Testing

23 Apr 2017

Most students understand the difference between these basic words. To give is active (that is, the action is performed by someone or something). Someone can give you a present. To get is passive (that is, the action is received by someone or something). You get presents on your birthday. But there are other active/passive word pairs that are more confusing and often give students problems. You will become more fluent if you understand these differences and use the correct words.

Teach/learn

To teach is active. A teacher teaches you English. To learn is passive. You learn English from your teacher. Some common phrases using these words include:

To teach a subject (or a class, or a course)

To teach someone how to do something (The father is teaching his son how to swim.)

To learn how to do something (The son is learning how to swim.)

To learn a lesson (This also has an idiomatic meaning that you learn something from a bad experience, or “the hard way.” For example, he sure learned a lesson the hard way from his car accident. I bet he won’t drive so fast in the future.)

Lend/borrow

To lend is active. You lend some money to a friend. To borrow is passive. Your friend borrows some money from you. Notice that lending and borrowing are a bit different than giving and getting. To lend and borrow have a temporary sense. If you lend money, you expect to get paid back. If you borrow money, you plan to give it back. Here are some examples:

The library lends books.

You borrow books from the library.

The bank lends money. It issues loans.

You borrow money from a bank.

The bank and the library are lenders. They are making a loan. You are the borrower.

Pay/cost

To pay is active. You pay money for something. You pay $400 for a new cell phone. To cost is passive. The cell phone costs $400.

As a verb, to pay has a more specific meaning than to cost. Pay almost always involves money or a debt of some kind. For example: I have to pay for gas and electricity along with my rent. But many things can cost something. For example: To learn better English costs time, effort, and energy.

Cost can also be used as a noun. For example: The cost of tuition is rising rapidly at that university. However, price is a better choice when you’re using it for something that has a specific monetary cost. For example: I’m comparing the prices of these two phones. I think I’ll choose the one with the lower price.

Donate/receive

These words have the same sense as give/get, but they are Tier Two words and can help you sound like a higher-lever speaker.

To donate conveys a sense of generosity and service. For example, people donate money to a charity, time to a volunteer organization, and blood to hospital patients. The people and organizations who receive the money, volunteer service, or blood are called recipients. To receive simply means to get, but since it’s a higher level word, it’s good to use it on tests of English proficiency or in academic writing. It sounds better to say, This research received much attention from the scientific community, rather than This research got a lot of attention …

If you can think of other word pairs that have an active/passive meaning, please comment below!

3 Apr 2017

When preparing for an English speaking test, especially a very structured test like TOEFL, students are often tempted to follow a “template.” That’s a specific formula that you can use to help structure your response. Many websites and even some English teachers will provide you with templates. Some of these consist of simple phrases or transition words like “First of all …” or “In my opinion …” These are fine. But others contain whole sentences in which you “fill in the blanks,” as for example, “In the listening material, the man and the woman are discussing a problem. The man’s problem is that —–.” These are definitely not so great and can negatively affect your score.

So what’s wrong with using a detailed template?

Here’s the problem. Templates are like crutches. When you see someone with crutches, you know that they can’t walk on their own. They’re not independent. They need help and assistance to get around.

Injured Man with crutches sitting on a bench

Templates basically fulfill the same function. Speakers who aren’t confident, who aren’t independent, and who feel they need help and assistance tend to use templates. Using a template is like holding up a big sign saying, “I can’t speak English very well. I need this template so I can answer the question!” And that’s not the message you want to send to your rater.

So how can you resist the temptation of templates?

First of all, I’d say avoid any website or teacher that tries to give you a really structured formula for your answers. They are providing you with misinformation that is not going to improve your speaking score.

Second, work on your overall speaking proficiency. I know that sounds vague, but try to remember that TOEFL is a test of English fluency, not of how well you can memorize formulas. If you are taking TOEFL, you probably have a goal to study or work in an English-speaking country. When someone there asks you your opinion of a movie, or how you would deal with a difficult team member, or what an academic lecture was about, you aren’t going to be able to answer with a template.

Finally, practice, practice, practice … without using a template. Take advantage of the structure of the test. Since the speaking questions follow the same basic pattern, you have some idea of what to expect. Develop your own individual way of answering the questions, just making sure that you try to answer the questions clearly, coherently, and completely.

5 Mar 2017

In my last post about writing, I talked about using the chained method of writing to help improve coherence and cohesion. I believe this method can also be used effectively in speaking tasks for tests such as TOEFL.

The speaking questions in TOEFL are rated on delivery, language use, and topic development. But what does topic development mean, exactly? According to the developers of the test, for the independent tasks (Tasks 1 and 2), topic development means your response is “sustained … well developed and coherent” with clear “relationships between ideas … (or clear progression of ideas).” This is essentially the same goal as the independent writing task.

Remember that chaining means that you begin with an initial topic in your subject and an idea about it in your predicate. Then the idea in the predicate becomes the subject of your next sentence and another new idea is presented in the predicate. And even though spoken English is very different from written English … much less formal, full of discourse markers, and not always strictly grammatical … you can still incorporate the principle of chaining.

So how can you actually use this method when you answer a prompt on TOEFL? Let’s take a typical Task 1 question, which is the most open-ended of the six.

What is an activity that you have never done but would be interested in doing in the future? Explain why you would like to do it. Use specific details in your response.

Here’s how you could chain your response:

Well, an activity I’ve never done but I’d be interested in doing would be sky-diving. I think sky-diving would be really good for me because I’m really afraid of heights. Actually, I’ve been afraid of heights since I was little, but it’s gotten worse and worse as I’ve gotten older. And I feel like that keeps me from enjoying things that my friends do, like mountain climbing or going up tall buildings. I can’t do the things they like to do. So maybe if I went sky-diving … well, it would be really hard for me … I know I’d be scared. But if I could do that, if I could overcome my fear, then I wouldn’t be afraid of anything else. I think that would totally help me face my fears. And then I could do all the things my friends do.

Notice that although I haven’t followed the chained method absolutely, I’m following the same pattern. The last idea that I mention in one sentence becomes the first idea of the subsequent sentence. There’s a coherent and logical progression in my ideas.

Now let’s look at a typical Task 2, which asks you to present and support your opinion about a topic. Many test-takers think that you need two reasons to support your ideas, but that’s a total myth. You need to give a well-developed, coherent, sustained response, and one reason, well-explained, is quite sufficient in a 45-second response. Let’s look at this question:

Your university is considering requiring students to take a class in financial management or in health and nutrition. Which course do you think is more important for students and why?

So here’s how you might answer with a chained response:

If my university was going to offer one of these courses, I think I’d choose a class in health and nutrition as more important for students. This is because when students go to university, they’re usually moving away from home for the first time. At home, their parents usually buy and cook the food and so they eat healthy meals. But at college, students tend to eat less healthy foods. They might eat junk food or go to fast food restaurants. Often, when they eat this way, they end up gaining weight. So a class in health and nutrition might help students avoid this weight gain. And they’d learn to eat healthier food. And I think that would help them for their whole lifetime, because when they leave college, they’ll probably be living on their own and they’ll still need to be making choices about what they eat.

Again, I’ve tried to present my ideas with chaining, moving from one idea to the next in a natural progression. A response like this is much more likely to gain a top score in topic development compared to a “two-reason” response with vague and undeveloped support.

1 Feb 2017

In my last blog post, I talked about “chunking.” Another very useful language chunk is the phrase:

Spoze-to

That’s the way it sounds, but it’s really spelled “supposed to.” And if you use it correctly, it can help you sound a lot more fluent.

Many English learners use should when a native speaker would use supposed to. For example:

The man should take a class on Shakespeare next semester, but he has a conflict in his schedule.

There’s nothing absolutely wrong with this sentence, but it’s not how native speakers would say it. Instead, they’d say:

The man’s supposed to take a class on Shakespeare next semester, but he has a conflict in his schedule.

What’s the difference?

Should is used to indicate a general requirement or obligation. For example:

Everyone should go to the dentist once a year.

You should brush your teeth twice a day.

Should I send an email or a letter?

Supposed to can be used in the same sense, but it’s often used when you’re talking about a more specific occasion OR, as in the example above, when there’s a conflict and you can’t do something you were planning to do. So, for example:

He’s supposed to come to my house tonight.

I’m supposed to go to the dentist tomorrow, but the bus isn’t running.

However, when you are using should and supposed to in negative terms, they are usually interchangeable.

I shouldn’t tell you this because it’s a secret. (I’m not supposed to tell you …)

You’re not supposed to smoke here in the restaurant. (You shouldn’t smoke …)

Finally, we often use supposed to for something that is believed in a general sense. For example:

Chinese is supposed to be the most difficult language to learn.

It’s not supposed to snow tonight.

26 Jan 2017

There have been lots of articles and studies about “chunking” as a good way of learning languages. Basically, a chunk is a whole piece. Here in the U.S., many people like ice cream with chocolate or peanut butter chunks. That means the chocolate or peanut butter is one piece, a chunk, mixed in with the ice cream. You can’t separate the chunk … it’s all in one solid, delicious piece of chocolate (or peanut butter).

Languages work the same way. Think of words that belong together in a chunk … a single group of words that students learn all at once. For example, “How’s it going?” or “Nice to meet you.” We usually learn these expressions all in a piece; we don’t separate them into individual words. And the words belong in a particular order, which is why they’re often called set or fixed phrases.

So how can chunking help you on tests of English speaking? On tests like TOEFL, your biggest challenge is to say what you want to say naturally and fluently, without pausing and hesitating over the right wording.

To do this, I think it’s helpful to slowly acquire a versatile supply of phrases that can be used in many situations. But rather than learning first one chunk and then another chunk, with no relation between the chunks, I recommend a “chunk plus” method. With this method, you start with one group of words, one chunk, and then keep building on it by adding variations.

So, for example, start with the fixed phrase:

a lot of

Now think of some common verbs you can add to this:

waste a lot of

cost a lot of

spend a lot of

take a lot of

Then add some common nouns:

to waste a lot of time

to cost a lot of money

to spend a lot of energy

to take a lot of effort

Now practice using different subjects and tenses. Try putting your phrases in the negative.

I spend a lot of money

It took a lot of time

She doesn’t waste a lot of energy

Then, when these phrases roll off your tongue (which is just another way of saying they come naturally and fluently), refine and expand upon them. Add adverbs or adjectives or simple prepositional phrases:

It really doesn’t take a lot of money

I often waste a lot of my time at the mall

Now’s the time to pay attention to details. For example, should the verbs be followed by a gerund, infinitive, or both? What prepositions follow the verbs? It’s at this stage that a teacher is going to be the most helpful to make sure you get it right.

She spent a lot of time doing her homework. (not spent a lot of time to do …)

It takes a lot of time to learn English. (not takes a lot of time learning …)

You shouldn’t waste your money on new shoes (not waste your money for …)

With my “chunk plus” method, you start with a single chunk and, by building upon it, end up with an almost infinite number of useful phrases. The result, I hope, is that when you are face-to-face with the microphone in your testing room, you’ll be able to speak more fluently, fluidly, and confidently.

25 Jan 2017

When I was working on my graduate degree in teaching ESL, I had to videotape myself teaching in front of my classroom of students. And, upon first viewing these recordings, I was horrified at how many times I used the word okay. It seemed like I started every single sentence with Okay, so … !

The fact is, these filler words are very, very common in English speech. If used too often, they can be quite annoying, but using them in moderation can actually make you sound quite natural.

So, while you may think you should use more formal speech on a test like TOEFL, if a native English speaker were answering these questions, you would be far more likely to hear something like this:

Okay, so the woman has a problem and, um, she needs to move to a new apartment. But, uh, this apartment doesn’t have a place to study, so, um, she could, like, study in the library or, you know, she could study on her bed. Okay, but, you know, she might fall asleep on her bed, so, um, I think maybe she should go to the library, like, at least three times a week. Uh, maybe not on the weekend, okay? But I think, like, most of the time, she, uh, could go there.

So, how much is too much and how much is in moderation? How can you use filler words naturally, but without annoying your listener?

It really helps to have someone listen to and evaluate you. Raters of TOEFL don’t see your face; they just hear your speech. Thus, your filler words are likely to be more obvious, and too many can make you sound less fluent. So have the person evaluating you listen to a recording you’ve made, or listen without looking at you face-to-face. And, if you can’t find anyone to listen to you, make a recording. Then listen to it. What filler words do you use too often or too repetitively?

And how do you cure overuse? Well, from my own example of using okay, simply realizing that I had that annoying habit was half the battle. Once I was aware of it, it was easier to catch myself “in the act” and work on reducing the times I used it.

In addition, certain filler words (also known as discourse markers) such as so, well, oh, now, okay, um, I mean, you know, like, and actually serve important functions in English speech: follow the links to the specific articles for more tips on how to incorporate them into your day-to-day speech.

24 Jan 2017

When you are writing in English, there are many transition words and phrases that you can use to convey your train of thought more fluidly and coherently. When you are speaking, especially in a test of speaking like TOEFL, I think you can rely on fewer phrases … but you must be able to use them correctly. If you don’t, you will not only sound less fluent but may also confuse your listener.

To add additional information to your ideas, try these transition words and phrases:

Furthermore

Also

In addition

Moreover

I believe that all students should study a foreign language. (Furthermore, Also, In addition, Moreover,) they should begin studying this language when they are very young.

To change direction in your ideas, to present an idea that contradicts your previous idea, use these words and phrases:

On the other hand (NOT in the other hand!!)

However

I think children should study mathematics in primary school. (On the other hand, However,) I think algebra is too advanced for them at that age.

To provide an example to illustrate your opinion or idea, I prefer:

For instance

For example

I think parents should make children eat foods they don’t like. (For instance, For example,) my mother made me eat spinach when I was young and I know it was very healthy for me.

Many test-takers use the phrases, to be more specific or take me (or myself) as an example, but these are not expressions that we use much in spoken English and thus they sound rather unnatural.

20 Jan 2017

This is the third installment in a series of Quick Tips to Improve Speaking.

Often, students get confused about whether to use many or much as a quantifier. The quick rule is that many is used with count nouns and much is used with non-count nouns. See my previous blog post for more specifics. So, for example, it is grammatically correct to say:

She went to many classes. She learned much information.

However, there’s a better way to say this in English. The fact is, native English speakers are much more likely to use a lot of or lots of as quantifiers, perhaps because you can use a lot of and lots of with both count and non-count nouns. This way, you don’t have to think about what noun you’re going to use after the quantifier; you’ll be grammatically correct no matter which one you choose. So an easier and more fluent way of expressing the ideas above is:

She went to lots of classes. She learned a lot of information.

By getting in the habit of using a lot of or lots of, you can not only avoid using much or many incorrectly but also sound more like a native speaker. It’s really a win-win combination.

Also, think of a lot of as one word with three syllables, rather than three separate words. That’s called “chunking,” which I’ll talk about later as a way of speeding your progress in English speaking. When you hear native speakers, it will sound like they’re saying, “uh-lot-uv” as one single word. The more you can copy this pronunciation, the more fluent you’ll sound. In the same way, lots of should be treated as a two-syllable word … “lots-uv.”

Finally, be aware that both a lot of and lots of are best used in spoken English. They are a bit too casual and informal for written academic English.

17 Jan 2017

This is the second installment in a series of Quick Tips to Improve Speaking.

Another common speaking task in English tests like TOEFL is to make a recommendation. What are the best language strategies for doing this?

First, many people start out by framing their answer as if they were in this hypothetical (unreal) situation themselves. To do this, you need to use the fairly uncommon subjunctive mood in English, which is used to describe conditional or imaginary situations. Here, the rules of subject/verb agreement change, so you would say something like this:

If I were her …

If it were me …

If I were in his shoes …

If you begin your statement this way, talking about what you would do in the situation, you should use the modal would. So you might say:

If I were her, I would take the bus to work.

If it were me, I wouldn’t take a part-time job.

If you don’t place yourself in the same situation, you should use the modal should. So you might say:

In my opinion, people should graduate from college before they get married.

I think that she should major in engineering.

Or you can use a combination of both. For example:

If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t take a part-time job. I think he should focus on his studies.

Finally, you might want to consider how to talk about the consequences of a particular action. Here’s how you do that using the modals would (to express a certainty) and might (to express a possibility):

If he took a part-time job, he would have less time to study. He might actually fail the class.

If he was studying hard, he wouldn’t have time to play video games. He might even get an A.

Notice that in the “if” clause, we use the past tense form of the verb.

Using these simple strategies will help you to make your recommendations much more fluently.

16 Jan 2017

This will be the first in a series of Quick Tips to Improve Speaking.

In many tests of English fluency, you may be asked a hypothetical question … that is, about a situation that has not actually happened. You might think that because this situation has not yet happened, you should use the future tense, but this is not true.

Let’s say the question is: Which would you prefer, to live in a large city or in a small town? It’s possible that if you already live in one or the other, you might answer something like: I really love living in a large city because it’s so exciting and interesting. But usually you will answer this as a hypothetical question, as if the situation has not yet occurred.

First of all, to start your response, it is helpful to frame your answer with an “if” clause. Although this situation has not yet happened, you use a past tense verb. For example, If I lived in a large city … or If I had to choose whether to live in a large city or small town … In other words, you do not say something like: If I choose to live in a large city … or If I live in a small town …

Many lower-level speakers use the words can or will in their response, but these do not sound really fluent. We usually don’t say things like:

In a big city, I can go out to a new restaurant every night.

In a small town, I will take lots of walks in the country.

The best words to use are could or would. So, for example:

In a big city, I could go out to a new restaurant every night.

In a small town, I would take lots of walks in the country

What’s the difference? Could implies possibility; would is more definite. You can think of these as forms of can and will that are more appropriate in a hypothetical question.