The 5 Ultimate Ways to Prepare for the TOEFL Exam

Taking the TOEFL test is always stressful. You need to keep a vision of your future ahead of you and study hard to get there. But to get there, you first need to get a specific score, pay money, and wait months to take it. Because a lot is on the line, you must try your best and do all you can. And it all starts with the test preparation.

To reduce your stress on test day, you have to start the TOEFL preparation well in advance, and Educatly is going to tell you how.

Here Are 5 Ways to Prepare for the TOEFL Exam:

1. Read every day

Reading daily is a great strategy for strengthening your vocabulary. The more you read, the more concepts and words you will come across and learn. This will also help increase your reading comprehension skills. And if that isn't enough, being prepared for the TOEFL test as an expert on a wide range of subjects never hurts!

2. Listen to programs and podcasts

There are many podcasts and videos online in the English language, such as those from the BBC and NPR. Listening to native English speakers speaking natural English is a great way to develop your listening skills, and you can listen to things you actually like or enjoy in any subject. 

Listening will also help you improve your speaking skills because you can try and mimic how they pronounce words. This, of course, is more effective than watching movies or shows because those have no subtitles, so they rely entirely on your listening skills.

3. Take notes

Improve your note-taking skills for the TOEFL exam. On the test, you get to listen to audio clips only once. You'll then need to answer questions about it and speak or even write about it. Because you can't replay the audio, you need to work on your note-taking skills. Try taking notes in your own language first and then in English as well. It’s probably good to do some of both. The goal is to learn to take notes while listening so that you don’t miss anything the speaker says. Make sure to pay attention to things like how readable your handwriting is and if organizational layout helps. Taking notes and recording information at once will be a huge help for your TOEFL test and for future studies as well.

4. Take practice tests

To prepare for the international standardized English test, you can take practice tests and keep track of your progress. There are many ways to get TOEFL practice tests. You can take the TOEFL iBT® Test, test guide, or EF SET test and assess yourself as many times as you want.

5. Write on a keyboard

In order to type a good essay on exam day, you'll need to learn how to type on a keyboard or even on a touch keyboard fast. You can spend some time practicing writing correctly on a keyboard to increase your typing speed and get familiar with a keyboard. This is a simple skill that many overlook when preparing for their TOEFL exams, so make sure you have this mastered well before your test.

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