I just beat the TOEFL - 116 :)

You just Beat The TOEFL/IELTS/Cambridge/PTE!
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I just beat the TOEFL - 116 :)

by Bevis » Tue Aug 28, 2012 2:41 am
Hello All,
This is my first post, although I was a silent viewer of the posts in beat the GMAT for almost a year now.

I just received my TOEFL IBT score - 116.
Reading - 27, Listening - 30, Speaking - 29, Writing - 30.

Study materials - all you need is the TOEFL official guide and notefull.com for the speaking section.

I spent about 2 weeks preparing for the test, but you really don't need more than 7-10 days.

Reading section
Just try to read as much as you can, I made an online subscription for the New York Times, which is an excellent source to read from. Also, when you practice, try not to spend too much time when choosing your answer, just choose the answer that seems right and move on. Usually when you go back and correct your answers, it turns out that the initial answers were in fact the right ones.

Listening section
If you usually watch American or British television/movies, you will do fine in this section.

Speaking section
This was the hardest part for me to practice while I studied, but thanks to notefull.com, I followed their patterns and it paid off - I got 29 on this section on test day. So, follow notefull's patterns and just make sure to practice on each question by recording yourself and listening to your response.

Writing section
Don't worry if you don't remember the different patterns that are suggested. I didn't follow a specific pattern, I just made sure that I answered the question with the right grammatical constructions with sufficient detail and reasoning. I wrote about 400 words for the first writing task, and 410 words for the second writing task (with 4 short paragraphs), and got 30 on this section. If you don't write often, I would suggest practice writing as much as you can before test day.

That's it. If you have more questions - I would be happy to answer them.