Ok, thanks to all of you for your replies
Since, no one answered yet, I will use this thread as kind of a diary (which hopefully improves my writing skills). I still hope for recommendations regarding the TOEFL. I know the internet is full of "help", but I found this site to be qualitatively helpful. I, of course, read the sticky threads.
So far:
General
As mentioned above I bought the TOEFL Official Guide and the TOEFL Prep Book by Barron. I took the reading Pre-Test in the Barron book and given the amount of right and wrong answers (and the conversion table) I scored only 23! Obviously, I was very disappointed about it. My problem, has been since I go to school actually, I work to fast which causes mistakes that could have been avoidable. I worked through the reading test within 30 minutes, but I did mistakes, if I had taken a closer look, those mistakes wouldn't have happened. So it wasn't due to lack of knowledge but rather my work ethic. I think this case is better than making mistakes because of not-knowing.
--> analyzing my mistakes is important.
Reading
To improve my reading I have subscribed to The Economist (kindle version). Since I study and currently obtain a masters degree in economics (german university), the content is not only interesting to me personally but it improves my english vocabulary.
How I read The Economist
1) Read an article fully. Just read it with respect to content.
2) Read article again. I write a list of words unknown to me, parallel.
3) Write flashcards for each of the unknown word from the list.
4) Learn words
5) Read article again
I know this is time-consuming and probably not the most efficient way of doing it, BUT honestly it is so much more fun to read an article that you
fully understand. I mean of course you understand a lot when reading the article in Step 1, but it will not help you to IMPROVE your reading skills since your voc basis just stays the at the same level.
I never took the TOEFL maybe the words there are not as sophisticated as in The Economist, or the Economist is not as complex as FT or whatever. But I really come to the conclusion now, that reading while understand maybe 7 out of 10 words is NOT improving your english. I forget the words that I don't know, within seconds. That's why I need to grapple(?) with them so intensively.
Listening
I downloaded 2 apps: "BBC" and "tunein" (both at least available for iphone). The latter one has all radio stations that came to my mind, I really recommend it. I listen to as much as possible, at least 20 minutes per day. I try to make notes during the listening and then summarize the content with my notes. I hope with this approach I can kill 2 birds with one stone: listening and speaking. I don't recommend BBC news for this summarizing-thing: news of the world just are not suited for this. For example, with tunein I found a radio station called business daily. Every now and then, they discuss a specific topic (topic introduction, explain the topic, pros, cons: e.g. solar energy) and then I basically summarize those 20min recordings. You can replay the sequences, but I try to avoid that.
I use BBC a) to hear more British English and b) to get used to a more eloquent English.
Speaking
See Listening. What I try, is to say sentences that I just said in my mother tongue in English. I will definitely intensify my Speaking skills in march.
What I already saw is the youtube video from the sticky, with the a, r1, r2 scheme.
Writing
Nothing yet. Again, I have 4 weeks in march to prepare this skill.
As we see, my weaker parts (Speaking, Writing) probably are not addressed properly as I find it very difficult to do them on your own and I have to say what I do now is already time consuming (see above: currently in my masters studies). I really don't know when to write an essay - actually I don't even know how to write an essay.
Conlusion for everyone to lazy to read
I need tips on writing and speaking, but definitely writing. Templates or anything like that will be appreciated.
