2. “I have studied English for many years. I know all the grammar and I don’t have the patience to sit through another class at an English school. My only problem is that when I speak, I make mistakes that I know are grammatically wrong, but I keep on making them.” This is very common. The first thing is not to feel bad about it because you and millions of other people are in the same boat. For my one-to-one students, I am constantly monitoring their speech patterns and after correcting them a few times, what I’ve noticed is my students start correcting their own mistakes until those bad habits are eliminated. For those of you who are studying on your own it’s still possible. For self-study learners, you need to record yourself speaking with someone and after listen carefully to what you are saying. You can increase your own awareness of mistakes you are making unconsciously that way. The grammar that I address in the video in some ways can be used in speaking and writing. This is especially true about: although, though, even though. I also talk about a rarely talked about adverb: “barely” and I also talk about its variant “barely ever”. Both of these are commonly used by native speakers, but I don’t see too many non-native speakers using them. So hopefully this will raise your awareness regarding that.

Well I hope you enjoy the video and keep up the good work everybody!

Steve Ford

All Video Quiz Answers Are Here!

New Quiz!

 I know many of you have constant difficulties with the longer lectures in the integrated speaking section of the TOEFL exam. It’s  everybody’s pet peeve and I decided to make a video with a sample listening lecture to show you how to learn new vocabulary in areas outside your major. It is important to get in as much practice as you can in a wide variety of university lectures so that you can build your vocabulary. It’s possible to paraphrase only when we already the original meaning of the word. Paraphrasing and summarizing is key on the TOEFL as it shows the ETS raters that the student has a higher level of understanding of English at the academic level. In my experience, one of the most challenging things in the longer speaking lectures is separating the “technobable” from the core information that you will need when you read out your answer. This is a skill, but I will tell you that quite often it takes a while before the lecturer actually gets to the main points which will be asked about in the question later on.

In this integrated TOEFL speaking question video, I first prep. you with the target vocab. which typically is the most challenging for students when they are taking notes during the listening lecture. Typical preparation time for longer speaking questions is 20 seconds to prepare your answer and 60 seconds to respond. Without further ado, here is the video. In a few days I will be posting an additional quiz and example answers ranging from low to high scores.

Learning English phrasal verbs can be really tricky. One of the main problems is that there are few rules to follow and more than often there are exceptions. This causes many students to feel insecure about their English. This is not the fault of the student and I hope that through some friendly teaching I can turn learning English prepositions into a pleasurable experience. The important thing as always is to try to associate prepositions with a real life experience. Think of when your favourite person was born. Were they born ON January 14th? or in January 14th?


In this case when you have the ordinal number after a month, you have to say “in”. It’s someone who stays deep “in” your heart and these are the kind of mnemonic devices you need to remember prepositions for the rest of your life. Now is this video I address the prepositions that always give my one-to-one students a hard time: look forward to, good in ? or good at?, in the internet? or on the internet? this Thursday? next Thursday? and many more. You can find great grammar books that list preposition combinations and of course the two big ones are by Raymond Murphy and Betty Azzar. That said, you still need to make these prepositions part of you and the only way you can do that is through constant practice. You don’t need to tell me that you understand the preposition usage, but you can’t you use them properly when you’re speaking. I know that! I hear that every day from my students around the world. Be creative and and you will find that prepositions can be your friend. Shine on my online students! Shine on!

Hello! Hello! Hello everybody and welcome to your TOEFL Podcast. My name is Steve Ford and I am happy to tell you since our last TOEFL podcast, I have had many students who have all passed their TOEFL exams with flying colors. Why is that? What makes the TOEFL raters tick?

listen:
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Do they all score you the same way? Are there really 3 to 6 raters going over your score? Well in my personal experience, I was a rater for the Michigan University General Test, the ECCE and the Michigan proficiency test, the ECPE. One thing I can tell you being a rater is that I never saw more than 3 raters evaluating the speaking and writing. So how do they do it? Well you can find what they are looking for from the speaking evaluation rubric which you can find here.

Now the ETS.org website has a free sample of recordings of what they consider to be a 3 out of 4 for example. So you can go to the following link on the ets.org website, download the sample TOEFL test and refer to the independent speaking samples I am going to mention. So here’s the first example:

Question: Talk about a pleasant and memorable event that happened while you were in school. Explain why this event brings back fond memories.

Answer: The most memorable and pleasant event I had in school was the party my friends gave me when I was in middle school. It is very memorable for me for two reasons. First reason is they were my best friends and I still think of them as the most special friends I’ve ever had. They were my friends and the teachers there to say farewell. Secondly, they gave me many cards and many presents. This was the first time I ever had a farewell party with such presents. Those are the two reasons why that event was the most memorable to me.

• passed their TOEFL exams with flying colors: passed with a very good score easily

• makes the TOEFL raters tick?: what is really going on in their minds?

• going over your score?: reviewing, taking a look at

What did she do right?

Pronunciation

First, she sounds like an Asian speaker who has already spent time at school speaking English, perhaps in an immersion school. I’ve taught many Asian TOEFL students living in Canada and she definitely falls into that category. This makes this speaker sound almost like a native speaker, so from the ETS raters’ point of view, she sounds like one of them and it makes it easier for them to evaluate her. You have to understand that ETS raters evaluate many people in any given workday and after listening to so many people, it is a breath of fresh air to hear someone without having to strain themselves to understand what she’s saying. Her pauses were minimal and she only stuttered once. Bravo!

* a breath of fresh air to hear someone without having to strain = a nice change……

• she only stuttered once: she only got so nervous she repeated the first letter of the word, for example: p..parties

Word Choice

ETS raters love it when you can paraphrase the question which she didn’t do in her intro. : “the most memorable and pleasant event I had in school was…”. So she just shot back the question to the raters. She repeats memorable a second time in her conclusion: “ Those are the two reasons why that event was the most memorable to me”. Try to think of synonyms for memorable: noteworthy, significant, exceptional. Synonyms for pleasant could be: enjoyable, delightful, uplifting. So with a little paraphrasing she could have raised her score to 3.5

• shoot back: popular expression to respond or even respond quickly. For example: shoot me back an e-mail when you can.

Her word choice of “friends” reflected that the cohesion of her ideas were somewhat repetitive:

Synonyms for school friends: classmates, fellow classmates

Grammar

Articles are a minor thing and given her strong pronunciation it’s not a big deal. “(The) First reason”

• not a major problem

Cohesive Ideas

On a basic level, this student talked about what she needed to. She came up with two separate points:

1. The people who were memorable

2. What they gave her

She most likely would have got more points if she had thought about a more subjective aspect of her experience: how she felt:“Secondly, they gave me many cards and many presents. This was the first time I ever had a farewell party with such presents.”

She could have said, “ I ended up getting presents from my teachers and classmates which really made my day. Throwing in a phrasal verb and an expression at the end would have not only given her a chance to elaborate on her second idea, but also she could have guaranteed that she would have raised her score by showing she knows how to use phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions. Remember, in the independent speaking section, you are being tested on general knowledge questions and the raters are looking to see if you have day-to-day vocabulary, not just academic vocabulary. 

• end up: the final result of an action, very popular phrasal verb among native speakers

  
  

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Hello! Hello! Hello Peppy Club Members! Have you ever thought about what the future will be like, say twenty years from now?
Well it’s time to think about it because the future is coming faster than you think. And why not, we have seen so many technological changes in the past 30 years. Each decade seems to bring us more surprises so I have made this video to get you thinking about the near future, or at least a possible future. You will find many English learning topics in this video. Some to focus on are: time idioms, phrasal verbs and grammar. Please note that some of the expressions are marked informal while others are more formal so that you can have a good mix of formality in English. I recommend you keep a notepad to type or write down all of the new things from the video which you will be able to use in your day-to-day conversation in English. If you have any questions, feel free to post on my Youtube video and I will be more than happy to answer.

Enjoy the video!

Steve

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