TOEIC Tips

Tips based upon feedback from

TOEIC Blanc with second year students in 2013 

1.      Read the all the four/five Questions FIRST: that is BEFORE you read the text to which the questions are to be referred.   This enables you to scan the article with a menu of four or five questions in your mind – you may be able to answer all the questions with just one pass through the text, possibly two.  If you don't do this then you are likely to have to read and re-read the text for each and every question with a considerable loss of time.

2.      Think about the questions you are posed – the question itself may contain a lot of 'hints' as to where in the text the answer may be found.  Once again, this technique can save you valuable time.

a.       Information almost always to be found at the start of an article:

                                                              i.      What is the letter / article / report about?

                                                            ii.      Why is the letter being written / what does the writer want?

                                                          iii.      Who is writing to whom?

It stands to reason: when we write we always explain the subject first: often in a heading (Subject…  Re:………) or in the first line / paragraph.

b.      Information almost always to be found at the end of an article:

                                                              i.      What is enclosed / to be attached?

                                                            ii.      How can the reader secure further information?

3.      Use your common sense and your eyes to 'home-in' on the answers by picking out key features that stand out from the text that may be identified in the question (this way you can quickly scan the text for a formation of letters rather than read it:

a.       A name: Mr. Jolley

b.      An abbreviation: EU… NATO… UNWTO… – the capital letters make it easy to pick out.

c.       A quotation: in reported speech we use quotation marks ( "…" ), and often italics to distinguish, hence: "The grass is always greener on the other side"… either the quotation marks or the italics (or both) can make it very easy to spot precisely where the answer may well lie in the text.

d.      A figure: £ / $ / € /  18.30 – although the amounts may be given in long hand: 'eight pounds Sterling' this would be rare, especially on an invoice or bill.

4.      Although all questions in each section carry the same mark (weighting / co-efficient), they are by no means all as easy: some can be VERY much more difficult than others (as we saw in the feedback session) and can cost you a disproportionate amount of time investment for the same return in marks.  You need to be aware of what sorts of questions will take significant amounts of time and take a decision (dependent upon whether or not you feel you may be running out of time) whether to tackle such questions 'now' or to come back to them later if time allows.  Unless you feel you are way ahead of time, my advice would be to leave the question, move on and come back later if time permits.

Particularly difficult questions may be phrased like these:

a.      What may / may not be inferred by xxxxxxxxxxxxxx?

b.      What can / cannot be implied by xxxxxxxxx?

c.       Which of the following is true /false?

d.      Who would be most likely to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx?

The problem is that this involves you in a process of elimination: you perhaps have to take each of the four statements in turn and check it for inference, implication or veracity and the clues may be numerous and planted throughout the article. This can be quite difficult as the examiners can make the differences / nuances very slight indeed – meaning it takes time and you may not be sure of your answer even in the end.  IMHO there would be very little point in an exercise in elimination of putting the correct answer first, because the examiner is most likely going to want to make you think. In that sense his logic might well be to tend to put the 'correct' answer as 'c' or 'd' to force you to work your way through the list.  If I am right about this, this might suggest that your strategy when facing such questions is to begin your elimination process with 'c' or 'd' rather than 'a' or 'b'.

5.      Some questions are less about your ability in English than your knowledge of life and business – this should give you some confidence and speed as you may well be able to anticipate quite accurately where the answer should lie:

a.       The shape and architecture of an invoice, letter or an email exchange, for example

b.      The ability to be able to read a table of data and extract therefrom

6.      Play the 'numbers game': always answer all the questions.  You should consider it a crime to finish the exam with some questions unanswered.  You may well not have time to get through all the questions, but you MUST leave a minute or so at the end to simply guess the answers as you have a 1 in 4 (i.e. 25%) chance of guessing correctly in a multiple choice test.   Say you have 20 questions unanswered.  If you guess, then statistically you could well get 5 more right. Just to show you how much effect this can have on your marks:

a.       A score of 81/100 increased by 5 to 86/100 on the Reading component of the test alone increases you TOEIC score by 30 from 375 to 405.  

b.      If you managed to do similarly in the Listening part of the test your mark would rise by 30 again…. i.e. 60 'free' marks.  If your 'base' mark on the Qs you answered was just a shade under 700, these 60 'free' marks could edge you over the 750 target line.

7.      Practice: keep it up…and intensify it: it's now or never!  We will keep practicing in class to hone your technique along the lines suggested above but quite a number of you will see from your results that you need to do more:

a.       Try tests at the CLAM if you can make the time in a busy ENSISA day.

b.      DO use www.englishteststore.net (and other similar sites shown to you) – it has exactly the same types of diagnostic tests that you have encountered in the TOEIC (and runs them to TOEIC time allowances so it really IS good practice for your technique!), and, over time, if you register on the site, you can see the degree of improvement in your results.  Repetition WILL help you, BUT ONLY if you go beyond the scores to LEARN very deliberately from your errors. www.englishclub.com also has topical listening and reading tests.

c.       Please increase your participation in classwork: contribute more orally, develop your homework more fully, USE the time productively in class (restrict yourself exclusively to English) get serious and start a vocabulary / phrasebook if you haven't yet (or perhaps even buy a paperback like: 'What you must know – vocabulaire Anglais/Francais'. Spratbrow,A. (1988) Casteilla.).

d.      Tune into the BBC / CNN news etc for the 'music' of the language