Aim for English
Understanding the details
TOEFL iBT at a glance
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- TOEFL iBT overview and general tips
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- Understanding inferences in TOEFL
- Understanding stated details
- Understanding main ideas
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TOEFL iBT tip of the month
TOEFL assesses your ability to communicate in an academic environment. There are similarities in reading, listening, speaking and writing questions. While your English has to be very good, the test won’t be impossible if you learn a few skills and do as much practice as possible.
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Understanding the details
What’s important?
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Use the details to check that you understand the main ideas.
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Connect details in an interesting way.
Understanding stated details
Once you have seen where main ideas are, see how details are used to support and explain those main ideas. There are lots of questions on these, all with four answer choices. Sometimes you are simply asked to say whether a detail is in a reading or listening passage. Sometimes you are asked which detail in not stated, meaning that the three others ones are mentioned in a reading passage.
In speaking and writing, you must use details to back-up your main ideas. It looks very weak to make broad statements with no supporting details. Think of it like this: paint a picture in the reader’s mind of what you’re describing. Help the listener know what you’re talking about, especially if you are describing something specific to Indonesia. Remember, the examiners are checking your answers in the U.S., so they might not know what you’re talking about if your ideas are not clear.