How to score more than 100 in TOEFL iBT in a week

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Hi, I am Krishna and I have scored 102 in TOEFL iBT in under a week. How did I do that ? Well, its not exactly a week. Feeling scammed. Trust me its not a scam, the prep time for TOEFL is 1 week but the prep time for the actual content of the exam is your whole life. How? Lets start from the beginning. The TOEFL iBT has 4 sections. 1. Reading 2. Listening 3. Speaking 4. Writing First let us see the reading section. As you might have gathered by now, this section consists of 3-5 passages. Each passage has 12-14 questions to answer. The subject of the passage varies from elementary subjects like a science class lecture to complex subjects as zoology, advanced physics and others. Your concern is not the subject, but its length. Every passage is about 700 words in length, so be prepared to read some dry passage of 700 words in under 5-8 minutes. The trick here is not to read the whole passage but to read in parts. The advantage of the iBT is that, the passage stays on the left side of the screen while answering questions. The first thing to do is get the essence of the passage. Read the first paragraph. Get the theme of the passage. Then you can rapid read the rest of the passage. How to rapid read? Read the first line of the paragraph and the last line, and then move on. By doing this youll know where a particular subject is. After getting the basic layout of the passage, start answering the questions. Some of the questions will have a direct reference to the part of the passage, like In line 30 what does the author mean by eradicated. When you are answering the question, the passage is always displayed in the left side of the screen. When I gave the TOEFL iBT, I was allowed to skip a question and come back to it later, but you do not take any chances. Before beginning the section read the instructions thoroughly. Sometimes 2 passages can be combined into 1 time slot. As in generally, 1 passage is given 20 minutes, but 2 passages maybe combined and given for 40

minutes. So here you have 1 passage followed by its 14 questions and another passage followed by its 14 question in a combined time of 40 minutes. Now you might be feeling, I did not tell you how to prepare for reading section in under a week. You are absolutely correct. To prepare yourself for the reading section, read a whole lot of books (not in that week, but in your whole life). I have developed rapid reading by reading plenty of books. Any books will do for that matter. you should just have the patience to sit and read a thousand words in a single stretch. If you develop that skill then the reading section is a piece of cake. Now in the week before the exam, start going through different types of paragraphs which are similar to the ones appearing. For at least 2 days in that week concentrate on reading, yes just reading. So here concludes the reading section. Now let us move on to the listening section. Now this section is interesting. Not to boast, but I scored 30/30 in this section. How did I do that ? Simple, by listening. No I am not pulling your leg here. The preparation for this section is to listen intently about the conversations around you. If you have a friend who talks a lot (any girl would do!!!), start listening to her (sometimes its a him also). (Not to sound rude, but you girls really talk. A lot!!). Now here is what you have to do. Without her(again, maybe him) knowing recall the whole conversation, I mean the whole part. From the starting to the end. If you can do this then this section is easier than a piece of cake. When in the exam, you are given a sheet of paper to take notes. If you are good in note-taking then very well you are all set for this section, otherwise, its best to shortly write the whole conversation here. Believe it or not, I had written down the whole conversations during the exam. Now to tackle the questions, just refer to your notes and click away on the right answers. In all the listening conversations therell be an american accent. To get used to this, watch a whole lot of Hollywood movies (my count 400). Understand the accent, understand what is being talked about here, then the answers will form themselves. To describe the listening section, it has 69 passages, each containing 56 questions, which lasts about 60 90 minutes. The conversations varies from simple conversations between 2 students to a lecture on a subject. Do not worry, you are not needed to have a knowledge on the spoken subject. All answers are in the conversations. In the week before your exam take a day or two and go through the listening samples. Plenty of samples are available on YouTube. Now we are done with Listening section. Lets take a break. Not here, but in the exam. Now you will have a compulsory 10 minute break, which you cant say

no to. The exam stops and sleeps for 10 minutes. There is a 10 minute countdown on the screen for you to know when the break ends. The sections after the break is the speaking and the writing sections. The break ends and you are introduced to the speaking section. Always LISTEN to the instructions given before EACH section. In this section you are supposed to speak. The exam records your voice and sends it to the evaluator. Before beginning the section, your voice will be calibrated. Now in this section, you will face 6 tasks with 6 questions in each task. You are expected to speak for about 45 seconds to 60 seconds. Speak slowly and clearly. Do not, I repeat DO NOT elongate your speech by adding umm,hmmm, eh, or any other dragging bits. This will not sound good to the evaluator. Do not worry if you have finished within the given time slot (it happens), or have exceeded the time( it also happens). As long as you speak clearly, youll be given a good score. Now preparation for this section, speak in English with your friends and/or family. Speak in English with everyone you meet. Ask your friends to correct you if you have made a mistake. Again watch a hell-o-lot of movies and learn how different people pronounce different words. Do not complicate your vocabulary. I know many people will suggest you to build vocabulary, but the main theme here is to communicate clearly. Learn a few synonyms for the words you already know. If you are preparing in under a week, then DO NOT start learning new words. This will only add to your frustration. Practice on how to speak. So ends the speaking section. Now onto the writing section. In the writing section, there are 2 tasks. 1. To read a passage, and to listen to a lecture in which all the points in the passage will be opposed, and to write a summary of the arguments. word count ~250 words 2. To write an essay on a given topic ~ 350 words. To tackle the first task, on your rough sheet put the table as below
passage <idea in para1> lecture <how lecture refutes the point>

<idea in para2> <idea in para3>

<how lecture refutes the point> <how lecture refutes the point>

By writing this table down, you will have a template on how to take down points. This will be of great help, when typing the essay. Most of the task will involve a reading passage with 3 paragraphs. Very rarely will it exceed this length. The structure of the passage should be as follows: <introduction paragraph> <Point 1 in passage and how lecture refutes it> <Point 2 in passage and how lecture refutes it> <Point 3 in passage and how lecture refutes it> Though a conclusion is not required, but if you feel compelled to write one, then a couple of sentences should do it. The expected word count for this essay is around 250 words, but the score will get a boost if you have a high word count. I would recommend 350 400 words. The more words you put up, the higher the score. But, (there is always a but ) just because there is a high word count, it doesnt mean youll get 30/30. You need meaningful content. search on YouTube for tutorials. There are some very good tutorials there. The next task is to write an essay on a given topic. There are about 200 topics in the internet around now. They will help you in structuring your essay. The expected word count here is 300 to 350 words. I would recommend a 400 500 word essay here. The same instruction goes here. The more the merrier, but with meaningful content. Let me, in detail, describe to you on how to write this essay. There are 2 types of styles, 4 paragraph essay and 5 paragraph essay. The 4 paragraph style contains, 1 introduction, 2 body, and 1 conclusion. The 5 paragraph style contains, 1 introduction, 3 body, and 1 conclusion. You can choose which ever style you want. The 4 paragraph style is used when you dont have many points to argue with, but are very good in producing word count. the 5 paragraph style is used when you have more ideas than word count. While writing the essay form the basic ideas. Use everything you can to increase word counts. Use your personal experiences and worldly examples in the essay. This helps build word count and give the essay more meaning.

In the week you are preparing for exam, use at least 2 days for writing section. So This concludes our writing section. Here are a few of the tutorials I found on YouTube. Please do search for more material on your favorite search engine. There are lots of TOEFL iBT material on the web. DISCLAIMER: The following videos are not mine. It has been linked to the original video residing on YouTube. I do not claim the content as mine. Reading tutorial : Speaking tutorial : Listening tutorial : Writing tutorial : NOTE: The above linked videos are NOT enough for the TOEFL iBT test. Please look for more videos. The rough sketch I followed of the week before TOEFL iBT is some what like this: Monday Reading Tuesday Listening Wednesday Speaking Thursday Speaking Friday Writing Saturday Revision Sunday TOEFL iBT I took 2 days for speaking section since i felt that my speaking ability was not up to the mark. Please find your own schedule and follow your practices. Identify your strong and weak points. concentrate on your weak points and brush up on your strong points. I hope this article has helped you in some way for your TOEFL iBT.

All the best.

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