مقاله شماره یک - مجتمع

Essay 1 - Integrated

As you start the writing section of your TOEFL, the first task you’ll have is Essay one, the integrated essay. You’ll have a text and a listening before you write. The text will be, like most texts on the TOEFL, academic. It’ll be mid-length. That is, it is less than half of the length of a reading section text.

The reading section texts in the beginning of the test are somewhere around 700 words. These will be 200 to 300 words, roughly. That text will introduce a topic and then give three important details. Now, there is something very nice here. Those three details are usually listed.

You’ll often see first, second, and finally in the text. That tells you that you have those three details in order. The recording will talk about all of the same topics that are in the text. It will even include the same three main points. But, they might not be in the same order.

What was first in the reading might be second in the listening. What was third in the reading might be first in the listening. That makes it a little bit more difficult, but since you already read about the topic, you know what to expect. The lecture might not agree with the text. In fact, it usually disagrees.

It’s very rare that the professor agrees with the text. Sometimes, there is even another relationship. The text explains some general topic and then the lecture explains the cause and effect. That’s very rare.

Normally, you’ll see a lecture, you’ll hear a lecture, that disagrees with the reading. So you can prepare and expect that the most. The question that you’ll be asked is something that asks about how the professor disagrees with the reading.

Here is an example. Summarize the points in the lecture being sure to illustrate how they cast doubt on the information in the reading passage. Cast doubt means that it shows, the professor shows that the reading isn’t true. This is very common and many students don’t know what it means.

So it’s good to learn now. You could get some other words, instead of cast doubt. You could say the same thing with oppose or challenge, or call into question. There are many different ways that the TOEFL can say this, but they all mean the same thing.

How does the professor disagree with the reading? Sometimes, there is that other relationship. Maybe the professor agrees. In that case, you’ll see a different set of words. You might see support, or explain, or illustrate, or result in, for a very different type of relationship.

If you see many, many TOEFL prompts, that is questions before test day, then you’ll know all this vocabulary. If you don’t know some vocabulary, like call into question, or cast doubt, then you might have trouble writing this essay, because you might not know what the question is. But really, from your listening and from the reading, you should already know if they agree or disagree.

Read the question, but don’t need it. You should already know. The clock is, as we’ve said before, divided into the different sections. First, you’ll have three minutes to read. After that, you’ll listen to the lecture, which will take about two minutes. It’s often a little bit more than two minutes, but it’s quite similar to what you heard in speaking tasks.

And then you’ll have 20 minutes to write. But of course, it’s not just writing. You’re actually planning, writing and editing. So, that means you have less time to write than 20 minutes, because you need that time to plan and edit. That’s all for this lesson.

Thank you for listening.