all right we're rolling what's up guys my name is Andrew and I am a university student at J here in Korea and I missed one problem on the TOEFL so I got a 119 out of 120 and I want to provide some information and resources for you guys to be able to do the same thing right um I just want to help you guys out before you even click out of this video thinking oh Andrew is just a n a native speaker U was really easier for him that's not the case it's like just because an American student went through a high school in America doesn't mean that there necessarily do well on the SATs right I think that content obviously language familiarity is the basis it's 50% and the remaining 50% it comes down to test familiarity so do you have a system a systematic way a plan to approach the reading the listening and the speaking and writing and I believe I cracked those codes and I just wanted to provide all that information for free and speaking of free I've actually made two downloads for you guys and the first one is the toal vocabulary flash card thing that I made it's a notion template and it's just a fun way to memorize and interact with tful vocabulary for the reading section and if this video is not enough information or if you feel like you need a little more help I actually have a lot more information I want to give to you guys but this video will get way too long and like really boring so I thought you know what I'll just make one notion template document with everything that I know about the toel and I'm just going to put it all in there um so if you guys want that and if this video is not enough for you guys feel free to download it it's down below and it's completely for free so all right so let's start with the reading so my first tip is whether or not you should approach the Reading part first or the question part first and I kind of have like my own version of it so this is what I would do I would first read the first sentence of every paragraph in the text just so have like a quick summary of what's going on but that's it just a first sentence and then move on to the questions right away so after I read the question I don't read the answer answer choices because those answer choices are going to like influence me and how I think about the answer so don't even look at the answer choices move to the paragraph read the paragraph find your answer come back and circle your answer the reason why I would do this is because all the questions on the toal are arranged sequentially or chronologically so question number one is related to paragraph number one question number two is related to paragraph number two and so on so it's a very time efficient system and I had about 5 minutes left on the exam to just go over my answers so yeah try the system out and let me know tip number two for the reading section is going to be about rephrasing questions some of these questions are really scientifically they're very dense and over complicated right that's the purpose of them right they're going to want to confuse you so dumb it down water it down right that's what I did so if I had a very complex question I'll try to like make it into my own words rephrase it right and just have that small idea and then take that into the paragraph and find the answer so rephrase questions into your own easier words tip number three is Find synonyms in the text so what kinds of synonyms so if a question asks researchers question blah blah blah right you might find somewhere in the paragraph or in the text Scholars doubt researchers question and Scholars doubt they're very similar right they're just found in different words and what you'll soon realize that the reading section is basically just a vocabulary rephrasing game as soon as you're rephrasing these words and vocabulary it's just matching and you'll be completely fine and tip number four is pacing and my general rule was solve half of the questions and half the given time and I was fine with the timing now let's move on to listening and listening was where I missed my one problem and this is where tip number one comes in it's don't Daydream don't Daydream cuz that's exactly what I did and I lost track of like 2 or 3 seconds and that's when like a major detail was there so when I solved the problem for that specific part I had no idea so like I just guessed right that was one problem that I missed so don't Daydream turn up the volume on those things don't look at anyone else focus on your work and solve those problems right that's my one tip moving on to tip number two it's should I take notes or should I not take notes so if you're type of student that's taking so many notes so that you're not like listening to the recording and you're missing out on information we'll cut down on the notes right but if you're the type of student that's not taking any notes you're kind of just listening and you don't remember anything well take a little bit of notes right be mindful that find your own balance and for me I was kind of in the middle right I wasn't taking too many notes but this is where kind of a sub tip comes in it's be an active listener and don't be a passive listener so passive listener is just you're kind of just like uh okay you're not taking notes you're kind of just listening to everything you're trying to memorize everything that's really not helpful that's very overwhelming right it's a lot of information they're throwing at you be an active listener and what that means is you know what to expect so we have two types of recordings right we have the campus conversations and then we have the academic lectures for the campus conversations it usually follows this outline first a student comes in with a problem or a question then a University staff or a Prof Professor will offer some guidance and help on how they can maneuver or navigate through that problem and then the third part which is the last part is the student will take action in the future based on that help right so be mindful of these three parts and take not based on these three parts so the lectures also have a similar outline of sorts and for the lectures what happens is they'll provide some the professor will provide some sort of background information and then they're going to talk about the main idea and then they're going to explain with details examples and even illustrations to expand upon that main idea so take notes on these three parts right and so you can systematically solve these problems that's basically what I'm trying to say the last tip for the listening part is don't get caught up with one single Det detail with one vocabulary word that you don't know focusing on that for just maybe a second longer it might sacrifice another part right maybe a bigger detail so don't get caught up with these small details vocabulary words um because you need to focus on the general bigger idea so now into the speaking section which is arguably the most difficult and challenging part for many students and many of youall are probably wondering how can you systematically approach the speaking section right well there are first well there are two issues that we need to resolve first one is delivery and the second one is content what to deliver so for the first problem of delivery many people ask does my accent matter well yes and no you don't really need native accents but you still want the greater to understand what you're saying right and in order for you to do that you don't want to mumble so right open your mouth right and increase your volume right and unate your words clearly because you want the greater to understand and there's also an AI component of the exam where the AI is kind of listening and tracking what you're saying so you want yourself to be audible right you want your your voice and your words to be heard correctly so the Second Challenge is what to deliver and this issue comes with other like smaller issues like oh I have these awkward pauses I have these ums and A's how can I fix that the reason why you have these awkward pauses is cuz you don't know what to say next if you know what to say next you're not going to have these pauses right so my fix for that was templates yes templates are completely fine Ed I've used them I got 100% on the speaking section and templates were completely fine to use right and by the way if you want my detailed templates they're down in the description below copy them make them yours right and get 100% on the exam and also I've detailed how to take specific notes for these questions and the reason why you want to take notes for this part is because templates complete 50% of the job right you know exactly what to say but now you need to fill in those blanks and that's where you listen take those notes plug it in and boom you're removing the friction between the mind and the mouth right so use templates templates are very good and they're going to give you confidence now lastly for the writing part my only major tip right here is to just use templates um because once again templates you're basically 50% done the remaining 50% is to just think about it have a very firm opinion on something know what you're going to write about and plug into that template that's really it and you have a very good delivered answer right and that's because these questions are very predictable for the writing for integr writing which is question number one and question number two which is academic discussion it's very predictable so as long as we have these very good templates you can look at mine I basically provided sample sentences and how to write them in detail down below right now I want to give some quick tips on how to organize and outline these essays so for integrated writing what you want to focus on is to write in the simple present write at least 250 words make sure you have an introduction two body paragraphs and a concluding sentence conclusion can just be one sentence that's it now for the introduction what you want to do is introduce the general topic right what is a topic is it deforestation ocean caring what is it right then you want to introduce the author's opinion from the reading and 99% of the time the lecture from the recording is going to counter that author's opinion then you want to say however right you want to introduce the counter opinion or view from the recording that's the introduction three sentences now moving on to all the body paragraphs just follow this basic outline introduce introduce what the author says the author believes blah blah blah right what does he believe then you want to have a third sentence or a third middle part that basically conveys contrast because now you want to talk about what the recording says and this is a very good rule of thumb is if you have one sentence for the reading you want to have double the amount from the recording the general rule of thumb is always write more about the recording than the reading because that's kind of the focus so follow that structure right so for the body paragraphs once again again introduce the author's opinion his view then offer some contrast however the lecture does not believe this then what does he talk about write more about that and do that twice right for the body paragraphs for the concluding sentence just write one sentence as you can see the author and lecture hold very different views on set topic maybe it's about deforestation for the question about academic discussion so this one might be a little new people how do I approach this it's the same there's a template for it um some things you want to keep in mind for this question question is you only have 10 minutes to read and solve you want to write around 120 words that's what I wrote I wrote around 130 120 words and I got a great score so for the academic discussion when the 10-minute timer starts you're going to be introduced to this essay of sorts and you're going to read it the professor is going to propose a question to a student and then one student will provide his View and then another student will provide a view that counters or supports that student's view now it's your job to kind of expand on this topic what do you think about this question and so this is what I've decided to do the alling for question number two is going to go something along like this so for step one this is all one paragraph by the way so or one long paragraph that's what I did so sentence number one is basically introduce a topic and then what you want to do is then give your opinion on that topic right what do you think about it and they give an example or some imagery to provide more details and insight on how you're approaching this topic why do you like deforestation why do you not like deforestation they want to provide examples for that then what you're going to do is acknowledge the point of view of one of the students do you agree with that one or do you counter that one think about that and step number four is basically summarize all that you said this is basically conclusion but don't make it one sentence make it a little longer right summarize everything that you said that's your goal so it might look something like this step number one right we want to generalize right we want to give a general statement on the topic in the set number two right we want want to give our own VI our own view our opinion on that topic and some imagery and examples step number three is to acknowledge right we want to acknowledge one of the students views that's what we want to do what do we think about that student's view do we agree disagree with that student step number four summarize all that you said in your post what did you say summarize it right don't make it just one short sentence so by following this General guideline I think you'll be fine so lastly what you're going to want to do is just practice this isn't just going to come naturally to you try following this guideline but then try to practice it right the first time keep it low stakes just try typing it out with no timer and maybe you're feeling more confident then add a timer right and then try writing so with all these tips in mind you'll hopefully have a more systematic way to approach the toll full and please let me know if you want me to film more videos on like how I specifically solved each section like the reading section because there is so much more that I could go in depth into I just don't think it's appropriate to make this video way too long right so but if you guys are interested in that please leave a like subscribe and leave a comment down below with some of your questions and how I can improve developing these videos for you guys so thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you in the next [Music] one