The Complete Guide for TOEFL Integrated Writing
Table of Contents
After going through the Reading, Listening, and Speaking sections, the Writing part becomes available as the last step towards your goal to complete your test. TOEFL Writing part consists of 2 sections. The first section is the TOEFL Integrated Writing and the second part is the TOEFL Independent Writing. Here in this article, I will be guiding you to discover the available strategies in Integrated Writing.
What is the structure of TOEFL Integrated Writing
In this section, we will be having a small essay for which we will be having 3 minutes to read. When the given time is over, we will be having the listening part. The listening part is a small part of a lecture. After the lecture, we are going to be required to write an essay that has 150 to 300 words in 20 Minutes.
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The Strategy In TOEFL Integrated Writing-Reading Part
As I have already explained, we will be having a reading passage at the beginning of the writing task. It is vital to use the time wisely here on this part. The idea is to clearly understand and write down the ideas from each paragraph in the reading part. Because later on these ideas will be argued by the lecturer. Understand the ideas clearly in the paragraphs and write them down. Avoid using long and complex sentences when taking notes. Make your notes understandable and clean. Keep it short. You do not have to read the whole paragraph and understand everything. The reason for that is that after listening you will be having a chance to see the reading part again. It means that your aim is not to fully understand and rephrase the whole ideas in the reading part of TOEFL Writing but to prepare a small set of notes that will help you understand the listening part better.
- Write down the main arguments from each paragraph
- Do not spend so much time understanding everything that is written on the reading
- Keep your notes short and clean
- Organize the arguments in the reading in order
The Strategy in TOEFL Integrated Writing-Lecture Part
- Write down the arguments from the listening part carefully
- Keep them clear and short
- Organize it in the same order as the reading part
Strategies for the TOEFL Integrated Writing-Essay Part
After taking careful notes on the reading and the listening section, you will be having 20 minutes to rephrasing the arguments in a structured way. To do that you can follow some templates that are available online or on Youtube. Make sure that the content of your writing comes mainly from the listening part. Since the reading part will stay on the screen while you are writing, it won’t be giving you additional scores to add some unuseful information from the reading part. Keep your sentences from the reading part short and use them as a way of introduction in each paragraph and then use connectors to oppose these ideas and then switch to the arguments from the listening part. By doing that, you will show the reader that you have an ample amount of comprehensive skills when it comes to listening and you can write to them. Although, it is not that necessary to provide a high amount of words in your essay, try to type somewhere close to 300 words. You don’t need to have a conclusion in your essay. Type 3-4 paragraphs.
- Combine the ideas from the reading and the listening
- Try to type around 300 words
- Exclude the paragraph for the conclusion part of your essay
Conclusion
TOEFL integrated writing is pretty easy when the strategies are applied. The challenge on this task is to understand the listening part carefully and to take solid and organized notes so that you can clearly compare the ideas from the reading and the listening.
For more information on TOEFL Writing part, please visit the website of ETS. Here is the link: https://www.ets.org/toefl/test-takers/ibt/about/content/writing/