TOEFL Ibt Speaking Section Overview

7/29/2019 TOEFL Ibt Speaking Section Overview

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TOEFL iBT Speaking Section

Speaking Overview

As we have repeatedly stated throughout this course, the TOEFL iBT is designed to by a

university skills exam. With that in mind, ETS has designed every section of the TOEFL iBT to test some

academic feature that a student will face during their time at a U.S. university. The Speaking section of

the TOEFL iBT is no exception and in regards to the necessary skills for Speaking, ETS bases this section

on the following:

Academic Speaking Skills

The Speaking section measures test takers ability to speak in English effectively in educational

environments. Students should be able to speak with confidence both in and outside the classroom.

In classrooms, students need to

respond to questions

participate in academic discussions with other students

synthesize and summarize what they have read in their textbooks and heard in class

express their views on topics under discussion

Outside of the classroom, students need to

participate in casual conversations

express their opinions

communicate with people in such places as the bookstore, the library, and the housing office

Based upon the above reasoning, ETS has designed Six Questions to determine how a prospective

U.S. university student can manage each of these different speaking requirements that can possibly be

faced at any point during school.


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For all speaking tasks, test takers use headsets with a microphone. Test takers speak into the microphone

to record their responses. Responses are digitally recorded and sent to ETSs Online Scoring Network.


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Speaking Task Types

Task Type (Independent) Task Description Task Timing

1. Personal Preference This question asks the test takerto express and defend a personalchoice from a given category

for example, important people or

places, or events or activities that

the test taker enjoys.

Preparation time: 15 seconds

Response time: 45 seconds

2. Paired Choice This question asks the test takerto make and defend a personal

choice between two contrasting

behaviors or courses of action.



Task Type (Integrated:

Read/Listen/Speak)

Task Description Task Timing

3. Campus SituationTopic: Summarize,

State and Explain

A reading passage (75100words) presents a campus-related

issue.

A listening passage (6080

seconds, 150180 words)comments on the issue in the

reading.

The question asks the test taker

to summarize them speakers

opinion within the context of the

reading passage.



4. Academic Course Topic:General/Specific

A reading passage (75100

words) broadly defines a term,

process, or idea from an

academic subject. An excerpt from a lecture (60

90 seconds; 150220 words)

provides examples and specificinformation to illustrate the term,

process, or idea from the reading

passage.


to combine and convey importantinformation from the reading

passage and the lecture.



Task Type (Integrated: Listen

to Recording and Respond)

Task Description Task Timing

5. Campus Situation Topic:Problem/Solution

The listening passage (6090

seconds; 180220 words) is a



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conversation about a student-

related problem and two possible

solutions.


to demonstrate understanding of

the problem and to express an

opinion about solving theproblem.


6. Academic CourseTopic:Summary

The listening passage is an

excerpt from a lecture

(90120 seconds; 230280

words) that explains a term or

concept and gives concrete

examples to illustrate it.


to summarize the lecture anddemonstrate an understanding of

how the examples relate to the

overall topic.




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TOEFL iBT Speaking Scoring

The speaking section is scored based on the delivery of your answer, language use and

topic development. On the delivery make sure you try to speak clearly. When doing the test you

will also be able to hear the responses of others responding to their questions. Try to avoid being

affected by this. Training this element is easy to do on your own. Most people hate hearing their

own voice, but absolutely necessary. Use Windows recorder to record your answers to your

practice questions and listen for any indications that your voice is unclear, or that is it very

monotone. If you have a very strong accent this can be a hindrance. This is of course more

difficult to evaluate on your own.

The second element evaluated in the TOEFL speaking test is the use of language. The

good news here is that since the answers are quite short and in many of the questions the format

is standardized, you can memorize many phrases and therefore have a great deal of the answer

already premade.

The third and last aspect being evaluated is topic development. You get evaluated on

what you say, meaning that you here have to be prepared to organize your content based on

predefined structures. Like with the writing section, you should here follow a predefined recipe

and we will provide this award winning recipe for you.


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Speaking Grading Criteria (Deeper Explanation)

Delivery

Your delivery skills are critical to achieving a great score based upon this criteria point. We

suggest that you have your pronunciation evaluate by an ESL expert to ensure that your speech is

clear, well-paced and minimal issues with pronunciation. The following websites are some of the

best sites to work on your pronunciation:

1. http://www.manythings.org/pp/2. http://www.susancanthony.com/resources/esl/prondiag.html3. http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html (this site is

incredible and we highly recommend practicing all of the sounds to improve your

delivery/pronunciation.http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/#

4. http://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/index.htm5. http://international.ouc.bc.ca/pronunciation/6. http://www.soundsofenglish.org/

Most international students have issues with pronunciation in one of the following areas: vowel

sounds, consonant sounds, syllable division, stress, rhythm, intonation, blending, clusters, plural

endings, object placement, grammatical endings. Discover your primary areas of difficulty

because you dont wantpronunciation and intonation problems preventing you from passing the

speaking section.
http://www.manythings.org/pp/http://www.manythings.org/pp/http://www.susancanthony.com/resources/esl/prondiag.htmlhttp://www.susancanthony.com/resources/esl/prondiag.htmlhttp://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.htmlhttp://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.htmlhttp://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/http://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/index.htmhttp://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/index.htmhttp://international.ouc.bc.ca/pronunciation/http://international.ouc.bc.ca/pronunciation/http://www.soundsofenglish.org/http://www.soundsofenglish.org/http://www.soundsofenglish.org/http://international.ouc.bc.ca/pronunciation/http://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/index.htmhttp://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.htmlhttp://www.susancanthony.com/resources/esl/prondiag.htmlhttp://www.manythings.org/pp/


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Lesson: Do all of the pronunciation exercises we suggest in the Pronunciation

Exercises Section of the Online Course. Practice makes perfect!!

Language Use

ETS will equally evaluate you on how well and effective is your use of English grammar

and academic vocabulary. If you are using only the simple present/past and basic

beginning/intermediate vocabulary your score will reflect the use of these basic elements. ETS is

trying to determine your automaticity and how naturally do you speak English. Be very careful

with using standard English phrases and not the weird, made-up phrases sometimes developed by

non-native speakers. Demonstrating an ability to properly use idioms and phrasal verbs will

make you sound more natural and improve your Language Use score. Improving your academic

vocabulary and grammar, will greatly improve your Language Use score as well. Keep in mind,

you dont have to over complicate your speech, as sometimes simple g rammar is necessary, but

all of your speech should not be in this simple form. Great speaking is a mixture of simple,

complex and compound sentence forms with a demonstration and command of verb tenses and

sentence patterns (conditional, coordinate, passive, correlative).

Topic Development

Finally, Topic Development is utilized by ETS to score all of your speaking tasks. Topic

Development is determined by how well you elaborate on a topic. The ability to elaborate comes

from practice, practice, and more practice. Equally important, having a template for each of the 6

speaking tasks will greatly improve your speaking score

Improvement can be made by improving your vocabulary and grammar usage, both of will need

to create some templates that you can use for the six speaking tasks and practice them often


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BEFORE you take the official exam. Therefore, you will be able to express and develop your

ideas coherently, hence making it easy for TOEFL iBT human raters to see how your different

ideas are connected. Also, displaying obvious progression, you develop your ideas in three

coherent layers of meaning: main idea, support ideas, and details. Finally, in addition to being

able to elaborate and coherently organize your ideas, you should make sure that you explicitly

answer the question being asked. In the case of the independent speaking tasks, you are required

to support your response by giving your opinions. However, with the integrated speaking tasks,

you should never give your opinion; rather, you are required to summarize and integrate the

speaking tasks, strictly relying on the main and critical supporting points from reading passages

and talks. What feedback have you gotten from a speaking specialist as it relates to topic

development?

Documents

TOEFL Ibt Speaking Section Overview