What major skills does TOEFL check?
Certification: English Test Preparation TOEFL - Test of English as Foreign Language
TOEFL is one of the best exams to evaluate the English Language skills of a candidate. It is one of the most widely accepted exams by more than 9000 universities. Thus, it is quiteessential to get a good score in TOEFL in order to pursue your higher education in one of the best universities in the world. The content which is used in TOEFL is 100% academic and tests the abilities and skills of the candidates from all aspects. This is the reason why loads of people take this exam and make both ends meet to get a good score in it.
Getting a good score in TOEFL is not quite difficult if one knows the proper and comprehensive way in which one should study for it. There are a lot of resources which are available to help you prepare for TOEFL; but they are useless until you know how you are going to make use of those resources for your benefit. In fact, it is very important to know that which of those resources are credible enough and will be useful for you. You have a huge database of books, websites, sample tests and many other resources which you could use to prepare for your test.
However, before you prepare for the exam, you should have a deep insight into the skills which TOEFL basically checks. If you know about these skills, you will be able to prepare in a good way and perform well in the exam. Following are the skills which are checked in the TOEFL exam and are very important in order to clear the test.
Reading
The most important section in the TOEFL exam is the reading section. It will assess the abilities and skills of the candidate with respect to how well they can read and understand a particular piece of text. In fact, this is one of the most important and difficult skills which the exam requires.
In order to get good marks in the reading section, the candidate should be well equipped with the skills of Critical Reading. Critical reading refers to reading and assessing a piece of text in depth and picking out important points from it in the shortest possible time. The candidates will have to solve around 3 to 5 passages, each of 700 words. Each passage will have around 14 to 16 questions. However, if the candidate is not skilled enough to read the passages quickly and extract all the relevant information from them, he will not be able to complete the passage on time.
One of the most essential skills in this section is having Good Vocabulary. The passages which you will come across in the exam will have a number of difficult words which are rarely used in everyday life. In this regard, you must have a good vocabulary and must be familiar with a lot of words in order to understand the passage and answer various questions.
Writing
In order to score good marks in the writing section, the candidate must have good writing skills. The candidate should be able to write a complete essay in just 20 to 30 minutes. In this regard, it is very important that the candidate has good grammatical skills. He must not make any grammatical error while performing the exam. In addition to this, he must also have the skill to bring together all of his ideas and arrange them in a logical order. He must also know how to use good vocabulary while writing the essay so that he can make it look more formal and organized.
Another important skill required in this section is to have a considerable amount of knowledge. The candidate will have to write an essay on a topic of the choice of the examiner. If the candidate does not have good amount of knowledge, it is possible that he might not be familiar with the topic under consideration. In this regard, the candidate should read a lot of topics and gain a lot of related knowledge so he is able to attempt this section.
Listening
The candidate should have good listening skills in order to clear the listening section in the exam. In this section the candidate will have to listen to a number of lectures and carry out some conversations. He will also have to answer some questions afterwards relating to these lectures.
In order to score well in this section, the candidate should be able to understand the English language in a proper way. In addition to this, he must have a good memory. Having a good memory is important so that the candidate can remember the things which he listens to. He should also have a tendency to pick out important information from all the things which he has listened.
The candidate should also be able to critically analyze whatever he hears. This means that he should be able to pick out all the relevant information and give feedback on whatever he listens.
Speaking
One of the most important skills which the candidate must have is the ability to speak well in English. The candidate should be able to gather all of his opinions in his mind and should be able to speak in an organized way. In this regard, he will need to be able to answer to various questions and give his opinions on various matters. This will not only check his speaking skills, it will also check the self-confidence in the candidate.
In one of the speaking sections, the candidate will have to speak on a familiar topic. This topic could be related to anything. Hence, you should have good amount of knowledge in order to speak on any topic.
