What's going on, guys? So if you are new to the TOEFL, I recommend that you don't
watch this video. This video is specifically for students who know about
the TOEFL writing and are stuck between the 18 to 23 range and just can't get
their score up to the level that they need. I'm gonna leave a link to a couple
videos below that I strongly recommend from my friend Michael at TOEFL Resources.
In this video, we're gonna focus on two specific strategies that are going to
help minimize the amount of points that you get reduced on your writing.
The first thing we're gonna do is talk about verb tenses. I'm going to show you the
exact verb tense to use when you are writing an Integrated essay. This is a
mistake I see a lot of students make. I don't want you to get any points taken
off because of the wrong verb tense. The second strategy we're going to talk
about is editing your essay. Now, I'm sure that you know that you have time to go
back and see if you made any mistakes in your essay. I'm gonna show you how to do
that the most efficient way possible so you reduce the amount of mistakes and
the amount of points you get off. My name is Josh McPherson, I am the head
instructor at TST Prep where our mission is simple to help you get the TOEFL
score you need as quickly and easily as possible,
and today we're going to talk about the TOEFL writing.
The title of this video is Experts Secrets Revealed, and you might be
wondering what makes me an expert. Well, I've been teaching TOEFL for over five
years, I´ve been teaching English language for over ten years now in two different
continents, three different countries, I've published two different books,
I have a course on Udemy that currently has over 25,000 students from
over a hundred and twenty countries and it has a rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars.
I also got my Master's degree in ESL which is English as a second language
teaching curriculum and instruction, and I also have a TESLA certificate and,
you know, I could send you my CV, if you are a doubter, or a hater, or both,
that's not a problem, so hopefully you trust what I'm about to say
to you guys here today. The next thing I want to say is that
I'm not gonna go over the general structure of the test again. I've put a
link below for some videos that are helpful, this is more about how to get a
24 or higher on the TOEFL writing. Why 24? The highest grade you can
get is a 30, why not get a 30? Well, a lot of people need a 24 on the writing to
get to certain schools, graduate programs, or to get a certificate, something like
that, so it's a common requirement for a lot of people which is why we're saying
we're gonna help you get a 24 or more, and what we're gonna do is that we're
gonna try to minimize the amount of mistakes you make so you get less points
taken off. That's the goal here. So the best way to improve your score quickly
is, again, evaluation. So I'll leave a link in the description below as well for our
writing evaluations at TST Prep, but right now let's get into the lesson. I'm
going to show you how to reduce the amount of mistakes you make for verb
tenses first, all right? I´ll go to look at my computer, so let's go. The first thing
we're gonna do is we're going to talk about verb tenses and our goal here is
basically to avoid using the improper verb tense. We want to make sure that you
use the right verb tense, no matter what the question, and so the best way to do
this is with the Integrated writing because this is where I see this
mistake the most. I'm talking about verb tenses because this is the most common
mistake I see happen when students give their essays, and so you don't want to
get points off for it, so there's a couple rules we're gonna follow.
We're gonna say that there are three rules for verb tenses. The first rule, rule number
one is that for contemporary issues keep it in the Simple Present. If you
remember, the Integrated writing is a reading passage and a listening passage,
and there are professors talking about a topic, and so the topic can be about a
lot of different things, but one thing that it can be about is a contemporary
issue, so first of all, what does what does that mean, contemporary issue?
Contemporary means modern day, today, an issue that's happening right now.
Some examples include something like turtle excluder devices, don't worry if
you don't know what that is, we're actually going to talk about it in a
minute, we're gonna look at an essay about it.
Global warming is an example still happens today, driverless cars, GMOs,
genetically modified organisms, that's GMOs and food, using solar energy another
example is extensive reading that's something that is about education, so
these issues are things that are still happening today pretty much, so when you
get these types of passages in these type of issues, you're pretty much just
always going to keep it in a Simple Present. What we're going to do is we're
going to look at an example, so let's look at TST Prep Complete Test number 11
here, and I'm going to go to the Integrated writing, and if you see here,
the first passage here is about Turtle Excluder Devices TED's and basically in the
reading passage author is writing how it's a good thing, basically how turtle
excluder devices TEDs are a good thing, they say they're designed to help sea
turtles, they make sure fishermen use these turtle excluder devices, and now
America controls it, so that these are not only beneficial but effective and
then in the listening passage, they go against these ideas.
If you want to see this passage in more detail, you can actually
download this test for free, if you go to tstprep.com and you will see somewhere
a free test, it'll say probably on the top somewhere, it'll say Free Test and
you can download this test for free. You see that, and then when it's
time to write your essay, we have an essay that you can see, most of your
sentences are going to be in the Simple Present, so the reading and lecture are
about the pros and cons, the writer believes, I'm just going to just show
a couple examples, I'm not going to go through the whole essay, but you see he
disagrees the article posits, additionally it says, ok and so on, and so on,
so pretty simple that most of your
sentences will be in a Simple Present, so when you have a contemporary issue like
that, keep it in the Simple Present, so that's a pretty easy one to follow.
The second one is more difficult, so let's talk about rule number two. Rule number
two is when professors speculate on the past, you have to change the verb tenses
so using the simple present over and over again just isn't gonna work, and so
what does that mean, speculating on the past? What that means is that they are
making guesses about the past and there's a good example on this of TST
Prep Complete Test number one and this is about Easter Island and the Rapa Nui
people, I think that's how you pronounce it, Rapa Rapa Nui, it's some these guys
here, and the writer is basically kind of saying why they went extinct, like these
people didn't survive until now, they're not around anymore,
so you're thinking, well, one reason might be because of this, another reason might
be because of this, and so you could hear it in my voice, I'm not using the
Simple Present, right? I'm talking about this could have happened, this might have
happened and so on. When you use that type of terms, you're going to have to
repeat some of that in your essay, so you can't use the Simple Present
all the time, and so the listening passage goes against these ideas, as this idea is
probably wrong, this idea is probably wrong, and then when it's time for you to
write, let's look at an essay here, and when it's time for you to write, we're
gonna look at, let's see here, we're gonna look at this paragraph, this first
body paragraph here, the author claims that the natives could have caused, this
could have caused, this is called this is a kind of complicated verb tense, but
when you're speculating, means taking a guess, when you're speculating about the
past. When you're guessing about the past, this is called the Past Perfect modal
tense, you say this might have happened, this could have happened, so the first
sentence the natives could have caused their own extinction, right, not the
Simple Present. I have to say this Past Perfect modal tense, that's what
this is called, the Past Perfect modal tense, and you see it come up in a couple
of other sentences as well, they would have noticed the effects, would have we
have here again, they would have been okay so we have this called Past Perfect
modal tense, and it's not always there, right, but it's there so you have to be
aware of it, so when you have an essay and passages where they're talking about
the past and they're making guesses about the past, you have to use the Past
Perfect modal tense, this is called, could have been, might have happened, but
it's that type of thin.g I don't want to teach you everything about Past Perfect
modal tens,e but just want to show you this different type of tense that comes
up so you have to be aware of that. When you have a certain passage, you might
have to change the verb tenses you use in your essay. This leads me to rule
number three, and rule number three goes back to the Simple Present which says,
keep each professor´s opinion in the Simple Present, so no matter what if you
got a passage where they're speculating about the past, or if you have a passage
about a contemporary issue, either way when talking about the people's opinions
the writer or the speaker's opinions you're gonna use Simple Present, so if
go back to the same essay, you'll notice that there are sentences in the Simple
Present, for example, the first sentence the reading and the lecture are, the
author of the reading believes, the lecture casts doubt, first of all,
the author claims, so even though I do have some sentences with this a little bit
more complicated verb tense, whenever I talk about the author or
speakers opinions, I use the Simple Present, so those are the three verb
tense rules. So just to recap really quickly, first one is use the Simple
Present for contemporary issues, the second one is to change your verb tenses
when you have a passage that speculates on the past, and then the third rule is
to keep the author´s or the listening passage professor´s opinion or
what they believe in the Simple Present. Okay, hope that's clear, all right, so here
we're moving right along, almost done guys. We're going to talk about one more
thing which is editing editing editing efficiently, I always have trouble saying it
and how does it work. So the problem is is that you get points off when you
spell something wrong or you have a typo, and there are no, there is no spellcheck
on the TOEFL writing, none, so you have to be able to edit it yourself and you have
to edit your essay in less than three minutes. That can be very difficult,
especially when you have to edit your Independent essay, we're gonna look at an
Independent essay example together and you have to edit at least 350 words in
less than three minutes. You try to give yourself at least three minutes to edit,
that's really tough. Alright, so now what we have to do is that we have to find
the most amount of mistakes in the least amount of time, so we're gonna look for
very specific things, it's not just go back and edit your essay and fix all the
mistakes, fix all the mistakes is too general, doesn't give your brain focus,
let's give you some serious focus on things. First thing, well, first two things,
I want you to focus on here's the five editing rules.
The first two is check for spelling errors and typos, the second one is check
for capitalization, spacing, and formatting, so these are the two that are
the easiest to find and so that's what you look at first, so you're not really
reading your essay again. Instead, what you're doing is you're scanning your
essay for these mistakes. So what I see I'm scanning, I'm gonna scan the first
paragraph of this essay here and just try to find these formatting mistakes
and spelling mistakes, since they're the easiest ones to spot. So the first thing
I notice is right up here there's no space, I´ve got to put a space here, I
noticed this is weird that there's a big space, you might not think this is a
problem, but actually it does have an impact on your score, and definitely
if there's a human grader looking at it, it looks very strange, okay. So I fixed
that formatting mistake, and then I see here, this is I think, dislike the idea,
it should be ideas of, so I gotta put an S and put a space here, so I'm just
scanning here really quickly trying to figure out, oh here's another spelling
mistake, hava should be a space, and then oh here's another spacing mistake, there
should be a space here okay, there's another problem here, this should be no
"the", should be tour guides but anyway,
here's another spelling mistake, trix should be trip. Now, you might see
other things that I don't see here, right? The idea here is that you want to fix as
many mistakes as quickly as possible. I didn't time it there, but that
probably took me about 30 seconds to do for one paragraph, so you would have
enough time to scan your essay, fix the typos and fix the spelling mistakes.
Those are the first two most important things, typos, spelling mistakes, and
formatting, sorry that's the third thing formatting. When you have formatting, I
mean like there's too much space, there's not a space, or you have a lowercase
letter where there should be a capital letter, something like that, those are
pretty easy to spot. The next thing you want to do is you want to check your
articles. Articles are the words "a", "an", and "the" and students have a really
hard time with them. One that pops out here is by the tour guide, it should
just be, let's see, groups led by yeah so, it should be tour guides, with an
S this but "the" shouldn't be here. Again, tour guides, this person made the same mistake
again, should just be tour guides, and I'm just looking for "a" and "the", so I see
travel in a group, okay, good, it's like he idea, that's good, okay, so
I'm looking just for these three words "a", "an" and "the". The reason for this is
because this is like the most common mistake students make,
it's like verb tenses and articles, it's just it happens so much. The fourth one
is to reread just one paragraph. So if there's one paragraph that you really
are not sure about and you don't, you didn't feel confident when you wrote it,
you know, when you're writing some parts will feel stronger than others, go back
to the one that you felt was weak. Usually, your instincts are right, so if
I'm looking at this essay, I might just read this first body paragraph here and
read it very deeply, because I want to make sure that everything is correct
here. And I didn't feel good when I wrote it, so that's the other thing is to focus
on one paragraph, pretty simple. And the last one is problem area, so after you
identify your strengths and weaknesses, after you know what you need to do to
improve, basically you'll know some of your weaknesses, let's say personal
examples are my weakness, like I don't know how to give a good personal example,
and the structure is a little strange. I'm gonna go to where my personal
examples are and I'm gonna look at them, okay, so then here it is, here's I went
okay, so I'm gonna read this part again, because I really want to focus on the
personal examples, but that's it. You pretty much know the five rules of
editing to make sure that you minimize the amount of mistakes you make so you
don't get as many points off on your score. Alright, so you have learned a lot
in this video. We started talking about verb tenses and how to use them
correctly in the Integrated writing depending on the type of passages you
have and how to edit your writing efficiently
so you can reduce the amount of mistakes you make, so you get less points off.
And I really hope that you got a lot out of this because it helped a lot of
students in the past for us as well. Your next step is to take a Diagnostic Test,
that's a 90-minute shortened version of the test, so you can get a good idea of
your strengths and weaknesses and what you need to do to improve. I'll put a
link in the description below, we have a free version and a paid version for you
to check out, so definitely go to our site tstprep.com and that's it.
All right, thanks for watching guys, good job, good luck, and
I appreciate your time. All right, take care guys, bye-bye.