Not really Shakespeare? How to write a TOEFL Integrated Essay
On-MBA Education - TOEFL Mini-series – Writing Section – Integrated Essays
Hello and Welcome back!
Today I am going to talk about how to approach writing the Integrated Essay in the Writing Section of the TOEFL test.
“I am not a poet! How can possibly write high-scoring TOEFL essays?”
My students often come to me with comments like the one above.
After the speaking and listening sections of the TOEFL test, many people feel that the TOEFL Writing Section is the most painful part of the exam!
The good news is, that you don’t have to be Shakespeare to write high-quality, and more importantly, high-scoring essays for the TOEFL test!
Despite how many students fear the TOEFL Writing Section, it is actually one of the easiest areas of the exam to raise your point score.
“But I am terrible at writing in English, how can you say this is an easy section to improve my score?”
There are two secrets to scoring well in the TOEFL writing section. The first is structure and the second is correctness.
Why is structure so important in my TOEFL essays?
ETS (the test maker of the TOEFL exam) explains that all essays are reviewed by human graders. While this is true, what ETS doesn’t tell you so freely is that your essays will first be graded by a computer, and then by a human grader. The computer will give your essay a score, and the human grader will also give your essay a score. When the two scores are different (which almost never happens!), another human grader will review your essay.
So what does this have to do with the structure of my TOEFL essays?
The first important take-away from how your essays are graded, is that, ultimately, you are writing your essays for a computer to grade. Last time you checked, does your laptop computer seem like emotional type of being, one who loves and appreciates flowery language and witty expressions in your writing?
Of course not:-)!
No matter how much you love your computer and consider him or her a critical partner in your life, he or she is still a machine!
Although artificial intelligence is getting better and better, a computer program to check your TOEFL essays is not a particularly sophisticated or exciting bit of software: -)! The computer has been designed to analyze the structure of your essay, and this is the key point!
Computers are great at looking at the structure of things and recognizing key words and transition points that they have programmed to find. This is what makes computers ideal for reviewing the thousands of essays that come in from TOEFL exams all around the world every month.
Bottom Line for the computer grader: Give the computer what it wants!
The computer wants to see your Integrated essay written with a very clear structure. This means it is looking for introduction to the topic being discussed, a transition to the key support points, and then a paragraph for each of the support points. It is also looking for key indicator words to let it know that you are moving from one part of your essay to the next.
It then compares the support points you have given in your Integrated essay to the support points that were made in the reading passage and listening portion of the Integrated writing task. Clearly these must match in order for you to prove you understood the points that were made in the reading and lecture portions of the exercise.
Finally the computer will check your spelling and grammar. When you are writing your TOEFL essays, remember simple and correct is better than complex (exciting flowery speech with high-level vocabulary and lots of “cool” idioms to make you sound fluent) and wrong!
Remember you are writing for a computer, the computer simply doesn’t care about anything else but structure and correctness (for both the content and then for the grammar and spelling).
Surely the human grader will see that my complex writing is exciting and beautiful, no?
No, definitely not!
Think again about the life of a TOEFL essay grader. Do you think this is a great job? A job where the grader gets up every morning and says, “Oh, Happy Day! I am so excited to go to work today and review some TOEFL essays!”
No way!
In reality, no matter how much you might dislike your own job, being a TOEFL essay grader has got to be one of the worst jobs there is! You probably sit at your desk and have to process a set number of TOEFL essays an hour for eight hours a day. The essays topics will always be the same, or very similar, and the graders are most likely paid very little. So do still think, in this rather mind-numbing job, the TOEFL essay graders will care about your “beautiful” and complex writing?
Absolutely not!
The sad truth is that the human grader is simply a sanity check to make sure the computer hasn’t broken down and somehow failed to check the essay correctly!
Now that you know this little secret, this simply means, again, you are writing your essay for a computer to review!
The human grader is looking for exactly the same things the computer is looking for, clear structure and correctness!
The human grader hates his or her job and just wants to get his or her quota of essays graded with as little trouble as possible. The easiest thing for him or her to do is agree with the computer grade and move on to the next essay. You are probably going to get 2-3 minutes of the graders time for each essay. Try to make this time as painless as possible for the grader and you will find your grade in the writing section will improve!
Bottom Line for the human grader: Make the human grader’s life easy by presenting a well-structured, simple, but totally correct (with regard to content, grammar and spelling)
Integrated essay.
Ok, now that you know what you are facing with the grading of your TOEFL Integrated essays, let’s take a look at the details of what you have to produce.
TOEFL Integrated Essay Task – Basic Facts
For the TOEFL Writing sections you will have to write two essays (one Integrated and one Independent essay) and the entire section should take about 1 hour to complete. Today we will deal with the Integrated Essay.
The details for the Integrated Essay task are below:
Integrated Task (Question 1)
Q1 – Write a summary of a short lecture and explain how it is different from a reading passage
3 minutes to read a short passage on an academic topic
Listen to part of a lecture on the same topic; professor will normally have a different view from the information presented in the reading passage
20 minutes to write a summary of the points made in the lecture and show how they are different from those in the reading passage
150-225 words (about ½ a page)
Strategies for writing your TOEFL Integrated Essay
Here are some key points to remember when you start your preparation for the Integrated essays.
Time management is critical!
You only have 20 minutes to prepare and write your Integrated essay, so you have to make every minute count!
Make sure to leave at least 2 full minutes at the end your essay writing to read through your work again and correct any easy grammar or spelling mistakes. This proofreading step is absolutely critical to scoring well on your all of your TOEFL essays, so DON’T skip this step!
Note taking is a key success factor!
With the Integrated writing task you will read a passage on an academic topic first, then listen to a short lecture on the same topic.
Reading: For the reading portion, you must identify the main idea from the reading and the points given to support it (usually 2 and sometimes 3) and get these down in your notes. Your notes don’t have to be in perfect sentences or beautiful, but they must have the correct information you need to answer the question!
Listening: After your read the passage, you will then listen to a short lecture on the same topic. While listening to the lecture, you must identify the points made in the lecture and how they are different from the points in the reading passage. The good news is that you should have the main points already from your notes on the reading passage and will know what to listen for. The lecture will cover the same points, but will give a different explanation or demonstrate why the points given in the reading passage are incorrect.
You can take a look at a note taking template here:
Structure is extremely important!
The structure of your Integrated essay should be:
Introduction paragraph
Body paragraph 1
Body paragraph 2 (and possibly Body paragraph 3 if there are 3 points given in the reading passage and lecture)
Here is a writing template for a high-scoring Integrated Essay. Try to follow this template as closely as possible when writing your own essays!
No opinion or conclusion for Question 1
For the Integrated Essay your job is to simply summarize the points made in lecture and explain how these are different from the information that was presented in the reading passage. Don’t include your opinion (you will not use “I think” in this essay!) and there is no need for a summary or conclusion on the Integrated essay!
Practice, Practice, Practice!
Sadly there is no substitute here for practice! The more integrated essays you try, the better your note taking will get and the better your essays will become.
If you are able too, it is a great idea to find an English tutor (preferably someone who has experience with the TOEFL test) who can review your essays and give you feedback on how to improve.
One final point here, when you are practicing, make sure to practice writing your Integrated essays under real time conditions (this means 20 minutes to prepare, write and proofread your response). Keep an eye on your stopwatch as you are writing your essays, and make sure the automatic spell and grammar check are turned off when you are writing. You will not have these support functions when you are writing your essay on test day!
Integrated Essay Example
Ok, now let’s take a look at an example together below:
Now that you know more about how to approach the TOEFL Writing Integrated essays, it is time to go out and put what you have learned into practice! The best way to improve your writing is, well, to write as much as possible:-)!
The more Integrated Essays you write, the more you will improve, so get writing:-)!
Good luck with your TOEFL preparations and on the exam!
And always remember, “Life is short, so study hard!”
David
