welcome to TOEFL speaking secrets so
this is kind of like an open secret but
almost all the teachers I talked to
almost all the students nobody knows
about this and this is crucial if you
want to improve your TOEFL speaking
score it has to do with how your TOEFL
speaking is actually scored so let me
get right into it
ETS the company that makes the TOEFL has
a service called a TOEFL speaking
scoring service I don't know if you know
this but your TOEFL score is judged by a
human rater but they also have a
software called speech rater and this
service this product you can actually
buy and you can do a TOEFL speaking
section and it will be judged by the
speech rater
now here's the exciting part is that you
can see the exact grading criteria
that's used to judge your speaking how
the speech radar actually works so
everything I'm going to tell you today
is from ETS so I'm really excited to
share this with you because once you
know how your speaking is scored you
will be able to know how to practice to
improve so my name is Josh McPherson I'm
the head instructor of TST prep an
online TOEFL School where our mission is
simple to help you get the TOEFL score
you need as quickly and easily as
possible and right now let's figure out
how to improve your total speaking score
by looking at the TOEFL speaking a
speech writer from ETS
Oh
so as of filming this January 2020 this
is still available on ETS website I've
put a link in this slide here
it's called TOEFL practice online
speaking series and it actually says in
the description that it's judged by the
speech rater so this is ETS is software
that they use to judge some speaking
this is my own kind of score report
there's nothing that said that I
couldn't share this when you take the
TOEFL test you can't share some of the
information from the test but here I
read carefully beforehand so I hope this
is okay
this might get taken down but I hope
it's okay because nothing said that I
couldn't share this and you can actually
do this yourself so just to be clear let
me explain something first and I'm gonna
read what they wrote here and there's
online speaking feedback it's judged by
the speech Raider and I'm reading now
please note that this report does not
address all the abilities scored by
human raters in the actual TOEFL test
this information does not necessarily
predict your speaking section score on
the actual TOEFL test so this measures
your delivery basically there are other
things that get measured for example the
content from the reading and listening
passages in the integrated speaking so
that's a little different this is just
on your delivery how you speak by the
way if you need help to get a TOEFL
speaking score of 26 or higher and a
link in the description below will be a
free download to give you templates
rubrics and different strategies to help
you improve your score you can download
that PDF as well okay let me get back to
it now the grading criteria so I'm gonna
go through this quickly first and then
I'm going to explain it in more detail
later so the first two criteria are
speaking rate and sustained speech which
is fluency and they look something like
this I'm going to explain this in more
detail as we go the other criteria is
pause frequency and repetition that's
how often you pause and how often you
repeated certain words this is what
it'll look like when you get feedback to
do that speaking scoring also
measure your rhythm and vows this is has
to do with your pronunciation and that's
what this looks like here rhythm is kind
of your flow how you flow when you speak
and pronunciation of vowels is basically
for longer words how you pronounce
vowels inside those longer words and the
final grading criteria is vocabulary
depth which is basically what it sounds
like
how your vocabulary is do you speak with
a little bit more depth than other
students so we're gonna explain this in
more detail as we go but again I want to
be very clear I do not work for ETS I am
not associated with the telephone at all
I'm a TOEFL teacher the TSD prep and
basically we found this product on ETS
and thought that it was so valuable it
has so much useful information for you
who are struggling with the TOEFL
speaking that we felt it necessary to
share it okay so I'm not I'm not with
ETF just a person who is a thing not a
fan but a teacher of the TOEFL and I
want to help students like you knowing
this grading criteria is really going to
help so let's look at the actual TOEFL
grading criteria according to ETS they
have three sections three criteria well
four actually there's general
description but delivery language use
and topic development this speech Raider
basically measures delivery and a little
bit of language use with vocabulary it's
not measuring topic development this
grading criteria is just for delivery so
again this is not a reflection if you do
this it's not a reflection of your score
it's more of a reflection of how you
speak than how well you speak and how
you deliver your response compared to
other speakers that's what this is about
okay now again ETS still uses human
graders to assess your speaking
responses it's not done by only a robot
there is a human grader so the speech
Raider is a software a computer software
that helps analyze your speaking but
your speaking is also graded by a human
grader again the product is called TOEFL
practice online speaking series I left a
link I'll leave a link in the
description below so you
check it out if you would like I think
if you take if you took the test before
and you didn't get the speaking score
you wanted I would take this I think
it'll give you a lot of really useful
information about your delivery speaking
rate and your and your sustained speech
so your rate is basically how many words
you say in your response and your speech
is how many times you pause so for
example if your question is do you agree
or disagree
coworkers make the best friends if you
speak like this if you say I think um
coworkers do make good friends mmm
because that's not gonna be a good
response that's obviously you probably
know that already but that's what has to
do with speaking rate and your speed
like how fast you speak and how fluent
you are so you want to be kind of smooth
when you speak if you're listening to
your response if you record your
speaking and listen you want to sound
pretty smooth so that's one thing that
you're graded on well two of the things
that you're graded on so if I give this
for his example response here and I say
to me I definitely do not think that
coworkers make good friends because it's
best to keep your work and personal life
separate that's pretty smooth but if I
said to me I definitely do not do not
think and I repeat myself that's gonna
hurt my score all right and as you can
see here I've put a kind of guide to
word count this is just a rough idea
it's that you have of how many words you
should have it per response this is not
according to ETS this is my own
experience and our own experience at TST
prep working with students this is just
kind of like an average the reason why
question one is 120 is because it's 45
seconds and the reason why question 2 is
more than three and four because
question two is a more casual response
it's about a change on campus three and
four more academic so they have more
academic words academic words tend to be
a bit longer and
harder to pronounce but this is just a
rough idea if you're about 10 words
below this it should be okay but if
you're a lot below this let's say 15 or
20 words then you're gonna have to work
on speed that's one thing that you'll
have to try to incorporate in your
responses and in your practice okay so
and I'll give you some ideas on how to
work on speed as well but let me talk
about this next criteria
pause frequency and repetition this is
basically how often you pause and I'll
read this a little bit stronger speakers
tend to pause less frequency less
frequently but keep in mind that other
aspects of pausing are also important
for example pausing at the end of a
sentence is better than pausing in the
middle of an idea so basically it's when
you bring words together if you don't
bring
words together then it's gonna hurt your
score so you want to try to bring these
things together and then besides that
another example is repetitions repeating
the same thing so you don't want to
pause too much native speakers tend to
bring words together especially North
Americans so you want to try to do that
in your speech as well this will be
easier for some students than others to
go back to this example to me I
definitely do not think that coworkers
make good friends I brought some things
together I didn't say to me I said to me
I definitely do not think I don't I
didn't say I definitely do not think I
tried to breathe things together there
that's another example of this idea of
pause frequency and how often you pause
and if you have to repeat the same thing
it'll hurt your score if you do it a
little too much when pro tip for you
guys is to record your responses after
that use a voice typing software to
transcribe it rerecord to improve your
word count and fluency so we're working
hard at CSE prep to have a kind of
automatic voice checker pretty much but
you can use something like Siri on your
iPhone or something like voice typing if
you use Google Docs this is software
where you speak and then it says what
you wrote or what you said excuse me
nobody's called text-to-speech so you
say it and then it writes it now that's
a really great way to check your
pronunciation and to see if it's
something that is understandable
intelligible another thing you can do is
transcribe your response
write out your response type it out see
how many words there are listen back see
where you had some pauses and see if you
can bring it together a little bit
better try to record the same response
again I almost always recommend that
students do the same response multiple
times two three four times not more than
four times if you do the same response
more than four times you might start
going a little crazy so you don't want
to go crazy you want to be focus and you
want to
help improve this is about improving so
transcribe your response and do the same
one more than once and it'll help build
your confidence of course on the TOEFL
you can only speak once to a question
but you're trying to build skills if you
find that something is a problem for you
right now you need to practice it and
that's one way to do that the next one
is rhythm and vaso rhythm again is like
the music of the language but vows is
the pronunciation particularly in the
middle of longer words and I'll read
this here it says vows is a measure of
how you pronounce vowels compared with
the pronunciation of a native speaker
specifically it's a measure of valet
okay so a lot of times when we say
longer words so for example in this
sentence to me I definitely do not think
I say definitely or let me keep going
here coworkers make good friends because
it's best to keep your work and personal
life it's separate so I say separate a
lot of students will say set buddies set
buddies or it's a pod it or it's
separate
you know there's a lot of different ways
that students will pronounce a vow
that's not exactly the way that we
usually pronounce it in American English
a lot of times that we have this sound
called the schwa sound it's just a sound
separate separate so but a lot of
non-native speakers will use other vowel
sounds instead so they actually have a
tool to measure those vowel sounds now I
don't think that you have to sound like
a native speaker or anything like that
you definitely can have an accent you
know it's part of you know learning
another language you're gonna have an
accent but it's just something that they
do measure so keep that in mind here are
some other popular words that are more
than one syllable that might be
difficult for you so you might say
something like university or a
university something like that but you
need university however disagrees
disagrees passage not passage not
passage II you know so there's different
that might come up with the vows from
people from other language groups
example reading listening remember these
are just some of the popular words that
do come up in the TOEFL that you will
probably have to say that the vowel
sounds you have to be very careful to
make sure that they sound like kind of
an American accent
the last grading criteria we're going to
talk about is vocabulary depth so
basically this is a measure of your
vocabulary range stronger speakers tend
to use a variety of words so if you have
a kind of simple template and you say
things like the first reason is that the
second reason is that that's why you
know that's okay but it might not be a
good idea because you're not showing a
good vocabulary range you want to make
sure that in your response you show a
good range you could have a template and
show range in other areas but you do
want to think about your vocabulary now
that doesn't mean that you think of
complicated vocabulary words and try to
use them don't do that you just want to
sound natural and comfortable when you
speak and there are a lot of different
ways that you can do that one way that
we recommend for the independent
question is to be specific so what do I
mean by be specific I mean in the
independent question tell a specific
story from your past I'm looking at the
third paragraph it says also you know if
you are friends with your colleagues the
relationship often ends when one of you
leave the job for example at the same
job in Korea when my friend Andrew
unexpectedly quit and moved to another
school in Seoul we hardly ever spoke
since we were no longer in the same
office together not really complicated
vocabulary but I'm telling a specific
story so I have things like colleague
unexpectedly quit you know I talk about
things that are going on in the story
it's not very complicated I'm not using
fancy words but I'm being specific
another way that you can get a kind of
higher vocabulary score is to use a
template that is a little bit I want to
I don't want to say trickier but not as
simple as like I
believe this the first reason is the
second reason is that's why so if you
know about TOEFL speaking and you know
about templates usually they're pretty
common and standard here are some
examples of different phrases that you
can use to start you can say personally
speaking to be honest I've never thought
about this before but I have to say that
those are just a couple of examples I'm
not going to read all of them
but you can see how these phrases the
phrases that come together are part of
that it's hard to say a phrase
confidently because it's three or four
words that have to come together so by
using phrases instead of simple template
sentences
it'll help improve your vocabulary to
give you another example you can also do
this with the conclusion I'll just read
the first one so that's why as you can
see to make a long story short these are
different ways to transition to your
conclusion to make a long story short
it's a little bit nicer a little bit
more vocabulary a little bit more
conversational than just in conclusion
and you just finish right there okay one
thing that students often ask is is it
okay to be casual for the TOEFL speaking
and the answer is yes and no you want to
sound comfortable and confident you want
to sound natural when you speak as long
as you sound natural that's the most
important thing and you can see that
here with this grading criteria
pause frequency repetition vocabulary
depth all of this stuff is measuring
your delivery and how smooth and
comfortable you are so when you're
deciding what to say ask yourself do I
sound comfortable saying this alright
and don't forget you can download the
pdf version of these phrases in the link
in the description below how to score 26
Plus on the TOEFL speaking also don't
forget this is the grading criteria
according to ETS this is not my words
this is what their speech Raider graded
me on speaking rates sustained speech
pause frequency repetition rhythm vowels
and vocabulary depth watch this video
again really internalize all of this
information
and use it to help you improve your
speaking performance this is all about
delivery remember I don't work for ETS
this is not a reflection of your score
but it's a big part of it okay you're
still judged by a human rater but they
do use the speech rater also if you want
to do this yourself this is available on
ETS s site I'll put a link in the
description and put it right here as
well it's called the practice online
speaking series where you can get judged
by a speech Raider as well and also we
have our TOEFL score builder program
coming out in the near future to help
students not just for TOEFL speaking but
also for all the sections so definitely
check that out TST prep comm thank you
guys for watching I appreciate you
sticking to the end there's so many
other things you could be doing besides
studying for the TOEFL but you actually
care about your score and that's exactly
the type of student that we do this for
thank you guys and I've seen the next
video
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you