hello hello hello everybody my name is Steve Ford welcome to your TOEFL lesson
here we are in 2019 and I have some news about how the TOEFL is gonna be
different in August of this year so you're ready let's go so in case you
haven't heard the TOEFL has a few changes that are coming up as of August
1st of this year so this comes directly from the ETS website in case you don't
know if you're new to the TOEFL the ets dot-org website is where you can sign up
for your TOEFL test and let's take a look at the changes that are going to
happen so we have the good news in the bad news what am I going to give you
first I'm gonna give you the good news so for the reading section as you can
see it's going to be the same number of text so it's gonna be three texts
normally could be four and that hasn't changed but the good news is that there
are fewer questions so before there was 12 to 14 questions and now there's only
10 questions as you can see here so that's a good thing because what it
means is that for each question if you measure it out before there was only 90
seconds per question and now you have a hundred and five seconds per question
and that's a breath of fresh air that's good news for a lot like gives people
some breathing space because if that's one thing that my students and I hear
other people complaining about is that the reading section after people have
done the test they say the reading section it's too long it's too darn long
and that has been consistent the feedback I've gotten from my students
over the years so this is great this means that you will have fewer questions
and you'll have more time to spend on those questions great so in total
there's over seven minutes of extra time that you will be able to spend on all of
those reading questions
are you feeling good I feel good I feel good yeah for the listening I have some
good news and some bad news so the good news is that there are fewer lectures
okay that's that's good so now there's three to four lectures
for the listening whereas before there was four to six okay and as a result the
percentage of academic lectures that you're going to have is slightly reduced
okay that's good because academic lectures can be very challenging there's
a lot of practice involved trying to learn target vocabulary inside different
academic subjects biology geology geology psychology and so on however
here's the bad news in the listening section you actually
have less time to answer the questions yes now you only have 87 seconds per
question to answer whereas before you had 105 seconds so in total you have 8
minutes less to do the listening section for the rest of the listening there's
the same number of conversations and also the same number of corresponding
questions for those kinds of questions in the listening okay so now we get to
the speaking section and guess what now there's only four questions instead of
six okay so far so good so far so good they've eliminated the first question of
the speaking so that means that that personal preference question that so
many of you have posted comments that Steve I really don't know what to talk
about I get stuck what if I don't have any personal experience to talk about
that's gone you don't have to worry about that anymore
you can breathe a sigh of relief that said the second question is still there
and the second question now becomes the first question the other speaking
question that they eliminated was the integrated the fifth integrated question
which is a campus question and it's just listening there's no tag
that's been eliminated as well all the other ones are the same so it's business
as usual for the TOEFL in that regard but I think it's good because it gives
people a chance to breathe a little bit six questions definitely is a lot to
take when you consider the workload of the rest of the tests so this gives you
more energy to concentrate and boost the quality of the answers for the questions
that still remain now the writing essentially has remained
the same as well some have said that there may be a little warning at the
beginning that no plagiarism is allowed well how is that going to happen
plagiarism unless I can't see how that could happen because there's somebody
that's monitoring sitting at the door monitoring and helping people along with
their tests so I can't see how plagiarism could happen I have seen in
other videos TOEFL videos on YouTube don't use a template the people who are
evaluating your tests are gonna know I really don't see how that would be
possible for goodness sake I use templates all the time when I'm talking
to sound like a voice of authority and I've passed those tips on to you a case
in point though is a student of mine and he always used the same introduction for
all of his essays and even for his speaking and it went something like it's
a foregone conclusion that there is substantial evidence to support the fact
that or there is overwhelming evidence to support the fact that he was always
saying this that there was always evidence to support the fact and
sometimes it didn't work you know like they're asking his his personal opinion
about something and he's saying well there's overwhelming evidence to support
no that's not that's not gonna work yeah so don't get too stuck in your templates
don't go over port ass but not least come August first some academic
institutions are already going to get on board with my best tours what is that my
best tours means that you can combine your best hopeful scores if you've done
the TOEFL than one time so that you can combine
the best scores in from each section this is great news as many people who
have taken the test many times because they're trying to get high scores
consistently in certain sections according to the requirements of the
institution that they're applying to so the academic institutions universities
are gonna need to get on board ok everybody I hope that this information
was useful so that you can be up to date with what's happening with the TOEFL a
test that was four hours long has now been reduced to three and a half hours
long so that gives you a little bit more time to focus on quality rather than
quantity and I'm sure that this is good news for everybody we hope I will be
doing a video I had a whole bunch prepared some including the TOEFL
question one well that's out the window but I have one where I do an evaluation
of a very good TOEFL question independent question to this student of
course already passed she's actually already graduated from Berkeley and I'm
gonna be doing an evaluation of her TOEFL speaking and why it worked so well
and why she got a 26 on the speaking yes and we will be going over that in my
next video you can subscribe to my channel you can watch other videos you
can contact me at the link below I will also post links for all the information
I've talked about that you can find them on the ETS website and we will see you
in our next lesson bye for now