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.