hi my name is rebecca and in this video
we'll be talking about the toefl ibt
structure as well as the skills all
right because the exam has a particular
structure
and it also has certain skills that are
required in order for you to do really
well okay so let's discuss what these
are
let's start first with the structure the
toefl ibt exam is an exam which lasts
for about four hours and it has four
different sections
they are
reading
listening
speaking and writing and they come in
that order okay
you have about a 10 minute break after
the reading and listening sections all
right
that's the basic structure which you
need to be aware of the reading section
lasts for 60 to 100 minutes the
listening section lasts for about 40 to
60 minutes
the then you have your 10 minute break
or so
the speaking section lasts for about 20
minutes
and last of all you have your writing
section which lasts for about 50 minutes
you have two tasks to do there okay
so that's the overall structure of your
exam
now let's look at how you can do well
and in order to understand how to do
well you need to see what skills are
involved in the toefl ibt exam
some students think because we are
testing reading writing listening and
speaking that these are the four skills
and that's that
well
yes and no
in order to do well in reading writing
listening and speaking there are a
number of other skills involved which
are written on the board so let's have a
look at these okay
all right so
we could say that the skills that are
required for you to do well on the toefl
ibt exam
are language skills as well as academic
skills
by language skills we can say
some primary language skills and some
secondary language skills
the primary ones are the ones you
mentioned in the beginning and the ones
that most students expect which are
reading writing listening and speaking
all right but what else is involved in
order for you to do well in these parts
let's look at that
this is where some of the secondary
language skills come in
grammar is no longer tested directly on
the toefl ibt it used to be in previous
versions of the test but luckily for you
it's not there as a specific section
anymore but we have grammar tested
indirectly
how
well when you speak
you should be using correct grammar and
when you write you should also be using
correct grammar so grammar will be
tested indirectly in your toefl ibt exam
okay
also vocabulary is tested throughout
reading writing listening speaking
pronunciation
does matter
when we say that pronunciation does
matter it doesn't mean that you have to
speak with an american accent or a
british accent or a south african accent
or anything special
what you do have to do
is to speak correctly and clearly
so that anyone
else who's listening can understand you
that's the critical part every single
human being who speaks english has an
accent i have an accent and each of you
has an accent and that's perfectly fine
if i try to speak your language i would
also not sound like you and that's
perfectly fine as long as i can be
understood
so that's what you should keep in mind
when you're trying to speak english to
enunciate clearly but don't necessarily
try to imitate a particular accent or
not and if there are any specific errors
in pronunciation
then those would need to be corrected
because otherwise somebody could
understand something quite different
from what you intend to say okay that's
about pronunciation
spelling is another skill that comes in
obviously this will matter in your
writing section
and related writing skills are
capitalization and punctuation you have
to know which words to capitalize and
how to punctuate your sentences and
paragraphs all right
so these are some of the language skills
which are required and tested directly
or indirectly in the toefl ibt exam all
right
now let's look at some of the other
support skills that you require which
lots of times students are not aware of
and they don't understand that
if they're weak in those skills that's
going to undermine
their success in the toefl ibt
what i mean by undermine is that's going
to make it more difficult that's going
to weaken their ability
for them to get a high score in the
toefl ibt exam so let's look at what
some of these academic skills are okay
the first one is skimming
what is skimming skimming is a skill
related to the act of reading
skimming means running quickly through a
passage to get a general idea of what
it's about
what does that mean for example in the
morning when you get the newspaper if
you still get the newspaper at home and
you don't read everything online
you see the headline and you want to
know what happened so you just read
quickly through the article to see to
get a general idea a quick general idea
of what it's about that's called
skimming all right
then after that is scanning what's the
difference between skimming and scanning
scanning is when you're looking for a
particular
piece of information
skimming allows you to run through the
entire passage and scanning you're also
running through the passage but with a
different purpose in mind the purpose is
to look for a particular piece of
information for example if you read a
news story about an earthquake happening
in a particular country
you might skim the passage and then
you'll have general knowledge about the
earthquake but if you happen to have
family or you know someone in the area
where the earthquake struck
then you might be looking for more
specific information about where that
earthquake took place right so you might
be looking for the name of a city for
example
that would be an example of scanning
because you're looking for the specific
information
all right another
skill that you require an academic skill
is synthesizing what is synthesizing
mean synthesizing means combining
information integrating information
which you receive from different sources
in the toefl ibt
it is an example of synthesizing is an
example of the integrated skill that
they are testing you are asked sometimes
to read something to listen to something
and then to write about it
or to read something listen to something
and speak about it all of this requires
the ability to synthesize or combine
information okay all right
next point summarizing again when you
read and hear different kinds of
information you want to summarize it
mention
kind of encapsulate it or summarize it
in short all right write about it in
short when you summarize the final
length of your passage is shorter than
the original passages okay
another very important skill which
students sometimes struggle with
actually is note taking
they don't always understand the
importance of that but when you're doing
the toefl exam and you're doing the
listening passages you have to know how
to take notes very quickly and
effectively
this is a kind of skill in itself which
you do develop as you go
as you're in school but also more so in
university because you have so much
information coming at you and you have
to be able to decide which is the
relevant information and which is not as
relevant and be able to record that
information in some way this is really
important on the toefl ibt because in
the listening section
if you have effective notes it can help
you to answer your questions
in the writing section
if you've taken effective notes
you'll be able to write your first task
very effectively where you have a
reading and a listening and then you
have to combine that information okay so
this is another skill to work on quite
separately
another one is paraphrasing paraphrasing
means basically expressing the same
ideas in different words all right
so when you paraphrase
you take the original sentence and you
express it in your own words you're
actually not allowed at all in the toefl
ibt or in university to copy somebody
else's words
you are not allowed to do that because
that's called plagiarism and plagiarism
is a very serious offense in
universities and also on the toefl if
you're asked to combine information from
a reading passage for example i'm
listening and if you copy something from
the reading directly more than maybe one
or two words and that could be evidence
of plagiarism so you want to learn a
variety of techniques to enable you to
paraphrase effectively so make sure you
also get a lot of practice doing that
okay
and the last one is something minor most
students today most young students
who've grown up around computers are
quite comfortable with this this is
keyboarding and keyboarding basically
just means being able to type on the
keyboard
into a computer all right you need to be
able to do that in your toefl exam on
your writing section because the entire
exam will be typed in okay
so that's a kind of overview for you of
toefl skills that are required so next
time you are studying please bear in
mind not only to work on your reading
writing listening and speaking but to
understand that all of these skills are
going to determine how well you do on
your toefl and of course i wish you a
lot of luck with your toefl if you'd
like more information about the toefl
exam you can go to my website it's
www.goodlucktofl.com
and if you have any other questions
about english or about toefl or ielts or
anything else then please visit our
website at www.ingvid.com
okay that's it for now see you later bye
for now
you