Your One-Stop Guide to TOEFL Speaking Preparation

This article from E2Language provides running examples of TOEFL speaking preparation along with pre-test strategies that will broaden your knowledge and expand your horizons … Seriously! 

Here’s the TOEFL Speaking Preparation low-down

There are six speaking tasks in the TOEFL. Two of these are independent where you speak about given topics.

Four of them are integrated where you’re given information to combine into a spoken summary.

Independent Speaking

The two independent speaking tasks are: Description and Summary.

Description

In the Description, you could be asked to talk about anything from your personal experience. For example:

Describe a teacher who had an influence on you. Or:

Describe a book that you liked to read as a child or something of the sort.

Opinion

In the opinion, you’ll need to give your opinion on a topic and explain why you think that. For example, you might be asked whether you agree or disagree with a statement, like:

All children should play a sport. You will need to support your opinion with reasons.

For the two independent speaking tasks, you’ll have 15 seconds to think about what you want to say and note down any ideas, and you’ll have to speak for 45 seconds into a microphone.

Integrated Speaking

These tasks include either listening, or reading, or both. For all four of these tasks, you’ll have 30 seconds to prepare and 60 seconds to speak into a microphone.

 Summarize opinion

For this task you will:

• Have 45 seconds to read a short text
• Listen to a conversation related to the text
• Summarize the opinion of the speakers

Summarize reading and lecture

For this task you will:

• Have 45 seconds to read a short text
• Listen to a lecture related to the text
• Summarize the reading and lecture, linking the main ideas

Summarize problem

For this task you will:

• Listen to a conversation
• Summarize the problem and solutions discussed
• State chosen solution and explain why

Summarize lecture

For this task you will:

• Listen to a lecture
• Summarize the main ideas

Pre-Test TOEFL Speaking Preparation Strategies

Firstly, preparing for independent speaking tasks is easy.

Remember, for task 1 you need to describe something familiar, and for task 2 you need to give an opinion.

So, for task 1, you can prepare by brainstorming a list of familiar topics like:

• Music (specific types/songs)
• Books (favorite books/childhood books)
• Travel experience
• Important objects/gifts
• Important life events
• Important people from history
• Influential people in your life.

These are just a few examples of possible topics.

Think about personal stories related to these topics and practice narrating these to yourself or your friends and family.

For task 2, you should practice giving your opinion on different topics. Research topics which inspire different opinions. These can be related to things like:

• Education
• Employment
• Children
• Animal rights
• The environment

Note: These are just some examples and there are plenty more examples out there! 

Read about issues related to these topics and think about where you stand. Make sure you practice giving detailed reasons to support your opinion.

This will help you to form opinions about a variety of topics and build up your fluency and expression in English.

For more targeted TOEFL preparation, each day, choose a random topic from this in the list to research and practice a one-minute response for it.

Integrated Speaking

To prepare for the Integrated Speaking tasks, you need to prepare by building different skills – reading, listening, speaking, summarizing, and integrating, or combining information.

To build these skills, you will need to practice summarizing information from a reading passage.

You should read short texts on a variety of academic topics. National Geographic is a great website that has many different topics such as history, geography, culture and the environment.

Read an article a day, taking notes, and then practice speaking for a minute about what you have read.

Also, you will need to practice summarizing information from an audio recording. TED and TED-Ed are great sources of academic lectures.

Listen to a lecture a day to practice note-taking skills. This is extremely important for the integrated speaking tasks. Then, give yourself 30 seconds to prepare a summary.

You can then practice speaking for one minute, summarizing the information in the lecture and focusing on main ideas and their related examples.

Another major skill that you need to develop for the integrated speaking is integrating information to give a spoken summary. So, find an article on a topic and then look for a lecture on the same topic.

Practice your reading and listening note-taking skills. Then use your notes from the reading and lecture to prepare a summary that integrates views from both sources.

Practice talking about the different views presented in each source and how they relate to each other.

As you can see, to build your skills for the TOEFL speaking, you need to read, listen and speak and practice integrating all of these skills.

Jump straight into E2 TOEFL Speaking with the expert TOEFL teacher, Lucy! 

Start planning your TOEFL speaking preparation time by following the link to this TOEFL Preparation blog post!

And make sure you check out our quality TOEFL learning materials too!

You can find our TOEFL preparation course on our website: E2Language.com

All the best with your TOEFL Speaking preparation!

Written by Jamal Abilmona