How do you prepare for the speaking section?

Hi everyone,

I am asking out of curiosity, but also in the hope that people will get on board here and share their strategies with others.

How have you been preparing for the speaking section of the iBT TOEFL? How do you practice and how often? Which particular speaking skills do you try to focus on more than others? What is the most effective practice strategy you've found so far?

We'd all love to hear your ideas and thoughts!

Best,

- Jason

i used a lot of your materials here, and i am pleased, my admirations! Your samplers are better organized than this one given by www.toefl.org/sampler...
Otherwise I also train a lot my speech when answering different questions and recording myself at the same time with other program. It is all timed. Then i play and listen to my intonation, the proper grammar use and try to use rich words for better explanation.
Well.. wish me luck ! It helps a lot! Any sort of questions are helpful, even those that are supposed to be a writing topic!
Success!

Hi bybolina,

Thanks for your comments and compliments - and sorry for any delays in responding. We are in the process of trying to upgrade the site, services and materials and it's a lot of time and work.

I'm really glad you like our samplers and that they were helpful to you. We've received some feedback from some other users saying the strategies and breakdown we suggest have helped them lift their speaking section scores above 26, whereas before they were consistently getting in the low 20s. It's nice to know our suggestions are reliable and consistent!

I think it is excellent that you train yourself by timing and recording yourself, then listening to your own production. It's amazing how much you can improve my listening to and analyzing your own efforts. We can't hear ourselves well when actually speaking under timed conditions, but listening to ourselves later is the best way to analyze and set new goals for improvement.

We'll be getting some more speaking materials on the site soon. In the meantime, thanks for sharing your thoughts and the very best of luck to you in your iBT preparation efforts.

Best wishes,

Jason

Dear Jason,
I have a quick question. I am practising from the beginning with Onlinenglish and team... I am taking the test saturday and so i wish to take the toefl powerprep test. Where can i find the toefl powerprep software online,..?Is it free to download?

Hi Sathya,

I'm not sure what you mean exactly by 'toefl powerprep software' (though I do like the idea and name! - something we could think about adding to the site in future...), but we do have some new speaking practice resources added to the site:

1. 6 new speaking self-trainer tasks aligned to speaking questions 1 and 2.

2. A new iBT speaking challenge task for January, focusing on question 4 (possibly the hardest) from the speaking test. If you submit to this one I'll try to give you personal feedback directly and quickly.

Please do give those resources a try, and very best of luck to you in your prep for the test on Saturday! Let us know how it goes.

Best wishes,

- Jason

Hats off to the Team...
I would like to convey my warm regards to all those behind this helpful portal. I scored 103 in TOEFL..
Big Thanks Again...

Sathya

hi
i have given ibt twice and got the speaking score 20 i wanta better grade that is abt 26 , can u help me to and give me tips to do better for next time
thank you
dipika