TOEFL Writing Ultimate Guide | Video Post

By

Rachel Kapelke-Dale

on

March 2, 2017

in

Maybe you’re just beginning your TOEFL studies and want to access all the information you need about TOEFL Writing in one place. Or maybe you’re a veteran of the Magoosh TOEFL blog and are curious to see the TOEFL Writing ultimate guide information our TOEFL expert, Lucas, has put together for you here.

In either case, welcome! We’re excited to present you with the latest addition to the Magoosh video library: the TOEFL Writing ultimate guide!

How Should I Use the TOEFL Writing Ultimate Guide?

In this video, Lucas introduces the different kinds of tasks you’ll encounter in TOEFL Writing, before discussing:

In-depth looks at what the two tasks ask you to do, and how to respond to them;
How the test presents TOEFL content;
Common problems students encounter and how to address them;
Mistakes that TOEFL test-takers make and how to avoid them;
How to use the Internet-Based Test format (iBT) to your advantage;
Test-day tips on:
- Timing
- Your thesis or opinion
- Structure
- Paragraphing
- Examples
- Language use
- …and more!

Lucas also answers some of the following common questions about TOEFL Writing:

Practice for your TOEFL exam with Magoosh.

Does it matter how long my essay is?
How does essay length relate to my TOEFL Writing score?
Is it better to use more complicated vocabulary?
How can I make the most of my preparation time?

That’s a lot of information! As Lucas takes you through the TOEFL Writing section, it’s a good idea to take notes. Bookmarking the page for later study is also a good idea. After you’ve written your next TOEFL practice essay, come back and go through Lucas’s advice to evaluate where you still need to improve.

What advice did you follow? What advice did you forget? Make sure to take note of what you forgot to do, as well as what you did right, so that you can start (and keep) using the best practices for TOEFL Writing moving forward!

How Can I Keep Improving My TOEFL Writing Score?

Now that you have all of the information you need about the structure of the TOEFL Writing section and how to approach it, keep going! You can check out the Magoosh TOEFL blog for more tips, practice, and expert advice. And for the ultimate in TOEFL Writing (and Reading, Listening, and Speaking!), take a look at the Magoosh TOEFL course!

No matter where you go from here, make sure that you not only listen to Lucas’s advice (as always, we highly recommend good note-taking!), but that you also work on incorporating this advice into your practice essays. Great practice incorporating the above advice, and correcting your practice rigorously, is the best way to raise your score. Happy practicing!

Author

Rachel Kapelke-Dale

Rachel is one of Magoosh’s Content Creators. She writes and updates content on our High School and GRE Blogs to ensure students are equipped with the best information during their test prep journey. As a test-prep instructor for more than five years in there different countries, Rachel has helped students around the world prepare for various standardized tests, including the SAT, ACT, TOEFL, GRE, and GMAT, and she is one of the authors of our Magoosh ACT Prep Book. Rachel has a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature from Brown University, an MA in Cinematography from the Université de Paris VII, and a Ph.D. in Film Studies from University College London. For over a decade, Rachel has honed her craft as a fiction and memoir writer and public speaker. Her novel, THE BALLERINAS, is forthcoming in December 2021 from St. Martin’s Press, while her memoir, GRADUATES IN WONDERLAND, co-written with Jessica Pan, was published in 2014 by Penguin Random House. Her work has appeared in over a dozen online and print publications, including Vanity Fair Hollywood. When she isn’t strategically stringing words together at Magoosh, you can find Rachel riding horses or with her nose in a book. Join her on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook!

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Comments

2 responses to “TOEFL Writing Ultimate Guide | Video Post”

Guilherme

May 8, 2017

Hey Magoosh!

Firstly I’d like to thank all of the team for the effort and dedication you put into this. Big shout-out to everyone out there!

Maybe this isn’t the best place to ask this, but what the hey it’s a simple question anyway.
For the past month/month and a half I have been putting all of the pieces of the TOEFL puzzle together to better understand how the test actually works. I’m in no way a native speaker, but my English is rather decent and having done some (and this is key) exercises, I quickly found my strengths and weaknesses.

With that said, I continuously find myself going back to learning the structure of the exam, rather than doing concrete exercises. What I mean by this is that I’m concentrating a big part of my studies into understanding how each question is written, the common mistakes, the “answer templates”, etc, and very little into actual exercises.

So, here’s my question – for a student such as myself with a level of approximately B2/C1 in English, do you think it’s better to continuously hammer exercises, or to focus on the “niche mistakes” that I find myself doing when I (sporadically) do some actual exercises, and study the questions with those specific formats?

I’ve been getting great scores in my practice runs (even the ones put out by Magoosh!), but I’m a little bit afraid I might be underestimating the actual test, and the conditions given on the test day.

Thank you so much! 🙂

(Your average broke student)

Reply
1. David Recine
  
  May 9, 2017
  
  Hi Guilherme,
  
  You definitely should be doing as many actual TOEFL practice questions as possible. Make sure you do official exams and questions from ETS, if you haven’t done so already. ETS has both free options (PowerPrep, the stuff from the EdX online course) and affordable ones (Official TOEFL iBT Tests Vol. 1, Official TOEFL iBT Tests Vol. 2, the Official Guide to the TOEFL).
  
  At your level, however, focusing on skills and exam structure is also also a smart move. You have English skills at a level that’s “TOEFL friendly”, so it does make sense to focus your practice on test-related skills, rather than language skills.
  
  Reply

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