is to get along well and to work well in a team and the other thing is to have long lasting relationships and in the other context to have good work relationships and you take this information and put that in your conclusion this is a really efficient way how you can take notes in top three in toefl speaking because once you start speaking everything is already there on the one side there is the stuff you need to talk about the reading on the other side there is the stuff you need to talk about the listening and then you just have a look at your circles and you construct your conclusion from that let's go on with the last task interval speaking task four the academic lecture this task is fairly straightforward and that's why taking notes in this task is also really easy the lecturer will talk about a specific topic and then he will define this topic and he will provide two examples regarding this topic and this is exactly what you should write down you should write down a few key words regarding the topic a few keywords regarding the definition and a few keywords regarding his examples and that's it there is nothing special about this task so you don't need to apply a special note-taking method regarding task four you can just write a bullet list like this and use this list when answering the question that's it this is how you take effective notes in terms of speaking if you like download the illustration you can find the link in the description below if you want to know more about the toefl speaking section and if you want to download the template that i used in toefl speaking have a look at my video about that and guys if you found this video helpful and if you want to get more tips about the tefl and download templates subscribe to this channel so that you don't miss the next video i love to see you here next time bye bye

Channel: IELTS and TOEFL with Juva

Views: 91,755

Keywords: toefl, toefl practice, toefl test, toefl ibt, toefl tips, toefl listening, toefl speaking, toefl reading, toefl writing, toefl preparation, toefl home, toefl score, toefl improve, toefl 2020, toefl 2021, toefl independent, toefl task, toefl speaking practice, toefl speaking test, toefl speaking 2021, toefl speaking tips, toefl how to, toefl how to score, toefl improve score, toefl home edition, toefl how to take notes, toefl with juva

Id: 3jUJy52oR5Q

Length: 26min 50sec (1610 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2021