Top the TOEFL

Unlocking the Secrets of Ivy League Students

Kaiwen Leong, Elaine Leong

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9789814663496
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Top the TOEFL is a TOEFL book like no other. It recognizes an essential key to the problem: students who struggle with the TOEFL have problems mastering English. Hence, while other TOEFL books teach strategies with long wordy explanations that hardly make sense to the average student, Top the TOEFL focuses on teaching students in the most intuitive way possible: examples.

Each unit is systematically broken down to make it simple for any student to Top the TOEFL. First, "Simple Steps" are condensed at the outset for easy reference. Next begins "Elaboration with Examples" — a section where the "Simple Steps" are put into practice. The unit concludes with the "TOEFL Trainer" which divides exercises according to the "Simple Steps", allowing students a chance to directly put the strategies to practice rather than just throwing students into the deep end by providing a full set of TOEFL practice tests.

Top the TOEFL is a TOEFL book like no other. It recognizes an essential key to the problem: students who struggle with the TOEFL have problems mastering English. Hence, while other TOEFL books teach strategies with long wordy explanations that hardly make sense to the average student, Top the TOEFL focuses on teaching students in the most intuitive way possible: examples.

Each unit is systematically broken down to make it simple for any student to Top the TOEFL. First, "Simple Steps" are condensed at the outset for easy reference. Next begins "Elaboration with Examples" — a section where the "Simple Steps" are put into practice. The unit concludes with the "TOEFL Trainer" which divides exercises according to the "Simple Steps", allowing students a chance to directly put the strategies to practice rather than just throwing students into the deep end by providing a full set of TOEFL practice tests.

Readership: Students who intend to take the TOEFL test, students who intend to improve their English language capabilities.
Key Features:

• Systematic breakdown of TOEFL questions with specific strategies to tackle each question
• Strategies taught via direct examples instead of abstract concepts
• Each unit concludes with exercises specially designed for students on how to apply the strategies

Reading Fast and Reading Well

The TOEFL exam is not just about whether you can read or whether you can read well. With the time restriction imposed on every student, it is ultimately a test of whether you can read well and fast at the same time.

The average student who sits for the TOEFL already finds English a huge challenge. Thinking in English is as troublesome as wading through a pool of thick mud. Every movement takes much longer than it should, and complicated words just confuse you to no end. When the clock is ticking down like a time bomb, what do you do?

We’re here to tell you precisely what to do. And it begins with the following Simple Steps.

Simple Steps

1.Underline the keywords within the question.

2.Generate relevant mental shortcuts using the keywords.

3.Use the mental shortcuts as handholds to identify the accurate answer.

Definitions:

•Keywords: Important words.

•Mental shortcuts: Methods that can help you think faster and better.

Elaboration with Examples

1. Underline the keywords within the question

What precisely are the keywords that you should look out for? Here’s a list:

Type	Example
Question words	Who, what, why, when, which, how etc.
Proper nouns	President Obama, the Forbidden City, Cannes Film Festival
Unusual words	Words that you do not normally see often, such as diving, nuclear, paragliding
Negation words	Except, unless, not, refused, false, incorrect, wrong etc.
Numbers	Figures such as 1989, 10,008

Let’s put this step into practice.

Sample passage (brief):

The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram

The diary of Dang Thuy Tram as published begins in April 1968 and ends in June 1970. At the beginning of the diary, she was 25 years old and the chief physician of a field hospital in the Quang Ngai Province, which was in the mountains of central Vietnam. Her entries are focused around her daily life in times of war, particularly of tending to the wounded and sick, and her thoughts on the war itself. In the earlier part of the diary, she also writes about her frustration at not being accepted into the Communist Party. She was only accepted in September 1968, at a point at which joy was no longer as sweet as it would have been were she accepted immediately. As she puts it, “for a child exhausted by hunger for her mother’s milk, the milk no longer tastes so sweet”. Interspersed between her writings on the Vietnam War are also reflections on her own personal life.

What is most valuable about this diary is the insight it provides the reader, specifically insight from the point of view of a Vietnamese at the battlefront of the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese perspective provided by Dang often clashes with the conventional American perspective at that time, allowing the reader to recognize and reconcile the complexity of the war. Subsequently, by piecing the two views together, the reader can begin to understand why the Vietnam War went on for so long (until 1975) despite American military and technological superiority that should have made it an easy job.

Sample question:

According to paragraph 1, all of the following statements are true of Dang Thuy Tram, EXCEPT:

a)Dang Thuy Tram was always a member of the Communist Party.

b)Dang Thuy Tram’s writing focused on what happened during the war.

c)Dang Thuy Tram was in the medical field.

d)Dang Thuy Tram was not always happy.

2. Generate relevant mental shortcuts using the keywords

Next, use the keywords to create mental shortcuts for yourself. Why are mental shortcuts important? Well, the average student knows that the TOEFL tests your basic understanding of English. But you have to ask yourself what “basic understanding” actually entails.

Basic understanding doesn’t just involve identifying keywords within the question. More importantly, it tests whether you are able to draw links between the question and the passage. This involves thinking of synonyms, antonyms or items closely related to the original keyword.

“Mental shortcuts” is our term for training you to do precisely that. It trains you to do a quick analysis of the keyword to generate important conclusions that can help you evade mistakes. It also involves coming up with relevant keywords that can help you find the answer in the passage as quickly as possible.

3. Use the mental s...