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Steve Ford: Hello and welcome to privateenglishportal.com. My name is Steve Ford and I am your private online English teacher and this is part to of our TOEFL Talk Series. And this week, I am continuing to deal with the question regarding state and support your opinion, and the speaking portion of the test.
Another piece of information, a valuable piece of information that I would like to give yours truly is that for our younger learns and our younger participants of the internet based TOEFL test is that when you have to support your opinion and state your opinion, perhaps you do not have that life experience to base your opinion on. So what can you do with regard to that?
You can try and make references to people perhaps older family members, teachers, role models, people who have had experience with regard to the question that you are being asked. And, in that way, you can and still some kind of confidence in the evaluator, okay?
So, that is one piece of information that I can give you. Especially, for our younger participant of the internet based TOEFL test.
My second piece of information is try to remember to stay away from politics, religion and any other taboo topics okay?
This is a rule of thumb for teachers, politicians, and anybody that has to deal with the public. It is also a very good tip for people who are doing the TOEFL test is to try to stay away from those kinds of opinions and topics right? Try to stay in the middle, okay?
My last piece of information is try to make your self understood by speaking clearly and fluently, okay? I am just going to tell you that I have taught TOEFL preparation courses to three kinds of students.
We have students they might be dressed in jeans and talk English fluently. You might have a student who is dressed semi-formally, who talks English in a semi-formal way. Well sometimes, you will have a student who is in a three-piece suit right? Looks like a business man, (Inhale) smells like a business man. He is got a cologne of a business man and he will come up to you and he will say something like, “Steve, I really have tried TOEFL, for me as there is sometimes I really want it well”, right?
What did he say to me? I have no clue, okay?
But, in that student’s mind, he thinks that if he is able to put all of those contractions together and speak English really quickly, somehow, he is imitating a native speaker, okay?
So, that is my third piece of information and this TOEFL Talk video 2 is do not try to fake it.
If you feel that your level is not sufficient enough to reach a point where you are able to use contractions and taking a very native speaker like way, do not try it because I have seen it done before. As I have just told you in my example with this one student, (Mumbling words) I could not understand what he was saying. And, he would automatically get a 1 on the speaking test okay?
So, do not try to fake fluency. Try to do what you know and not what you imagine to know, okay?
So, those are my three important pieces of information and, I will be giving you more information on TOEFL Talk next week.
Bye-bye.
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