I got a 120/120 (TOEFL IbT) Here’s my advice!
Hi! I got a 120/120 in the TOEFL IbT (first ever try!) I studied for 8 hours total (the day before and the day I took the test). I only used free resources to study (including this subreddit), the only extra money I spent for the test was buying a portable whiteboard. I’m a non-native speaker living in a spanish-speaking country. Also, I’m a woman (some of you are calling me “bro” in my other post, lol).
Here’s some advice for the test:
Tbh, the hardest part was the “room check” the “handlers” (can’t remember what they are called) have to do before you take the test. This took almost and hour and a half for me (I had to shut down and turn on my laptop once because my handler made me “end” all of the active tasks in task manager, including windows explorer even though I told him multiple times doing that would shut down my laptop’s taskbar). My advice is to clear out your desk completely (also, above and below it!) and make sure your room complies with all the requirements needed in order to take the test. The time this “check” might take could throw you off, do not allow it to! It’s completely normal.
Get yourself a portable whiteboard for the test!!! This is the most important advice I can give you. You will definitely need to take notes during the listening, speaking and writing sections of the test if you want to get a perfect score in them. Also, practice writing on it and then erasing its content in between each section and sub-section. You’ll need to be super fast! This was the most stressing part for me. It’s better if you get a whiteboard where you can write on both sides! It saves time!
Knowing what to expect from the test is as important as your level of english. I am sure people lose time or get thrown off because they don’t know which section comes next or what they’ll be asked to write/say/read/listen ti. This subreddit has good summaries of each section. What helped me the most was reading through the “Toefl Resources” webpage, especially their speaking and writing samples. It’s free.
Reading was the easiest part in my opinion. For what to expect, I read somewhere that the articles are almost always related to nature or history. This was the case in my exam. Don’t waste time reading through the entire article, read what you need in order to answer the questions. You’ll be able to skip the ones you don’t know the answer to and then go back (this happens only in the reading section), do so if needed. I practiced reading by checking out the links listed here: https://www.toeflresources.com/toefl-reading
Now, listening! Practice with youtube videos to get a gist of the speed in which the conversations will go, but don’t freak out when you get the answers wrong! I found a couple of youtube videos that had wrong or ambiguous answers for listening and might throw people off. TAKE NOTES!!! Like crazy! But practice keeping your focus: that is, listening and taking notes at the same time, without your thoughts drifting away. I took the FCE and English IGCSE almost a decade ago, back in high school, and my school made us practice a lot of listening back in the day. If you have past experience with similar tests, doing the listening session will feel like riding a bicyle after a long time. Also, know what to expect! It’s a college campus conversation for the first audio. For this, take “dialogue notes” for each speaker (I used “S” for the student and “P” for the teacher, then wrote down whatever they said, as much as I could). For the second audio, I believe it’s almost always a “class” where a teacher narrates some lesson and then a couple of students participate asking questions and giving their opinions. Make sure to write the names of the students and what each of them said if you can.
Speaking! Take a breath after listening and quickly erase your whiteboard before this session. Again, know what to expect for each of the four tasks! I used this link to review it: https://www.toeflresources.com/speaking-section/ Use your whiteboard to write down as much of each if your speeches as you can. At the very least, write how you want to start and end your speech, so that you don’t “drift away”. Knowing where to stop and having it written down helps a ton. For subsections 2-4 you WILL have to take detailed notes, try to structure your speech while you write them. I read a tiny bit and stuttered in all four of my speeches and still got a 30. What matters is: speaking at a good speed (not too slow, not too fast), having a good intonation and good vocabulary (it doesn’t need to be extremely advanced). Also, confidence! Smile at the end even if you think your performance was horrible. You can torture yourself about your speaking after the test is over and your webcam is off.
Writing! Second easiest part imo. Just make sure to take tons of notes, especially for the audio part. I used the structure suggested here for my notes in the first task, and it saved my life: https://www.toeflresources.com/writing-section/integrated-writing/ For the first task I wrote about 350-400 words (can’t remember exactly). Make sure to use synonyms and do not copy exactly what the article says. The second task is way shorter and easier. There is no audio for it, so you can breath easy and relax a bit. The most important aspect of writing is checking what you write (hopefully you can check what you wrote two times per task) so that you can correct any typos and mistakes. Don’t lose time finding flowery words and make the “form” of your writing (spelling, punctuation and such) as clean as possible.
I’m not a native speaker. I was taught english in a PreK-12 school, which I graduated from almost a decade ago. My day to day life is almost completely in Spanish. However, I do listen to tons of podcast, watch TV shows and read articles in english.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them!
Hi! I got a 120/120 in the TOEFL IbT (first ever try!) I studied for 8 hours total (the day before and the day I took the test). I only used free resources to study (including this subreddit), the only extra money I spent for the test was buying a portable whiteboard. I’m a non-native speaker living in a spanish-speaking country. Also, I’m a woman (some of you are calling me “bro” in my other post, lol).
Here’s some advice for the test:
Tbh, the hardest part was the “room check” the “handlers” (can’t remember what they are called) have to do before you take the test. This took almost and hour and a half for me (I had to shut down and turn on my laptop once because my handler made me “end” all of the active tasks in task manager, including windows explorer even though I told him multiple times doing that would shut down my laptop’s taskbar). My advice is to clear out your desk completely (also, above and below it!) and make sure your room complies with all the requirements needed in order to take the test. The time this “check” might take could throw you off, do not allow it to! It’s completely normal.
Get yourself a portable whiteboard for the test!!! This is the most important advice I can give you. You will definitely need to take notes during the listening, speaking and writing sections of the test if you want to get a perfect score in them. Also, practice writing on it and then erasing its content in between each section and sub-section. You’ll need to be super fast! This was the most stressing part for me. It’s better if you get a whiteboard where you can write on both sides! It saves time!
Knowing what to expect from the test is as important as your level of english. I am sure people lose time or get thrown off because they don’t know which section comes next or what they’ll be asked to write/say/read/listen ti. This subreddit has good summaries of each section. What helped me the most was reading through the “Toefl Resources” webpage, especially their speaking and writing samples. It’s free.
Reading was the easiest part in my opinion. For what to expect, I read somewhere that the articles are almost always related to nature or history. This was the case in my exam. Don’t waste time reading through the entire article, read what you need in order to answer the questions. You’ll be able to skip the ones you don’t know the answer to and then go back (this happens only in the reading section), do so if needed. I practiced reading by checking out the links listed here: https://www.toeflresources.com/toefl-reading
Now, listening! Practice with youtube videos to get a gist of the speed in which the conversations will go, but don’t freak out when you get the answers wrong! I found a couple of youtube videos that had wrong or ambiguous answers for listening and might throw people off. TAKE NOTES!!! Like crazy! But practice keeping your focus: that is, listening and taking notes at the same time, without your thoughts drifting away. I took the FCE and English IGCSE almost a decade ago, back in high school, and my school made us practice a lot of listening back in the day. If you have past experience with similar tests, doing the listening session will feel like riding a bicyle after a long time. Also, know what to expect! It’s a college campus conversation for the first audio. For this, take “dialogue notes” for each speaker (I used “S” for the student and “P” for the teacher, then wrote down whatever they said, as much as I could). For the second audio, I believe it’s almost always a “class” where a teacher narrates some lesson and then a couple of students participate asking questions and giving their opinions. Make sure to write the names of the students and what each of them said if you can.
Speaking! Take a breath after listening and quickly erase your whiteboard before this session. Again, know what to expect for each of the four tasks! I used this link to review it: https://www.toeflresources.com/speaking-section/ Use your whiteboard to write down as much of each if your speeches as you can. At the very least, write how you want to start and end your speech, so that you don’t “drift away”. Knowing where to stop and having it written down helps a ton. For subsections 2-4 you WILL have to take detailed notes, try to structure your speech while you write them. I read a tiny bit and stuttered in all four of my speeches and still got a 30. What matters is: speaking at a good speed (not too slow, not too fast), having a good intonation and good vocabulary (it doesn’t need to be extremely advanced). Also, confidence! Smile at the end even if you think your performance was horrible. You can torture yourself about your speaking after the test is over and your webcam is off.
Writing! Second easiest part imo. Just make sure to take tons of notes, especially for the audio part. I used the structure suggested here for my notes in the first task, and it saved my life: https://www.toeflresources.com/writing-section/integrated-writing/ For the first task I wrote about 350-400 words (can’t remember exactly). Make sure to use synonyms and do not copy exactly what the article says. The second task is way shorter and easier. There is no audio for it, so you can breath easy and relax a bit. The most important aspect of writing is checking what you write (hopefully you can check what you wrote two times per task) so that you can correct any typos and mistakes. Don’t lose time finding flowery words and make the “form” of your writing (spelling, punctuation and such) as clean as possible.
I’m not a native speaker. I was taught english in a PreK-12 school, which I graduated from almost a decade ago. My day to day life is almost completely in Spanish. However, I do listen to tons of podcast, watch TV shows and read articles in english.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them!