Welcome to our brand-new complete guide to speaking question number two. Now, for those
who don't know, there's actually a new version of the test. So, as of August 1st, 2019 the TOEFL test
has changed. They've updated the speaking section, and so we updated our guide to speaking question
number two. We're gonna do a lot together. So, let me just go through it really quickly. So,
we're gonna go through, walk through one question, one example of a question number two. I'm gonna
share with you a note-taking strategy to help you read and listen well. I'm going to share with you
a speaking template so you know exactly what you have to say on test day. I'm gonna give an example
response so you can learn from my own speaking, and I'm also going to give you a checklist so you can
actually grade your own speaking at home, give you four exclusive tricks and tips, and then finally,
I'm gonna give you a free and complete test, and you can download that in the description for this
video as well. So my name is Josh MacPherson, I am 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 get right into it. TOEFL Speaking question number two.
Fo for those of you who don't know, as of August 1st, 2019 the test changed, and basically, for the
Speaking section they have cut the number of questions. There used to be six questions, and
now there are four. The change is pretty much that, they cut question one and cut question five. So,
this question number two is pretty much exactly the same like question number three from the old
test. But don't worry, I'm going to explain more, even if you don't know about the old test, all
right. So, basically, this is how it works is that it is a campus announcement, there's some change
on campus, and then after you read a short passage, I'm going to give you an example so you can see it,
two students will have a conversation about the change, and you'll listen to this passage after
you read. And then, so you'll have 50 seconds to read the passage, will be about 90 seconds when
you listen to it, and you'll have 30 seconds to prepare and 60 seconds to speak. We're going to
talk all about this, so don't worry if you're a little confused, no problem at all. So, basically,
the thing that I want you to remember here is that your goal is to sound natural and conversational.
And this goal is always the same in the speaking for the TOEFL. You want to make sure that you sound
like you're having a conversation with a friend. You don't want to sound like you're answering a
test question, okay, you want to sound very natural. So, keep that in mind as I give you this advice and
talk about question number two, all right. So, for this question it's very important that you think
like a reporter, a reporter. A reporter's job is to report the news, and that's what you're doing
for speaking question number two, you're going to report the news, and let me talk about that
a little bit more. So, this is what you're going to do is that you're going to read a passage and I'll
give you an example in one minute. The passage is going to have a new rule or a change, you're
going to have to find reasons for that change. Then the reading passage goes away, and it's time
to listen, and you listen to a conversation between two students, just like an interview
that it reported us. Basically, a reporter reports some news, let's say for example that there's a
hurricane coming, and then they ask people, "What do you think about the hurricane?" and they give
their opinion. And that's what you do, you report on their opinions and supporting reasons. So, you are a
reporter. You don't give your opinion, you don't say anything about yourself. You basically just
report what you heard, okay, that's why you think like a reporter. Here's an example, so again, your
job is to find a couple things in this but I just, before I show you what to do for this question,
I just want to give you an example. So, a lot of times the reading passage is pretty short, it's
about a hundred words. You have fifty seconds to read, and it's about some change on campus.
Sometimes you'll get a passage that is a letter, that happens about 20% of the time, I'd say. So,
what's the difference? Basically, if it's a letter you'll see at the end sincerely and a name, and
the letter is a recommendation, the student wants the school to change something. The other examples
it's an announcement, there is a change. In this example of a letter, there's a recommendation for
a change. So, just so you know those are two types of passages, but they're pretty much exactly the
same, okay. So, then you're asked a question, and the question is always pretty similar, that the woman
or man expresses their opinion about the change, state their opinion and what they think about
the change. And you're gonna just report on what they feel, all right. So, we're gonna walk through
an example together. First of all, let me show you my notes here. So, this is a example of how I take
notes for the reading passage. I'm looking for the change and two reasons for the change. You
only have 50 seconds to read. So, if you don't get to hear everything, that's okay, but that's your
goal at least, that's what you want to try to find. So, when I read this passage here, I highlighted in
yellow the change, that they decided to conduct two separate graduation ceremonies. And then a
couple of reasons for the change is that enrollment numbers have increased, so because it's increased,
once ceremony will last too long. And also there's not enough space because enrollment has increased.
Now, that's a lot of information to write down. So, you're going to have to pack a lot of information
in just a few words when you write down notes, and that's what I did. So, you see that there's
two graduation ceremonies is the change, there's too many students, so I put an arrow up for a lot
of students and it equals a long ceremony. Now, you might not be able to read this, but I can read it. I
understand it, and that's your goal for your notes. You want to understand your notes. Don't worry if
I don´t understand your notes, you understand your notes, most important. And then there's not enough
space for family and friends. So, those are my notes, pretty simple and short, and there's only
about, let's see here, one, two, three, yeah, only about nine or ten words here. So, pretty short.
Focus on nouns and verbs when you write down your notes. Try to make them short and as clear
as possible for you. Your notes are like triggers for your memory. So, you don't have to make them
too complicated. And then you listen to a passage. And this is how your notes should look when you
listen to a passage. It's a man and woman having a conversation. I make a little T chart. M stands for
man, W stands for woman, and they're gonna have an opinion about the change. So, what's the opinion and
the two reasons for the opinion? Just so you know, only one person is gonna have an opinion and two
reasons. Basically, you want to focus on one person. One person is gonna do most of the talking for
speaking question number two, all right. So here's a transcript of this thing, and again, you can
download the complete test so you can actually practice this on your own, but so I highlighted
what the woman thinks, that's her feeling that she certainly doesn't like the change, that there's two
different graduation ceremonies. And then she goes on to say why that two ceremonies. There's a lot
of speeches, that right now that the speeches take two hours, they can cut the ceremony down if they
give less speeches, and they could also give the ceremony outside instead of keeping it inside the
auditorium. So, those are the reasons why she feels that way. So, I make sure that I write that down
and that's what I write down in my notes. I put a little symbol that she doesn't like to change, limit
the number of speeches, right now it's two hours, and the outside space has good weather in
June. If you can write down a lot of notes, that's great, this is really short actually. It's not a
lot of notes. The more notes you write, the easier will be for you to speak. And also for the TOEFL,
they want you to speak about the listening. So, if you can, say a lot about the listening, that's great.
So but these are just an example so you can see it, alright. So, now preparing your response.
So, what are you gonna do, you're gonna report the change just like a reporter, okay. So, you're gonna
report the change, graduation ceremony has changed. Write the person's opinion of the change. How does
the woman feel? She doesn't like it, right? The reasons for her opinion. she doesn't like it and
she thinks it's a bad idea because they can cut down the number of speeches and also because they
can have the ceremony outside, and that's why the woman feels blah, blah, blah, that's the conclusion.
Alright, and let's look at an example, oh this is actually a template that you can read on your own.
I'm not going to go through each detail of this here, but this is a basic template that you
can use, and we'll look at it in use right now. So, I'll show you how it looks here and I'll read a
couple of lines from here so you can get an idea of how you should sound. You start with the reading
passage. The reading passage announces a change on campus. In particular, so it's always a change on
campus, right. You might want to change this, if it's a letter, you would change this to something like
the reading passage is a letter that recommends a change on campus, okay, so slightly different if
it's a letter. In particular, the administration has decided to split again graduation ceremony
into two separate events. Now, I transition to the listening. So, talk about the reading
very little, and now I talk about the listening. The woman in the conversation is against this idea. To
start, she says that ... and then I say what she says, okay, and I explain as much as I can, give a lot of
details here. And then I move on to my second, the second reason the woman feels this way. Secondly,
she explains that the graduation event should be held outside rather than in the auditorium if the
committee is concerned about space, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, and I'll keep going with that. As you can
see, the woman in the listening clearly disagrees with this plan. And you could pretty much say that
any time it's an announcement. You could also say for the letter. As you can see, the woman in
listening clearly disagrees with the letter's idea. Pretty simple. I know it's a lot of information at
once. I'm sorry if I'm going a little fast, there's just a lot of things to talk about. So, I just want
to make sure that I don't talk too long, I tend to talk. So, I want to make it short and to the
point, but definitely, watch this video again if there's some things that you're confused about,
and no problem, alright. So, now you have a tool for self-study, this is basically your grading
criteria. This is ETS is grading criteria of the integrated speaking, they basically judge your
delivery which as you speak in a calm, cool, and natural manner, and that's speaking naturally and
conversationally. They judge your language use, the kind of vocabulary and grammar that you use, and
they judge your topic development. Does it sound like you have a beginning, and a middle, and an end
when you speak. You can read this in some more detail on your own, but that's there for you. And this is a
checklist for you for the integrated speaking. I'll do it really quickly, just run through each one. Did
you speak for fifty-seven to sixty seconds? So, you have to speak for sixty seconds for question
number two. Was your introduction 15 seconds or less? Keep it pretty short. Did you have enough
time to include a short conclusion? A conclusion is not necessary, but it's nice to put if you have the
time. Did I look at the clock to monitor my time at least twice? Time management is a big problem
for a lot of students. Try to speak for about 57 to 60 seconds, and one way to do that is to make
sure you look at the clock while you speak. Did you include at least two transitional words or phrases?
When you say things like in the reading passage, according to the listening, so, to sum up, those
are transitional words and phrases. Make sure that you use them. Did you speak at a smooth and even
pace? Try not to say like uh, um, like ah, okay, try not to do that. And then also a natural, no robot voice, please.
Don't speak like I am a robot and speak like a human. There's a lot of rules, a lot of things to
think about for TOEFL. So, a lot of students sound kind of robotic. Try to be smooth, be natural. And
Did you include all the important information from the reading and listening? All right, so again,
a couple quick tips. Don't be a robot. I get, you get the point. Don't worry about paraphrasing. So,
a lot of students feel like they have to say in different words what they read in the reading,
what they heard in the listening. Don't worry about that. You're gonna naturally paraphrase
when you speak. Don't worry about it at all, just speak how you naturally do. Always record your
responses when you practice, it'll help you judge your speaking. Use the checklist, also our website
tstprep.com. We do speaking evaluations, you can always check us out there. All right, so here's my
last little tip here is to put yourself in their shoes. In other words, you want to imagine you're
the person in the listening, you're the person in the conversation who agrees or disagrees with the
reading and you want to sound like you agree or disagree. So, for example, here the woman disagrees
with the idea that the graduation ceremony will be split, right. So, if you say the woman in the passage
disagrees for two reasons. The first reason she disagrees is... The second reason she disagrees is...
not good, not natural, not conversational. Sound like you disagree and you understand her feelings. The
woman in the conversation is totally against this idea. First of all, she doesn't understand why they
have to have so many speakers. I mean, they could reduce the amount of time by up to two hours. If
they had less speakers, so you see how I tap into that emotion. Do that when you speak, put yourself
in their shoes. All right, so, practice, experiment, and think for yourself. Most of your learning is
going to come from you not listening to me talk, but actually from you experimenting and trying
to do this speaking stuff on your own. And if you need help, tstprep.com we're there to help, and
also make sure you download the complete test, it's free. It should be in the description or somewhere
around here. And you could practice these speaking questions on your own. Thank you for staying to the
end. There's a million things you could be doing right now, the Internet is an amazing place, but
you decided to watch this video. So, be proud of yourself. Thank you and I look forward to seeing
you in the next one, TOEFL speaking question number three. All right, I'll see you guys.