Teacher Discussion Forums

Seeking advice from experienced TOEFL tutors as I am working with a bright young lady who desires placement in an elite secondary program in about 18 months from now. The TOEFL test is required and we have a year to get ready for the exam - but will average only two hours a week from now until then. I have used Barron's before and was quite happy with it. But! I want to do the absolute very best for this young lady.

The issue:

I've read in a variety of places (including Amazon reader reviews) comments that certain prep texts excel in certain areas, but not in all.

For example, I've read that the Barron's gives the best explanation of grammar issues, has the best essay section, but that it's practice exams are too easy (compared to the real test).

Conversely, I've read/heard that the Cambridge has the best reading section, best essay section (too!), but that its practice exams are more difficult than the actual exam.

I've read/heard that Kaplan has the best listening section, but everything else is of poor quality.

Question:

If I could cherry pick the best components from a variety of sources what would you suggest? Also, what one or two prep texts would you consider to be the very best?

Something that will be of great help to this young lady would be detailed explanations of everything and lots of practice exercises - with explanations of correct AND incorrect responses.

Thanks in advance!

I've been using the Heinle and Heinle Complete guide to the TOEFL with my advanced students for about a year and a half and I think it's excellent.

Sounds like you have a great, if not ideal, TOEFL tutoring situation going on: a motivated student, a long time to prepare, weekly lessons.
I 'm jealous!

I don't want to completely avoid your question, but if I were tutoring this young woman, I would think my primary objectives would be the following:

1. Direct student to appropriate TOEFL prep books (which you are doing by asking the question you did). I also liked the Heinle and Heinle one Pink Piggy recommended, although not for very advanced students.
2. Provide student with a significant number of partial and/or complete practice tests, either by recommending a book of tests to buy or giving students copies from your personal test collection, if you have one.
3. Teach general and section-specific test-taking strategies. A good TOEFL prep book should have these.
4. Explain confusing test items
5. Guide student through exercises in TOEFL prep book
6. Informally score practice TWEs
7. Identify student’s specific problem areas, especially within the grammar and writing sections. This can be done by looking at the types of errors made across a couple of tests and also by looking at a small collection of the student’s practice TWEs or other writings.
8. Help with prioritizing: Which things are most and least important? (i.e. Don't worry about the subtle differences between at the beach/on the beach when you can't even structure a basic sentence correctly!)
9. Assign supplementary exercises that target weaknesses, offering explanations where necessary.
10. Direct student to other resources that will improve grammar, reading, listening, writing, vocabulary, etc. and will be helpful for the TOEFL as well as general language development.
11. Assist in developing and managing the student’s long-term test prep and general language learning plan. Teach learning strategies that fit into this plan.
12. Encourage the student to look at the big picture and always relate TOEFL study to general English improvement whenever possible, while still empathizing with the student's need to "pass" this all-important test. Balance the "quick fix" attitude (which is not necessarily bad) with the long-term approach whenever you can.

It seems to me that you cannot effectively help this student with one TOEFL book, not only because each has its own strengths and weaknesses, but because a student will need grammatical information, supplementary exercises, and numerous practice tests that you won’t find in a test prep book. I would pick one or two favorite test prep books to center the lessons around and then supplement with a book of practice tests and a bunch of non-TOEFL resources. These resources could include: Grammar practice books, reading books with skimming, scanning, and timed reading practice, composition books that show the basics of writing an essay, vocabulary books (Essential Words for the TOEFL is one TOEFL based book - it doesn't deal with idioms- but any generic ESL vocabulary books that develop vocab systematically would be good too), idiom and phrasal verb books (Heinle and Heinle's TOEFL book does a great job on idioms for the listening part, but a general idiom book would probably be a good addition), an academic prep listening book that contains talks on academic subjects, etc.. Your student may not want to buy all of these things and neither would you, but she could buy a few of the important ones. And you may have a few materials you’ve collected yourself over the years or a resource library available to you somewhere. You could also see if you could get an examination copy of something and take from that when necessary.

I can understand that students would want a test prep book with the full explanations in the answer key. The Heinle and Heinle one I keep mentioning does this (explanations are brief). But, I don’t really see this as essential when a tutor is involved. It seems to me that you will be her primary source for explaining difficult test or exercise items. In fact, this will probably be what you spend the most time on during your sessions, assuming she can do the bulk of the actual test-taking and practice exercises on her own time and reserve class time for questions.

Sometimes students will ask about dialogues in the listening section or passages from the reading section, but most often the questions are about grammar. This can be daunting if you don’t feel comfortable explaining English grammar. If that's the case, just do your best. Come up with a series of 3-5 similar examples for an item you ‘re having trouble explaining and try to see if you can figure out what's going on. If you can't explain it, just offer her the examples and tell her to study them. You can also refer her to a grammar book (although there are some types of TOEFL items I know I will probably not find in grammar books), tell her you'll think about it and get back to her, discuss it with fellow teachers etc... Students always want to know WHY, and in many cases I think there is an acceptable answer that will help clarify the issue for them. However, there are times when it needs to be pointed out to students that rules are not sufficient to explain everything. I try to encourage analytical thinking when I teach TOEFL grammar (make them explain why this is the answer and why this one isn’t right), but students also need to see the limitations of rules and explanations and learn to move on when no ready answer is available.

To help your student with grammatical weakness areas, have her buy a good grammar practice book to supplement the grammar material in the test prep book. TOEFL books are notoriously lax on explanations and examples (for a good reason) and your student may also need more practice with a point than the book offers. Good old blue Azar is essential for any student studying for TOEFL and will be useful to her after the test too. Every student should also have a grammar resource book (just info, no practice), like Swan's Practical English Usage. It's essential for teachers too to help explain some of those grammar items that you just can’t find in an ESL textbook.

Good luck! Sounds like a fun assignment!

I just want to expand on the idea I mentioned above about helping TOEFL tutees with developing and managing a plan for improving their English. This is one area where you can really make a difference, not only in their scores on the test, but in their approach to learning, so that they can continue progressing to the next stage for the rest of their life. Fortunately, with a year to prepare, you have plenty of time to do this.

I would emphasize reading to a TOEFL student. Reading anything. I would first find out if, what, and how often she is reading in English. I would then get her started with some of your favorite novels that fit her level (Children's novels like Anne of Green Gables, are great for this). Develop a reading schedule for her to follow if she can and encourage her to ask you questions and/or report what happened in the story for the first ten minutes of your lesson together each week. Let her know how reading will directly help her TOEFL score and her English in general (faster reading speed, increased vocab, and a more native intuition about English grammar). Encourage her not to stop at every unknown word but to just read as much as she can as often as she can….. and to enjoy it too! Eventually, I would try to get her to read short articles in science and social science magazines like National Geographic, as these are closest in style and topic to the reading passages on the TOEFL, but I would emphasize the children’s novels, short stories, and plays simply because there’s a world of linguistic benefit in them and she is less likely to feel frustrated and bored by them.

I would also use reading as a starting point to introduce learning strategies like notebook keeping. I would show her how to keep a vocabulary notebook where she keeps track of words she learns while reading. I would show her different ways that she could organize it and the types of info she needs to keep about each word (example sentence, overall context, part of speech, related words, formality, etc.) . I would occasionally encourage her to try to create her own sentences from the example sentences she has copied down.

While many students are familiar with vocabulary notebooks, most have never thought of keeping a grammar notebook. She can record sentences (taken directly from her pleasure reading, not a grammar book) that have difficult or surprising structures in them and highlight or underline the relevant portions. 3-5 complete copied sentences per chapter, depending on the length of the chapter, works well. This really helps students to become more observant and analytical in their approach to improving their grammar.

Another strategy for vocabulary learning, especially for the listening TOEFL, is to identify common situations in the listening sections and keep word and phrase lists for each situation. As university life is a common topic, I would have students title pages "Social Science", "Biology," "Campus Life," "Classroom talk," "Graduation Requirements," etc. I would then have them leave sections open under each situation for things like verbs, adjectives, people, places, other nouns, phrases, etc. that pertain. At the end of each situation, they would keep a running list of possible conversation topics that might occur within these situations (i.e. a teacher explains the syllabus, a student gives directions to a building, a lecture on the origins of life, etc.). I would have them fill in the pages as we worked through the TOEFL listening exercises in the prep book or after taking a listening test, adding words and phrases or additional situations as they came up. The lists became great study sheets the day before the test. You can also do a lesson with her on each common topic that you identified, giving her a little background on what it’s like to study in a university, for example. You could do a mini lesson on the bare essentials of Economics, English Lit, Genetics, etc. (nothing fancy, just what you can get from an introductory book). She could answer questions after your mini lecture and record important words for those subjects (i.e. supply and demand, rhyme, Shakespeare, gene, DNA) in her word list pages.

Lastly, I would try to encourage her to get involved in “real-life” speaking and listening situations in her community. Helping her find English speaking friends is one of the best things you can do for someone studying Englsih. Get her interested in and help her find information about clubs and classes she could join where regular attendance would establish friendships. Encourage her to find an interest like dance, fitness, cooking, astronomy, etc. and seek out other native speakers who are interested. Attending a seminar at a local museum or a noncredit class at a community college would be great practice for the types of talks on the listening section. And it’s much more fun than studying with a TOEFL book.

My employers want me to introduce a TOEFL course. I work in a large software company, and I'm excited about the idea, but there is a BIG problem, which is bone-idle students who don't lift a finger out of class. Well, that's not fair. They work hard and have families, and genuinely don't have much time. But they expect me to 'teach them to speak English' purely through lessons, which they don't always attend, and don't pay much attention to when they do.

Chaps, any ideas how to motivate people into making the effort that Chercheuse talks about? I'm worried that this program will flop due to lack of effort from students, and it's going to be a bad reflection on me. The management here has no clue about teaching/learning issues, and believe as much as the students do that I should be able to perform some miracle without student intervention, kind of like a surgical language implant.