5 Skills You Need To Master To Get 26+ On TOEFL Speaking - Podcast & Transcript

In a new episode of The TOEFL Podcast, Paul Austin, head instructor at TOEFL Speaking Teacher speaks about the five skills you need to master to get 26+ on the TOEFL Speaking section.

First, Paul tells us about his work and how he created his website TOEFL Speaking Teacher. He noticed that many students struggled with the TOEFL Speaking section, and there were very few good resources.

Also as he started to work with the students on the Speaking section, he noticed that a lot of students needed to get 26+ on the TOEFL Speaking section and tried to figure out what is required to get 26 on TOEFL Speaking.

As a result of his experience, he found the five skills you need to master to get 26+ on the TOEFL Speaking section.

The first skill is Fluency. Fluency is your ability to deliver a response smoothly, with minimum interruptions.

Skill number two is TOEFL Speaking Tactics: Timing, Content, Organization, and Note-taking.

The third thing Words and Phrases. You want to show the evaluator that you can speak English well, you are not using templates, you are using natural sounding English.

Skill number four is your Accent and Intonation. It´s the most challenging one to improve because it takes more time.

Skill number five is your Pace of Speech. You need to speak fast enough, 100-105 words on Question types 1 and 2 and about 125 in Question types 3 to 6.

A bonus skill that affects everything is Confidence. You really need to work on improving your Confidence to get 26+.

The advice that Paul gives is not to focus on the score you need to get but focus on improving those five skills. Then you’ll be good enough to get 26+

Also, Paul emphasizes, that the part of getting 26 is accepting that you haven’t been perfect in the past, but now it’s time to change, now it’s time to get a professional help.

5 Skills You Need To Master To Get 26+ On TOEFL Speaking - Transcript

Welcome to the TOEFL podcast where we give you all of the hints, tips and secrets you need to know to score one hundred plus on the TOEFL exam. I'm your host Paul Austin, head tutor at TOEF Speaking Teacher and I'm here to help you succeed in your next TOEFL test.

Welcome back to the toefl podcast listeners, we are so excited to have you here today and to learn about the 5 skills that you need to master to get 26+ plus on the TOEFL speaking section now some of you may be familiar with the work that I've done in terms of the toefl test. If you haven't just a brief introduction about what my work has been like for the past couple of years, you know when I first started the toefl speaking teacher website a couple years ago I only had one or two years of experience with toefl and I specifically created this site because I noticed that there were many students who struggled with the toefl speaking section. As you probably know the productive skills Speaking and Writing are the most challenging skills for a total student to master and so I thought you know I'll just focus on the speaking section, I’ll provide private lessons, I’ll provide extra help for people so that they can do well on the speaking section and as I started to work with students on the speaking section I noticed that a lot of students needed to get 26+ on the toefl speaking section and this 26+ was for pharmacists, physical therapists,  nurses, teachers, doctors, dentists then of course you know people who needed to get their MBA or go to graduate school look at their PhD or their LLM and there were a lot of students who needed to get 26­+ on toefl speaking and there weren't a lot of resources, in fact they were basically zero resources that were widely read and well known amongst the online community. You know you have note full as I've spoken about with other students and as I spoke about on this toefl podcast, their advice for the reading, listening sometimes the writing section is pretty good but their advice for the speaking section is bad, it’s the best way to put it, it's incorrect and since they have the most popular YouTube channel, they get the most traffic people say I'll look it's work for other people it will work for me too I'm unfortunately if you were to ask them the percentages of the students that they would help for the speaking section specifically to get 26 it would be probably somewhere between 20 and 30 % and maybe even lower so you always wanna look at percentage.

Anyway that's getting a bit off track because there weren't any good resources I started to work with since I started to try to figure out what is required to get 26 on toefl speaking because this is a challenging thing to do, it is not easy and after about two years of private lessons, now specific to 26 on toefl speaking I've come up with a program more or less, and  this program is you know I do have a self-study course curriculum called get twenty six placental for speaking that's available for purchase it is a premium product but it basically has then all of the skills that I'm gonna tell you about today it has all the details on them audio files, video files, fleshed out exercises that you can use at home all of those things are in the cream of course but in today's podcast I just wanted to give you a taste for what those five skills are that you need to master to get 26+ on toefl speaking so let's get started without kind of waiting any longer and at the end of the 5 skills I'm going to tell you one bonus skill that you definitely need to master or understand well if you want to get 26+ speaking and this bonus skill I see 90% of students struggle with probably 90 to 95% of struggle with this bonus schools would definitely stay on in time to hear the bonus skill so the first skill right let's get into it guys the first skill is Fluency you need to have excellent fluency if you want to get 26­+ on toefl speaking.  What does that mean? you know so we say the word fluency what does that mean when you're actually giving a response on the TOEFL speaking section well fluency is your ability to deliver a response smoothly with minimal interruptions from point A to point B so for example the question one you have forty five seconds to get that response should start with confidence in the first five to ten seconds start smoothly you should go the full time forty four forty five seconds with minimal interruptions of hesitation I say no more than two or three hesitations or interruptions in your response if you want to get 26 on toefl speaking so what do we count as a hesitation or an interruption? Well the most common one is going to be the word mmm or ahhh so if you record your responses and you listen to those responses and you notice a lot I have eight mmms and ahhhs  in this response, well you need to minimize those, you need to get those down so that's the first one mmms and ahhhs.

The second type of interruption is often when we repeat ourselves so this happens with people who maybe have some issues with stuttering which are brought on by a lack of confidence and being nervous and stressed out so if you find yourself repeating words stuttering over words you would also count that as an interruption and you want to minimize those and sometimes those can be very challenging because sometimes the student also stutters in their native tongue and that's something that's difficult just to eliminate right away so if that's a problem for you I highly recommend hiring a professional, it could be one of our teachers, it could be someone else who will help you to minimize the stuttering in your response so we have mmms and ahhhs, we have stuttering, we also have general pauses and breaks and kind of drawing words out so I worked with one student who, she's from Dallas Texas and she really struggle because to give her brain more time to think she would often drag words out very long so she's say you know personally I think that the doctor should blablabla instead of just saying like that person I think the doctor should go to Chicago she was a personallyyyy, I think the doctorrrrrr should go to Chicagooooo and she would draw out those kind of the ends of the words to give herself more time to be able to think about what she wanted to say next. We fixed that, we improved it and she went from 23 to 26 on toefl speaking and we also worked on some other things but that was one of the main things that we worked on so to minimize also than drawing any words out you want to speak clearly you want to speak quickly and you want to get from one point to the next. So that’s skill number one, skill number one is fluency let's go on to skill number two guys skill number two is going to be the toefl speaking tactics so the toefl speaking tactics, there are four of them there's your timing, there's your content, there is your organization and there's finally your note taking and these I call these the total speaking tactics because these are just the things that you need to do specific to taking the toefl speaking section you know if you were doing any other thing if you're going to have coffee with a friend or you were going to give a presentation about a certain topic to a group of people or if you were going to speak to a client or a person is coming into your work you don't need to worry about these things you don't need to worry about taking notes beforehand or how you're organizing your response or that you know how much time you're talking but because we're in the toefl speaking section you know you need to you need to be able to do those things so toefl speaking tactics: timing, content, organization and your note taking.

I'll say a couple of things about these. Timing: for question type one and two you want it to be forty four, forty five seconds, for question types three to six you want it to be fifty eight, fifty nine or sixty seconds, easy enough and you just want to work until you can hit that timing consistently, now content and organization 90 to 95 % of students who work with me we don't ever focus specifically on content and organization, that's something that with enough practice and with enough exposure to example responses, you won't have any problem with the content and organization thought if you're struggling with content and organization, if a teacher tells you that you are or if you kind of self-evaluate and determine that you're struggling with it look at your notes, usually notes are the first problem. If you want more advice on the notes then you can take a look at our YouTube videos, ok master guide to question type one, master guide to question type two, question type three I tell you how to take notes in those videos I tell you how to take very good notes so improve that note taking process and that is going to help you with your content and organization. The other thing that will help you with content and organization is by listening to example responses from students who have gotten 26­+ for toefl speaking, this is one of the best things that I include in our premium course to get 26­+ for toefl speaking, before I have students take the TOEFL, I have them record responses and send them to me and then I save those responses and if they end up getting 26+ on toefl speaking which most of them do, I put those responses in my premium course so that the students were coming through can actually hear what a 26 response sounds like from a nonnative speaker and when you listen to those again and again and again and again and again you have a very good understanding for what you need to do to get 26 on the toefl speaking task in terms of content and organization. One last note, a lot of students that come to me they worry that their content and organization is not good enough, they worry that it's preventing them from getting 26 on toefl speaking, typically they're worrying about the wrong thing so if you're worried that your content and organization is preventing you from getting 26, you are probably wrong. I will repeat that if you're worried but the content and organization of your responses is preventing you from getting 26 on toefl speaking you are probably wrong it is probably something else that is probably your accent and intonation it's probably the words and phrases you use and it might be your pace of speech it could be your fluency but usually when students come to me their content and organization is fine so if that's the case if you think that's preventing you from getting 26, meet with me. Ok schedule TOEFL speaking response analysis which will provide a link to below, we evaluate your responses and will actually tell you what is the real thing that's preventing you from getting 26 on toefl speaking for some students it is content organization but that's very rare typically students want to believe that its content and organization because that you know that's the easy one to fix that's the one they know how to fix but it's usually not usually not the tactics it's usually not the content and organization let's move on now okay so total speaking tactics timing content organization and note taking.

The third thing I get is going to be the words and phrases that you use, yes words and phrases what are the actual words that are coming out of your mouth. First of all if you're using templates and you expect to get 26 on toefl speaking you are shooting yourself in the foot that's a really good idiom to look up, shooting yourself in the foot. Don't use templates in the toefl speaking section when humans communicate when native speakers talking English we do not speak like robots me go to the store or talking with friends were ordering food at a restaurant we don't have pre memorize phrases that we use. Why would you do that and the toefl speaking section? You are trying to show the evaluator that you can speak English well that is the entire point of taking the toefl speaking test. Yes you want to get your MBA yes you want to go to graduate school yes you want to get your PhD you want to you know work as a pharmacist doctor, dentist, physical therapist, teacher but ultimately you need to prove that you can speak English well in order to do those things and the toefl is the medium for you to prove that so why would you speak like a robot on the total speaking section? It doesn't make sense you want to show the evaluators that you can speak English well so don't use templates don't try to memorize formulas, spoken language is not A plus B equals C.  It's not that simple you have to be able to use conversational English at the able to speak English naturally okay so that's the third thing our words and phrases so for not using templates what you need to use is informal colloquial English, natural sounding English and the best way to learn that, the best way to understand what that is by just immersing yourself in as many natural kind of authentic listening resources as possible: podcast, movies, TV shows, the radio, listen to those again and again just notice and pay attention to how native speakers actually talk what it what's the conversational English they don't use the word moreover for I still chuckle have a good chuckle when I have a student come in who uses the word moreover I've never use that word in my entire life. Ever. When I'm speaking English I've written a couple times but I would never use that word to don't use it if there's a word that a native speaker wouldn't use in conversation with other people and you're trying to use it and that'll for speaking response, the professor states that, get it out, eliminate it, it's not helping you. Ok, the words and phrases, eliminate templates, use colloquial informal English. Skill number four is your accent and intonation so your accent and this is probably the biggest thing preventing students from getting 26, this is the real one so where a lot of students think oh it's my content and my organization they come to me and I say no it's your accent the reason they don't want to admit that it's their accent the reason they don't want to have to accept the fact that it is their accent is because that is the most challenging one to improve. That is by far the most challenging thing to improve because it takes time because it takes patience because it's typically not an overnight fix and in our day and age in our society in the way that we live we have been trained to want to find the shortest way possible, we have been trained to want to find a shortcut. Sometimes it's just not possible sometimes you have to take the long way, the challenging way and I see this most often with students who struggle with accent and intonation so as part of accent, there are you know there are multiple areas of accent there's your intonation which is the rhythm of the language, going high, going low, taking pauses, speaking really fast and going from one word to the another it's that type of rhythm that we look at for intonation but then there's also pronunciation, how might actually saying phonetic sounds in the English language and pronunciation takes, it can take anywhere from one to three months to improve to get to a point where you can get 26 which is why students don't want to accept that intonation, sorry they don't want to accept that pronunciation, that accent is the reason they can't get 26 because they don't want to study one to three months they want to say I want to be done with this in two weeks I want to be done with this in three weeks. Now paradoxically, that's a good word paradoxically because they try to shortcut their way to 26 because they try to take the short way, it ends up taking them much longer to actually get the score I've heard I've worked with so many students who have come to me and then like yeah I've already taken the toefl 20 times they started out with the same mindset as you well you know just take the short way I'll take the shortcut in eventually I'll get lucky and I'll get this, it only be a couple months, two months turns into three months three months turns into six months, six months turns into one year, one year turns into three years and then all of a sudden they've spent three to four thousand dollars on taking the test they still haven't passed the gotten 26 on toefl speaking and they've lost all that time and opportunity in terms of making extra money at their job so by trying to take the short cut they've completely failed and actually extended how long it's taking them, and if that's you that's no problem right, it’s part of getting 26 is accepting that that's you accepting that you've made a mistake accepting that you haven't been perfect in the past but that now it's time to change now it's time to get professional help. If you need 26 on toefl speaking and you've taken the test more than three times you need to hire someone who can actually get you twenty six on toefl speaking who has a track record of helping students get 26 on toefl speaking and not 20%, I'm talking 60 to 70 to 80 % like we have at Toefl Speaking Teacher so accent and intonation is skill number four.

Skill number five is your pace of speech and that one's pretty simple I tell students okay fluency is great beautiful speaking tactics are great you using informal words and phrases your accent and intonation is closer and closer to a native speaker well then you just need to speak quick enough need to speak fast enough and I tell them aim for 105 words in question type one and two, aim for about 135 words in question types three six so imagine these five skills like a pyramid okay then I'm gonna provide a graphics you guys can see what I mean but skills one and two fluency and toefl speaking tactics, those form the foundation of the pyramid and first you need to make sure that those are well established then once you've mastered those go to the next step of the pyramid which the words and phrases you're using, once you eliminate the templates, once you use in informal words and phrases then go ahead and go to the next step of the pyramid which is your accent and intonation, work on your accent, work on your intonation, then finally top of the pyramid is your pace of speech but if you try to jump right if you try to say ah my fluency is fine and it's not fine and you try to go work on words and phrases that's a recipe for disaster, you want to first make sure that the foundation is very strong very strong because of the foundation crumbles, if it doesn't go well everything else falls about it so imagine that period will include a graphic below, one other thing the bonus of course that I mentioned what is the one bonus for the skill that everyone needs to master his confidence.

I have too many students who come to me and say you know I can speak fine I can speak English fine when I'm talking with a friend or when I'm having coffee with a friend or when I'm at work like it's no problem but then I get into the toefl speaking section then all of a sudden I can't function I can't give a response I'm too nervous I'm too distracted the environment is challenging all these things are difficult and I ask questions and I try to get into why that's the case and I will record a full podcast episode about this but usually the reason that's the case is because they lack confidence so the one bonus skill that affects everything is confidence, you need to work on improving your confidence, there are a number of ways to do that just system quick advice: focus not on the outcomes, too many students focus and saying I need to get 26 I need to get 26 I need to get 26 and because their focus is so outcome driven that causes a lot of stress and anxiety when they go actually to take the test so kind of reverse that mindset and instead of focusing on the outcome 26 on toefl speaking, I want you to focus on the process I want you to focus on improving those five skills, focus on what you can control to improve your fluency and improve your TOEFL speaking tactics, improve your words and phrases, improve your accent, improve your pace of speech and then do that and after time eventually, eventually you'll be good enough to get 26 and then the outcome it's just a result of having focused on the process. Ok the last thing, guys I'll make this very simple I make this very clear if you have taken toefl for more than three times and you have not gotten 26 on toefl speaking yet you are throwing away money, you’re throwing away money on the actual total test fees, 190 dollars each time you take the test you're throwing away money because for every month or two months or three months that you're not getting 26 on toefl speaking you're literally losing thousands of dollars in extra salary that's not an exaggeration. Pharmacists, full pharmacists make about 90,000 more dollars per year, on a per month basis that means they make somewhere between 6,000 or 7,000 more dollars per month, for every month you don't get 26 in TOEFL speaking if you're a pharmacist we were losing seven thousand dollars which is why I don't understand why students aren´t investing in professional help for this if you take control for more than three times you have not gotten twenty six until full speaking at you need to sign up or register for a response analysis so we can see what's going on with you and then based on that we’ll give you a recommendation about whether private lessons or group lessons or does the self-study course is the best option for you but stop wasting time stop wasting money, invest in your education, invest in getting help and you can get those details on our web pages here on the blog posts if you just listen to this from itunes and you can access at toeflspeakingteacher.com ok toeflspeakingteacher.com thank you so much for listening today guys love string this information with you if you have questions about this please go to our website leave comments on the blog post page I'm happy to answer any questions and like I said I will probably record podcasts about each one of these skills as well, definitely about the confidence aspect of taking the toefl speaking section so thanks again have a great rest of your day.