Tips for the Toefl Exam

Listening Comprehension
Structure and

Written Expression Reading Comprehension.

General TOEFL strategies

Use your time wisely. Get familiar with the instructions before taking the

TOEFL so that you will not have to waste time reading them. If you do not know the answer to a question, guess. There is no penalty for guessing. Unmarked answers will be counted as wrong. Mark your answer sheet very carefully. Do not write in your test booklet.

Tips for the TOEFL exam

Structure and Written Expressions

Time: 25 minutes
40 questions in two subsections Structure (15 questions). You choose gramatically

correct sentence completions for sentences with missing parts. Written Expressions (25 questions). You choose the incorrect segments in complete sentences.

PRESENT PARTICIPLES A present participle is the -ing form of a verb . The present participle can be (1) part of the verb or (2) and adjective. It is part of the verb when it is accompanied by some form of the verb be. e.g. The woman was intriguing against her husband It is an adjective when it is not accompanied by some form of the verb be. e.g. the intriguing woman was a mistery.

PAST PARTICIPLE A past participle often ends in ed but there are also many irregular past participles. (played, taught)

The ed form of the verb can be (1) the simple past, (2) the past participle of a verb,or (3) an adjective. e.g. the finished task is on the desk.

COORDINATE CONNECTORS

Many sentences have more than one clause (group of words containing subject and verb). One way to connect two clauses is to use: AND, BUT, OR, or SO between the sentences.

When you analize a sentence, first identify the verb, if there is no verb in the main sentence, you have to choose the answer that contains the correct form of the verb needed. Once you identify the verb, ask a wh...question of the verb. This will locate the subject

Subject-verb agreement.- the subject must agree with the verb of a sentence in two ways: in number (singular vs. plural) or in person ( first, second or third person). Be aware that some times there are prepositional phrases (distractors) . Pronoun-noun agreement.- a pronoun needs to agree with the noun in term of number and gender. Parallelism principle requieres that expressions of similar content and function should be similar. Comparison.- make sure to compare the same things always.

Be sure that the sentence has a subject and a verb Be careful of objects of prepositions because they can be mistaken for the subject of the sentence. The object of the preposition is a noun or a pronoun that comes after a preposition such as: in, at, on, of, to, by, behind, etc, to form a prepositional phrase. Be careful of appositives. An appositive is a noun that comes before or after another noun and has the same meaning. Appositives can be left out the phrase and it still makes sense.

Be careful of present participles: they can either be as part of the verb or an adjective Be careful of past participles

Use coordinate connectors correctly: and, but, so, or, yet Parallel structure

Invert the subject and verb with question words

Invert the subject and verb with negatives Subject verb agreement Subject verb agreement