5 Reasons Why You Are Not Speaking English Fluently

1. You Don’t Want It Enough

Most people don’t REALLY WANT to learn English, they only KIND OF WANT to learn. Really think about it for a second, on a scale of 1 to 10 (ten being the most excited about learning) how much do you really want to learn English?

Many people come to me asking for English classes saying that they really, really, really want to learn and that they would do anything for me to start teaching them.

Sure, for the first week, sometimes even the first month, they attend every class, do the activities I ask them to do in their spare time, and sometimes they even come to the RealLife English party which we host every month to give English learners a social atmosphere where they can practice their English. Find one near you.

But soon enough that excitement to learn, all of their desire to master the language just suddenly disappears and they decide that the money they invest on English classes would be better off spent on candy crush credits and other useless stuff like that.

English or any other language cannot be learned in just one class; it actually takes some time and focus. If you feel like learning a language isn’t something that you want to invest at least 3 or 4 hours a week on, then maybe you should stick to the candy crush.

2. It’s a Resentful Work Obligation

Ok, so maybe I was a little harsh on the first point, I understand that for some people learning English is more of a work necessity than a cool hobby.

If you are being obliged to learn English because it is necessary for your job, then I wish you the best of luck. I know that the corporate world is very cutthroat [relentless] and if you don’t speak English as well as the other person in the interview then you’re probably not going to get the job.

These types of students are generally pretty honest with me, sometimes they even tell me how much they hate learning English and resent the fact that they have to spend their money on English class when they would rather be drinking beer and playing Candy Crush.

Seeing language acquisition as nothing more than a work obligation is not going to make you enjoy the process and you are not going to be motivated to learn. You must find a way to see the benefits English can have in other aspects of your life and use that as a focus point of your classes.

You spend all day at work talking about business, why don’t you make your English classes something totally different, something fun and entertaining.  I’m sure your teacher would definitely be happy to help you find a way to connect your English learning to something more pleasurable to talk about.

3. You Haven’t Made a Habit Out Of It

If you want to be good at something, you have to do it on a regular basis. Think of something you are good at, how did you become so good?

Unless you have a natural gift, you probably spent a lot of time practicing or dedicating at least 10 to 20 minutes a day to that skill. This is also a necessity when learning a language and without making a habit out of practicing, you are not going to achieve English proficiency.

A common exercise I give my students to practice in their spare time is the tour of the tenses. The objective of this is to go through the table of verb conjugations with 3 verbs a day and then present me with all the verbs they did in out next class.

This is a simple exercise and it would probably take you 5 to 10 minutes a day, if you made a habit out of it. A lot of people get lazy and decide to do all of the verbs an hour before our class and get very frustrated with it and want to give up.

What they fail to understand is that the purpose of this exercise isn’t just to practice the verb conjugations, but to start developing good habits. Leaving everything to the last minute and getting stressed is not a healthy way to learn anything, you need to pace yourself and develop convenient and stress-free habits to be able to maximize your learning ability.

Ten to twenty minutes here and there is much better for you learning than 2 hours rushed before your class.

3. You Have No Accountability

What’s that you say? You’re really busy and didn’t have any time to practice? That’s strange because your Facebook status on the weekend said “bored as hell on a Saturday with nothing to do.”

Most people don’t hold themselves accountable for their own learning. When I ask my students if they got a chance to listen to any podcasts, read an English article, or practice in any way, the typical answer is – I was too busy, and I didn’t have any time.

Maybe that’s true but I really doubt it. If you really want to learn something you are going to find time. There is no use lying to your English teacher because you are just lying to yourself. He or she doesn’t really care if you studied or not, they are not the ones that need to learn English, you are.

To help my students from lying to themselves I get them to say “I didn’t make it a priority,” instead of saying,  “I didn’t have time.” This helps the student to realize that the reason that they didn’t practice anything was because of their own problems, not because of exterior reasons.

4. You Think Your Teacher Is Some Sort of a Magician

Imagine if you could go to a magic man or a witch doctor of some kind and ask them to make a special potion that when you drink it you can suddenly speak English.

Unfortunately some people think that when you have class with a private teacher that is what happens.

Sorry but I don’t have any magic tricks or special potions. You have to realize that a private teacher is more of a tour guide. We are teaching you the way to learn English and showing the right paths to take. Holding your hand along the process and answering your questions.

If you think that 1 or 2 classes a week is enough to learn everything about English I’m sorry but you are wrong. You need to do use some initiative and be more of an independent learner.

5. You Think You Are Stupid

And lastly, I have to tell you that learning to speak English is not rocket science. Don’t over complicate things.

A lot of learners have the idea that they’re not the type of person who can learn languages, and with that kind of thinking of course you never will. To learn English you have to give yourself time, you can’t get too frustrated, and you can’t be afraid of making mistakes.

If some of your colleagues are learning faster than you that doesn’t mean that they are smarter than you. You shouldn’t feel like a dumb ass. Everyone has their own type of intelligence and their own way of learning.

 

 

 

 

 

(Reference: reallifeglobal.com; http:/www.fluentland.com)

Identifying the Main Ideas in TOEFL Reading Passages

By Kate Hardin

A lot of reading well—especially for the TOEFL—is recognizing the most important ideas and distinguishing them from less important ideas. In this post, I’ll give you some tips to help you recognize main ideas in reading passages.

 

Look at the beginning and/or end.

When you write an essay, you necessarily repeat yourself. Some people say that you should say what you’re going to say, then say it, then say what you said—that is, the introduction contains hints of the information that will be in the body, the body explains that information, and then the conclusion repeats it and draws it all together. Fortunately, this means that usually the main idea of a passage can be found at the beginning and/or at the end. Everything in between is usually supporting detail. Just by reading the first and last paragraph of an essay or the first and last sentence of a paragraph, you can usually get a pretty good idea of what the piece is about.

There are many exceptions to this, though, and if you haven’t already read the text, it can be very confusing to only read single sentences from each paragraph, so this is generally not a good idea if you haven’t read the passage at all yet. If, however, you have to identify the main ideas (when answering a summary question, for example), then it helps to look at the beginnings and endings of paragraphs and whole passages.

 

Cross out supporting details.

What if the beginning and end aren’t telling you what you need to know? One strategy is to work backwards by eliminating all information that you know isn’t necessary. This may include examples, details, and explanations.

 

Mark sentences from least to most important

Crossing out the supporting details is a quick way to eliminate some nonessential information, but it isn’t perfect. Here’s a related strategy that builds on your outlining skills: mark each sentence, either with numbers or by arranging them on a page,  according to its importance. Any sentence that has only very small details gets, let’s say, a 3. A sentence that’s a little broader gets a 2, and the sentence that is most general or broad gets a 1. You may have multiple sentences marked 2 and 3, but there should only be one marked 1.  If you were to put these numbered sentences into an outline, 1 would be at the top. All of the #2 sentences would fit under it conceptually, and some of the #3 sentences would go under each #2. This is a good way to break down the excerpt and conceptualize its format visually.

Of course, you can’t really do this while taking your actual TOEFL iBT. Instead, this is just an exercise to practice finding the big ideas. But if you do it many times before your test, the habit of finding #1 sentences will be very useful.

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(Reference: http:/magoosh.com)

 

TOEFL Reading Question Type – Inference

by Kate Hardin

For inference questions, you’ll need to use the stated information in the text to draw a conclusion about unstated information.

There are a couple of common themes among inference questions. For example, they often deal with a “cause and effect” situation by stating the effect of a change. The question will then ask you to identify the cause of that effect.

Similarly, you encounter a partial comparison in the text, which you will then have to complete in the question. Look out for phrases like “now” and “for the first time”, as well as general comparison words like “than” and “relative to.” If you see one of these in the reading, it may be a hint that you’ll have to answer an inference question about it later.

When answering inference questions, be careful not to infer too much. If you assume information that’s not in the passage, you will be wrong. Even though the correct answer will not be stated in the passage, be sure that you can find concrete evidence to support it.

Let’s look at an example. For this exercise, context is important. I recommend that you click the link above and read the whole passage; if you don’t want to, here’s a short summary: In this passage, scientists try to figure out why dinosaurs and other animals suddenly went extinct. They believe that the amount of the element Iridium in certain samples of border rock, or rock found just beneath the earth’s surface, may help them answer this question.

10. The paragraph implies that a special explanation of the Iridium in the boundary clay is needed because

(A) the Iridium in microscopic meteorites reaching Earth during the Cretaceous period would have been incorporated into Earth’s core

(B) the Iridium in the boundary clay was deposited much more than a million years ago

(C) the concentration of Iridium in the boundary clay is higher than in microscopic meteorites

(D) the amount of Iridium in the boundary clay is too great to have come from microscopic meteorites during the time the boundary clay was deposited

Answer choice (A) is tempting because it seems related to the second sentence of the paragraph. But earlier in the complete text, (not in the paragraph above) the passage tells us that the Cretaceous period was the time when dinosaurs lived. Meanwhile, a sentence in the paragraph above says that iridium was included in the Earth’s core during the formation of the Earth, when it was “cooling and consolidating.” This was long before the Cretaceous, so we can’t assume that iridium also moved to the core during the Cretaceous.

(B) is incorrect because we’re talking about how long it took for the clay to be deposited (about 1 million years), not how long ago it was deposited. That’s discussed in another paragraph, so you may have had trouble with this one if you didn’t read the whole passage.

(C) doesn’t make any sense. If the iridium in the planet’s rock was deposited by meteorites, then the meteorites must have a higher concentration of iridium than the planet.

(D) “However, other reliable evidence suggests that the deposition of the boundary clay could not have taken one million years.” It would have taken at least a million years to create as high a concentration of iridium as there is, yet scientists are pretty sure that the process took less than that. This is the correct answer, since it is definitely stated in the passage.

The inference is very, very small. Don’t assume too much!

 

 

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(Reference: http:/magoosh.com)

TOEFL Reading Question Type: Detail

By Kate Hardin

Detail questions ask you about information that’s specifically stated in a small part of the passage. They generally focus on the “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” and “why” as explained by the author.

Detail questions usually take one of these formats:

According to Paragraph X, _____ occurred because…

According to Paragraph X, which is true of ____?

The author’s description of _____ mentions which of the following?

There are two major traps that people fall into on detail questions. Both of them can be avoided if you’re careful not to choose an answer simply because it contains key words from the passage. The first trap is to choose a true statement that was contained in the passage, but that doesn’t answer the question. The second mistake people make is to accidentally choose an answer that contains a lot of words from the passage, but actually states a different idea or changes the relationships between things (for example, “sleeping makes me happy” is very different from “happiness makes me sleep”).

Read the passage and answer the question below.

Shrouded in the mist of an Andean cloud forest, the first newly discovered carnivore in the Western Hemisphere in 35 years rarely leaves its treetop home. Smithsonian researchers stumbled upon Bassaricyon neblina, also known as the “olinguito,” while riffling through museum specimens and old field notes in search of information about other members of the genus Bassaricyon—a group of tree-dwelling meat-eaters commonly known as olingos.

As described by researchers, the olinguito weighs just 2 pounds and resides at 5,000 to 9,000 feet above sea level, making the orange-and-brown tree dweller the smallest and highest-venturing of the olingo species. Misidentified until now, olinguito specimens have existed in museums for 100 years, and at least one olinguito lived in several U.S. zoos during the 1960s and 1970s.

According to the passage, how was the olinguito discovered?

A) It has been common in museums for a century.
B) A Smithsonian researcher who has spent 35 years in the Andean forest discovered it.
C) The olinguito has been a known part of the olingo species for many decades.
D) The olinguito was misidentified in museum records, and the mistake was only recently discovered.

Answer choice A falls into the first trap: it is generally a true statement (although the passage doesn’t say that the animal was common in museums, just that it was found there), but doesn’t address the question. Answer choice B is a great example of the second trap you have to watch out for, since it combines many key words of the passage into a very incorrect answer. Answer C is fluff: it directly contradicts the main idea of the passage. So the correct answer must be D.

Of course, you don’t want to go through every answer choice if you can find the correct answer faster. The best way to answer a detail question is to read the question, then find the answer in the passage before looking at the answer choices. We find the answer in the second sentence.

If we take that idea, that researchers found the olinguito while “riffling through museum specimens and old field notes,” we can decide on D much faster.

 

“Except” Questions

“Except” questions are just detail questions but reversed. They have 4 answer choices, and 3 of them will be true. Your task is to choose the statement that is false or that does not match the information in the passage.

All negative detail questions will contain the word “NOT” or “EXCEPT”, and these words will always be written in capital letters. Be careful to notice them! The simplest way to get an “except” question wrong is to think that it’s a detail question.

The only way to answer is by process of elimination. One by one, look in the passage for evidence of each answer choice. If you find evidence, cross that choice out. At the end, there should be only one answer remaining. Try out this sample question. (source)

The city of Teotihuacán, which lay about 50 kilometers northeast of modern-day Mexico City, began its growth by 200 –100 B.C. At its height, between about A.D. 150 and 700, it probably had a population of more than 125,000 people and covered at least 20 square kilometers. It had over 2,000 apartment complexes, a great market, a large number of industrial workshops, an administrative center, a number of massive religious edifices, and a regular grid pattern of streets and buildings. Clearly, much planning and central control were involved in the expansion and ordering of this great metropolis. Moreover, the city had economic and perhaps religious contacts with most parts of Mesoamerica (modern Central America and Mexico).

 

In the paragraph, each of the following is mentioned as a feature of the city Teotihuacán between A.D. 150 and 700 EXCEPT

A) regularly arranged streets
B) several administrative centers spread across the city
C) many manufacturing workshops
D) apartment complexes

Here’s the evidence for each incorrect answer choice:
A) “a regular grid pattern of streets and buildings”
B) None
C) “a large number of industrial workshops”
D) “over 2,000 apartment complexes”

As you can see, there is no evidence to support the claim that Teotihuacán had several administrative centers; in fact, the passage says that it had “an administrative center,” meaning just one. So the correct answer choice is B.

 

 

 

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(reference: http:/magoosh.com)

TOEFL Reading Question Type – Paraphrase

by Kate Hardin

Paraphrase questions will ask you to decide which of the given answer choices best summarizes a particular sentence from the passage. The correct answer choice will contain all the important points (“essential information”) from the first sentence and will retain the original sentence’s basic meaning.

You will never have more than one paraphrase question in the same passage, and some passages will not have a paraphrase question at all.

There are a couple of ways to identify wrong answer choices: wrong answer choices may be missing important information from the original sentence, or they may change the relationships between parts of the sentence or the focus of the sentence. If you read “the audio speakers in headphones function by the use of small magnets,” an incorrect paraphrase might say that “small magnets are included in headphone speakers.” The focus in the original sentence was on how the speakers function. The incorrect paraphrase changed the focus to the magnets.

Paraphrase questions tend to be very tricky because the incorrect answer choices are similar to the correct answer, with just one detail to differentiate them. Be sure to take your time on these questions. You will recognize the sentence you will be asked to summarize immediately because it will be the only fully highlighted sentence in the passage. So when you read it, make a note of the essential information the sentence contains. Once you’ve finished the passage and you reach the paraphrase question, take your time reading and re-reading the answer choices. Find any answers that completely change the relationships and eliminate them. Then start comparing each answer choice to the essential information you selected while you were reading, and make an initial guess. Before you mark your answer, check yourself in two ways. First, make sure that your answer contains all of the important information from the passage, and second, double-check that you didn’t overlook a positive or negative that changes the meaning of your chosen answer. Often there will be an answer choice that looks very convincing if you overlook a “not” or “still” that changes the meaning completely. By taking the time to double- and triple-check your answer, you can avoid falling into that trap.

Let’s try an example. Read the following excerpt from a music history textbook.

Example

There is no better way to experience the splendor of classical music than to attend a concert. Compared to pop or rock concerts, performances of classical music may seem strange indeed. First of all, people dress “up,” not “down”: at classical events, attendees wear “costumes” or “uniforms” (coat and tie, suit, or evening wear) of a very different sort than they do at, say, rock concerts (punk, grunge, or metal attire). Throughout the performance, the classical audience sits rigidly, saying nothing to friends or performers. No one sways, dances, or sings along to the music. Only at the end of each composition does the audience express itself, clapping respectfully.

Attending a classical concert requires preparation and forethought. Most important, you must become familiar in advance with the musical repertoire. Go to a music library and listen to a recording of the piece that will be performed, or perhaps download it from iTunes. Hearing a recording by professional performers will prepare you to judge the merits of a live (perhaps student) performance.

Choosing the right seat is also important. What is best for seeing may not be best for hearing. In some concert halls, the sound sails immediately over the front seats and settles at the back. Often the optimal seat in terms of acoustics is at the back of the hall, in the first balcony. Sitting closer, of course, allows you to watch the performers on stage. If you attend a concert of a symphony orchestra, follow the gestures that the conductor makes to the various soloists and sections of the orchestra; like a circus ringmaster, he or she turns directly to the soloist of a given movement. The conductor conveys to the players the essential lines and themes of the music, and they in turn communicate these to the audience.

Which of the following best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence? Incorrect answer choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.

1. At a time of change in the attitude toward classical music of the 19th century, concerts were given greater dignity.
2. Although the classical concert had not previously been treated with silent respect, it now is, due to a change in perspective over a century ago.
3. A shift in opinions in the 19th century led to more highly regarded art, such as classical music concerts, which audiences refrain from disrupting.
4. The modern reception to classical music is highly influenced by a time in the 19th century when classical music came to be regarded as an art.

Be very careful to pick out the subjects and verbs of each choice, to simplify it down to the main meaning.

According to (A), concerts were given greater dignity in the 19th century. This is very tempting. But on careful reading, there’s one big problem: “change in the attitude toward classical music of the 19th century.” The original sentence describes a change in the attitude toward all classical music, not just the music created in the 19th century. This very small wording problem makes (A) totally false.

In (B), we have all of the right information. Classical concerts are treated with respect and silence today, and that started in the 19th century. This is correct.

Answer choice (C) tells us that the shift in opinion caused better art, “more highly regarded art.” That’s not true. We’re only talking about classical music, and the change is in the audience, not in the art.

The final answer, (D), is almost right. But there are two problems: it doesn’t mention respect or silence, which are very important in the original sentence, and it’s possible that classical music was “regarded as art” before the 19th century—it just wasn’t “high art.”

 

 

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(Reference: http:/magoosh.com)

TOEFL Reading Question Type – Categorization

by Kate Hardin

The categorization questions are somewhat similar to the prose summary questions. Both of them test your ability to identify important ideas of a passage, and both involve putting those ideas into a table. But while prose summary questions only require you to choose the main ideas, categorization questions will have you choose which of several sub-headings each idea belongs under, and the statements in categorization questions might be a little less important than the statements in summary questions, which are really only the most important ideas from the passage.

A table in a categorization question will have two or three columns and two or three rows. There will be five correct answers for you to choose and categorize. Each table is worth three points total, and you will get partial credit if you get three or four correct answers.

Each table will deal with a certain kind of relationship such as cause and effect, problem and solution, or comparison. Correct answers will be clearly related to the category in the passage. The extra, unused answers will be about different topics from the passage, will change the relationships between things, or will be on the same topic but not stated in the passage. Basically, answering categorization questions is very similar to answering detail questions, but you must look for several correct answers on two or three different topics.

Check out this example to see what I mean. (Please note that the question below is easier than one that you’d see on a real TOEFL and the passage is shorter, but the main purpose of this—to understand the format of the question and the skills needed to answer it—is accurate.)

 

A. People usually dress up for these concerts.

B. The audience is required to sing with the music.

C. People wear casual clothes or dress less formally than they usually do at these concerts.

D. It’s essential to know the music that will be performed before attending a concert.

E. It is important to see all of the performers clearly.

F. The audience may sway, sing, or dance with the music.

G. This performance is led by a conductor.

The sentences that belong under the first category are C (rock concertgoers often “dress ‘down’”) and F. The sentences that belong under the second category are A, D, and G. The incorrect answers are B (neither pop/rock nor classical concerts require audiences to do anything, although it is acceptable to sing at a rock concert) and E (the passage does not state that either genre prioritizes seeing the performers).

 

 

 

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(Reference: http:/magoosh.com)

TOEFL Reading Question Type – Prose Summary

by Kate Hardin

Text Summary questions will make you grateful for the time you’ve spent outlining readings and essays (if you haven’t done that, it’s a good idea!). To answer a Text Summary question, you’ll have to read and understand the entire passage and be able to distinguish between major and minor ideas.

After you read the passage, you will be given a topic sentence that summarizes the passage. There will be five answer choices, and you should pick the three that summarize the most important ideas of the passage. The order in which you choose the ideas does not matter. Partial credit is possible on these questions, so if you choose one incorrect answer, you can still earn one point (two points are possible).

There are two traps you can fall into in a text summary question. The first and most obvious is to choose an answer choice that contains incorrect information or that is not stated in the passage at all. The other is to choose a minor rather than a major idea. Try the example below to see what I mean.

Passage

Directions: Read the passage below and answer the question.

Paleontologists have argued for a long time that the demise of the dinosaurs was caused by climatic alterations associated with slow changes in the positions of continents and seas resulting from plate tectonics. Off and on throughout the Cretaceous (the last period of the Mesozoic era, during which dinosaurs flourished), large shallow seas covered extensive areas of the continents. Data from diverse sources, including geochemical evidence preserved in seafloor sediments, indicate that the Late Cretaceous climate was milder than today’s. The days were not too hot, nor the nights too cold. The summers were not too warm, nor the winters too frigid. The shallow seas on the continents probably buffered the temperature of the nearby air, keeping it relatively constant.

At the end of the Cretaceous, the geological record shows that these seaways retreated from the continents back into the major ocean basins. No one knows why. Over a period of about 100,000 years, while the seas pulled back, climates around the world became dramatically more extreme: warmer days, cooler nights; hotter summers, colder winters. Perhaps dinosaurs could not tolerate these extreme temperature changes and became extinct.

If true, though, why did cold-blooded animals such as snakes, lizards, turtles, and crocodiles survive the freezing winters and torrid summers? These animals are at the mercy of the climate to maintain a livable body temperature. It’s hard to understand why they would not be affected, whereas dinosaurs were left too crippled to cope, especially if, as some scientists believe, dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Critics also point out that the shallow seaways had retreated from and advanced on the continents numerous times during the Mesozoic, so why did the dinosaurs survive the climatic changes associated with the earlier fluctuations but not with this one? Although initially appealing, the hypothesis of a simple climatic change related to sea levels is insufficient to explain all the data.

Dissatisfaction with conventional explanations for dinosaur extinctions led to a surprising observation that, in turn, has suggested a new hypothesis. Many plants and animals disappear abruptly from the fossil record as one moves from layers of rock documenting the end of the Cretaceous up into rocks representing the beginning of the Cenozoic (the era after the Mesozoic). Between the last layer of Cretaceous rock and the first layer of Cenozoic rock, there is often a thin layer of clay. Scientists felt that they could get an idea of how long the extinctions took by determining how long it took to deposit this one centimeter of clay and they thought they could determine the time it took to deposit the clay by determining the amount of the element iridium (Ir) it contained.

Ir has not been common at Earth’s surface since the very beginning of the planet’s history. Because it usually exists in a metallic state, it was preferentially incorporated in Earth’s core as the planet cooled and consolidated. Ir is found in high concentrations in some meteorites, in which the solar system’s original chemical composition is preserved. Even today, microscopic meteorites continually bombard Earth, falling on both land and sea. By measuring how many of these meteorites fall to Earth over a given period of time, scientists can estimate how long it might have taken to deposit the observed amount of Ir in the boundary clay. These calculations suggest that a period of about one million years would have been required. However, other reliable evidence suggests that the deposition of the boundary clay could not have taken one million years. So the unusually high concentration of Ir seems to require a special explanation.

In view of these facts, scientists hypothesized that a single large asteroid, about 10 to 15 kilometers across, collided with Earth, and the resulting fallout created the boundary clay. Their calculations show that the impact kicked up a dust cloud that cut off sunlight for several months, inhibiting photosynthesis in plants; decreased surface temperatures on continents to below freezing; caused extreme episodes of acid rain; and significantly raised long-term global temperatures through the greenhouse effect. This disruption of food chain and climate would have eradicated the dinosaurs and other organisms in less than fifty years.

Summary Question

An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is provided below.

Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that express the most important ideas in the passage. Some sentences do not belong in the summary because they express ideas that are not presented in the passage or are minor ideas in the passage. This question is worth 2 points.

Write your answer choices in the spaces where they belong. You can either write the letter of your answer choice or you can copy the sentence.

• The reason for dinosaurs’ extinction is unknown and continues to fuel debate among scientists.
  

Answer Choices

(A) Extreme changes in daily and seasonal climates preceded the retreat of the seas back into the major ocean basins.

(B) A simple climate change does not explain some important data related to the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous.

(C) The retreat of the seaways at the end of the Cretaceous has not been fully explained.

(D) The abruptness of extinctions at the end of the Cretaceous and the high concentration of Ir found in clay deposited at that time have fueled the development of a new hypothesis.

(E) Some scientists hypothesize that the extinction of the dinosaurs resulted from the effects of an asteroid collision with Earth.

(F) Boundary clay layers like the one between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic are used by scientists to determine the rate at which an extinct species declined.

 

The correct answers are B, D, and E. A is not true: the extreme changes in climate occurred at the same time as the retreat of the seas. C is true, but the retreat of the seaways is not as important in the passage as the ideas directly related to the dinosaurs’ demise. F is probably true, but the passage doesn’t deal with the Mesozoic period: it deals with the Cenozoic and Cretaceous periods.

 

 

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(Reference: http:/magoosh.com)

TOEFL Reading Question Type – Vocabulary in Context

Vocabulary questions are multiple-choice and always have a single correct answer.  In the original excerpt, all of the words that you’ll have to define later are highlighted. This helps you find the words quickly and see the context easily.

The wording of vocabulary questions is almost always “The word ‘_____’ in the passage is closest in meaning to” followed by four answer choices. The word or phrase in the questions might be a word you’re familiar with already, or it might be something you’ve never seen or heard before. If you know the word, then you should go straight to the answer choices—you may be able to identify the correct answer without looking at the text, which can save time. You should still check the text, but if you already have an answer choice in mind (again, because you already know the definition of the tested word), then checking is pretty fast.

If you don’t know the tested word, then it’s important to pay attention to the context the word is used in, as this may impact your answer. Here’s how to answer in that situation:

1. Read the passage from beginning to end.

2. When you get to the vocabulary question, put your finger over the highlighted word and read the sentence again. Try to substitute in a word that makes sense.

3. Think about the possible meaning of the word in question. Do you know any related words? Do you know other words that look like it? Any memory of the word or association will help. Be sure to do that before looking at the answer choices.

4. Look at your answer choices and see if any of them match the meaning you expect. If so, that’s probably the correct answer. Double-check it and mark it on the test.

5. If not, eliminate fluff answers and try plugging in the remaining answer choices. Choose the option that makes the most sense to you logically.

Example

Read the following passage and answer the question.

A) natural
B) specialized
C) old
D) foreign

When I went back and re-read the sentence, I replaced “technical” with “rare.” If I go through my answer choices, I see that none of them really has the same meaning as “rare,” but B and D are sort of close. “Natural” doesn’t make any sense at all; that’s my fluff answer. “Old” could make sense if you’re not familiar with words from older English, but that’s inferring some extra meaning. We can imagine that “technical” (with the same root as “technology”) doesn’t mean “old.” So now I’m pretty sure that either B or D will be the correct answer. D makes some sense logically, but it’s simply not related to “technical.” Whereas “technical” describes how the word is used, “foreign” describes how well the reader knows the word. B, “specialized,” is about how the word is used, so that makes more sense. Again, the root “tech-” can help us greatly.

Saving Time

Because vocabulary questions are about the definitions of single words, and not really about the passage as a whole, if you are running out of time on the final text of your reading section, it’s a good idea to answer all of the vocabulary questions first without reading. If you know the definitions of the words, you can usually find the correct answers without reading (although not always).

 

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(Reference: http:/magoosh.com)

7 Things NOT to Do When Speaking English

by Alba

1. Don’t Be too Ashamed to Speak

There is only one way to learn how to speak English, and that is to open your mouth and speak English! The only way you will ever get better at speaking is by speaking, and speaking a lot!

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear. – Mark Twain

You can make excuses for why you don’t want to speak, like saying that you’re too embarrassed to speak, but these won’t get you any closer to your goal of achieving English fluency. It doesn’t matter if you have no vocabulary, or if your pronunciation isn’t perfect, you need to open your mouth and speak if you want to improve.

Whatever you do, don’t say that you can’t speak English because this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By believing that you can’t speak English you close your mind to trying, and never give yourself the opportunity to improve. The only way to improve your English is to practice it, no matter how bad you may or may not be at it.

2. Don’t Be Afraid of Making Mistakes

Another thing you shouldn’t do when speaking English is to be afraid of making mistakes. Part of being human is making mistakes and sooner or later you’re going to have to accept the fact that you’re not perfect and that you will always make mistakes. The only way you can avoid making mistakes is by not trying at all. If you follow this approach you’ll avoid making mistakes, but you’ll never improve either.

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. – Michael Jordan

This may seem counter-intuitive, but you should try making as many mistakes as possible. If you are making mistakes that means you are actually speaking English and improving. If you aren’t making mistakes every day then you aren’t speaking enough. Of course, you shouldn’t intentionally make mistakes, and you should try to be aware of your mistakes so you can learn from them and improve your skills.

Grammar is the last thing you should be worried about when speaking English. You don’t need to have perfect grammar in order to communicate with someone in English. Native speakers aren’t going to judge you for having bad grammar, they are going to be more focused on understanding your meaning and continuing the conversation.

As long as you speak clearly and confidently, it doesn’t matter if you use the wrong article, adjective ending or sentence order.

Many language programs put too much emphasis on grammar and not enough emphasis on speaking. They spread the idea that you have to know all the grammar rules before you can start speaking, which can have the effect of reducing your confidence when you finally start speaking. This is backwards. You should learn to speak first to build your confidence, and then work on correcting your grammar after you’ve reached a basic level of fluency.

Everybody makes mistakes, even native speakers of English. Nobody is born speaking perfect English; fluency is something that takes time and hard work to achieve. There are many Americans who go through 13 years of schooling and still don’t learn how to speak English properly.

So don’t be discouraged by your mistakes. Learn to embrace them and value them for the role they play in your learning.

3. Don’t Apologize For Your Level

Something that really annoys me when I’m talking to someone in English is when they apologize for how much English they speak. I’ve never been offended by someone’s level of English, and I don’t get upset when someone makes mistakes. If you talk to someone and they do get offended or upset because of your level of English they are an evil person who probably tortures kittens in their spare time.

Most of the people who apologize for their level of English feel like they should speak better than they do. Its fine to think this, but don’t get upset at yourself for not knowing more than you do. Achieving fluency in any language is a process that takes time, and you can’t expect to become fluent overnight. Whether you’ve been studying English for years or only for a few months, you’ve put in a lot of work to get where you are, so don’t underestimate yourself.

4. Don’t get frustrated with yourself

Learning English will come with a certain amount of frustration. At some point you will come to a stage where you won’t be able to fully express yourself like you would be able to in your native language, and there will be times when you won’t be able to find the right word to say.

Nearly everyone who learns English goes through this phase; it’s just a natural part of the language learning process. This stage may last only a few weeks if you are completely immersed in English, but it could last years if you only use English twice a week at your language school. The only way to overcome this frustration is by practice, practice, practice.

Keep in mind that this frustration isn’t because you’re not smart enough, or because the language is too difficult, it is something that many people have to go through. By embracing this frustration and feeling it more intensely through increased exposure you can pass through this stage more rapidly.

5. Don’t take it personally when people don’t understand you

At some point in your English speaking career you are going to speak to someone who, no matter how hard you try just cant seem to understand you. Due to the large number of English speakers in the world, there are a wide range of accents, some of which are hard to understand. I for one have a hard time understanding some Australian accents and most Irish accents.

You’ll have this problem a lot when talking with people who aren’t used to dealing with foreigners. If they don’t have this experience they will be used to hearing English spoken in a very specific way, and they won’t have any frame of reference when talking to you. Realize that this isn’t a reflection of your language skills, but rather a reflection of this person’s lack of exposure to different people.

This can also happen when talking to English learners who have a lower level of English than you. They won’t be able to understand everything you say because of your more advanced vocabulary. Try to remember that you were once at their level and not everyone is at the same place on their language journey.

The same person who gets offended when you speak English also tortures kittens like these.

6. Don’t compare yourself to other English Speakers

No matter what level your English is at, you had to work hard to bring yourself to that level. Be proud of what you’ve accomplished and don’t be too concerned with what other people think about it. They don’t know how many hours you’ve had to work to get to where you are, they don’t know all the struggles you’ve been through to get there.

This also means you shouldn’t go around comparing yourself to other people. Everybody is different; some people learn languages more easily than others and some people have spent more time working to improve their English. Just because your friend who lived in London for 3 years can speak really well doesn’t mean that you’re not on the right path.

Some people like to see others fail, and by paying any attention to these people you are just feeding their negativity. Any time you spend worrying about what they think of you is time wasted that could be better spent by working to improve your English.

7. If you are fluent, or just think you are, DON’T GET COCKY (ARROGANT)

English is not a chip in your brain. It’s a learning process. Maybe this is gonna seem harsh, and definitely a bit paradoxical, but for the rare English Jedi breed, they realize that there’s never really perfect fluency, only the impassioned and ever-approaching journey toward it.

This means that when you finally become fluent, (whatever that really means to you or to the world), you shouldn’t adopt the attitude of somebody who thinks “I already learned English” because there are some fundamental problems and limitations that come from this assumption. Here are just a few:

You’re living a lie because you never stop learning a language. It is like calling yourself a fully-realized human being.  There’s always the next level up, and the current level always needs practice.

The learner tends to get lazy, and it’s a universal fact about any learning process, that if you aren’t growing, you are probably getting worse.

The inflated ego prevents you from recognizing the final 5 or 10% that separates you from the master jedi breed of English speakers.

There is a tendency to treat other English learners (or people who are learning their language) in a condescending, totally idiotic way, forgetting what it is like to learn because they themselves are no longer connected to their own learning process.

Cultural Understanding: You can know everything about grammar, but that doesn’t mean you are fluent. You need to be constantly connected to the source of the language (culture) so that it flows from who you really are.

So there you have it, 7 things not to do when speaking English. Now that you know what not to do, go out there and speak English!

 

 

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(Reference: http:/www.fluentland.com)

500 words, phrases, idioms for the TOEFL iBT Plus Typing Strategies

500 words, phrases, idioms for the TOEFL iBT Plus Typing Strategies:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3mI7ULbUEWRUC15dGJ5em82ems/view