Thursday, February 26, 2015

Formats and the TOEFL Speaking Section

One of the more frustrating aspects of helping people get high scores on the TOEFL is that sometimes I get students who have watched a lot of (stupid) youtube videos and who are convinced that they just have to memorize 'formats' and certain phrases to do well on the TOEFL.

Basically, it's tough to work with these types of students because they are looking for ways to cheat on the TOEFL exam instead of just fixing their English.

If you see some guy on youtube telling you that he has taken the TOEFL exam 20 times himself and is an expert on it and that all you have to do is memorize his phrases and follow his instructions, you would be an idiot to do that. The better your English sentence structures, the better your vocabulary, the better your score is going to be.

So should you ignore all formats?

No. Nobody 'just talks'.  Before any intelligent person speaks, he/she organizes his/her thoughts a bit. So I think if you look at the formats on this blog, you'll see that they are formats which help you to quickly and effectively organize your thoughts for answers.

I think the formats you find on this blog are, actually, among the most useful formats out there.

Daniel Gauss
English Teacher/Tutor
http://djg51qu.wix.com/gauss

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