Independent Speaking Tasks Part I by Della Keith


Independent Speaking Tasks Part I by DELLA KEITH
Article Posted: 10/16/2013
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Independent Speaking Tasks Part I

Education,Organizing

Hello, You are looking at taking the TOEFL exam and are anxious about speaking, particularly the independent tasks. If you are familiar with TOEFL, you have two of these tasks. Let’s take a look at them. The first task is NOT scored. That’s right, it’s not scored; however it is an important task. In this first task, you are asked to introduce yourself. Now, why are you asked to do this? Well, for two reasons. The first is that this task provides biometric data which will be used to identify you. Second of all, it serves as a practice for the scored task. The reason why you are asked to introduce yourself is that it should be easy to talk about yourself right from the start. This is a good idea, but for some reason sometimes when we are asked about ourselves, we tend to fall short and not say much, but actually there is a lot we can say and end up saying who you are, where you’re from and what your educational goal is. Remember, you have 1 minute to speak. That doesn’t seem to be a long time, but when you are asked to speak independently, that is quite a long time. What you want to do is to use this time to the fullest. While this section is not scored, it is evaluated by human scorers who will more than likely form an opinion of your performance of this task and this could lead to bias in their evaluation of the other task. So, what can you talk about? Well, this task is an introductory statement and there are a lot of things you can discuss. For instance, you want to state the obvious which is your name, your age, country and educational goals. This won’t take a lot of time 20 seconds at the most. So, what do you talk about for the other 40 seconds? You can mention your educational level….”I graduated college with a bachelor’s degree in engineering” for example. You can also state what your professional goal is…”My plan is to become a specialist in orthopedic surgery” Another thing you can talk about is why you want to take the TOEFL exam. Obviously it is because you wish to study abroad, but expand on this and say why you wish to study abroad; perhaps there are no opportunities in your country to learn about the subject you are interested in or perhaps there are no jobs available in country for your field of study. It could be anything, but it should make sense. You can also expand on why you wish to study a certain field or join a certain profession. This would also be nice to know rather than just your basic information. By adding more content and expanding, this makes you appear to be more interesting and also reflects on your fluency and ability to speak English, which is what TOEFL test. Furthermore, you will fill in those 40 seconds and make for a winning introduction. We’ll talk about the next independent speaking task in our next installment. Until then, visit TCYonline.com for tips, tricks and help for TOEFL or any other test you are interested in. We at TCY are committed to your success!

Related Articles - TOEFL exam, TOEFL test, TOEFL preparation, TOEFL speaking test,

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