TOEFL

Formats and contents

Internet-based Test

Since its introduction in late 2005, the TOEFL iBT format has progressively replaced both the computer-based tests (CBT) and paper-based tests (PBT), although paper-based testing is still used in select areas. The TOEFL iBT test has been introduced in phases, with the United States, Canada, France, Germany, and Italy in 2005 and the rest of the world in 2006, with test centers added regularly. The CBT was discontinued in September 2006 and these scores are no longer valid.
Although initially, the demand for test seats was higher than availability, and candidates had to wait for months, it is now possible to take the test within one to four weeks in most countries. The four-hour test consists of four sections, each measuring one of the basic language skills (while some tasks require integrating multiple skills) and all tasks focus on language used in an academic, higher-education environment. Note-taking is allowed during the TOEFL iBT test. The test cannot be taken more than once a week.

1. Reading

   The Reading section consists of 3–5 passages, each approximately 700 words in length and questions about the passages. The passages are on academic topics; they are the kind of material that might be found in an undergraduate university textbook. Passages require understanding of rhetorical functions such as cause-effect, compare-contrast and argumentation. Students answer questions about main ideas, details, inferences, essential information, sentence insertion, vocabulary, rhetorical purpose and overall ideas. New types of questions in the TOEFL iBT test require filling out tables or completing summaries. Prior knowledge of the subject under discussion is not necessary to come to the correct answer.

2. Listening

   The Listening section consists of six passages 3–5 minutes in length and questions about the passages. These passages include two student conversations and four academic lectures or discussions. A conversation involves two speakers, a student and either a professor or a campus service provider. A lecture is a self-contained portion of an academic lecture, which may involve student participation and does not assume specialized background knowledge in the subject area. Each conversation and lecture stimulus is heard only once. Test-takers may take notes while they listen and they may refer to their notes when they answer the questions. Each conversation is associated with five questions and each lecture with six. The questions are meant to measure the ability to understand main ideas, important details, implications, relationships between ideas, organization of information, speaker purpose and speaker attitude.

3. Speaking

   The Speaking section consists of six tasks: two independent tasks and four integrated tasks. In the two independent tasks, test-takers answer opinion questions on familiar topics. They are evaluated on their ability to speak spontaneously and convey their ideas clearly and coherently. In two of the integrated tasks, test-takers read a short passage, listen to an academic course lecture or a conversation about campus life and answer a question by combining appropriate information from the text and the talk. In the two remaining integrated tasks, test-takers listen to an academic course lecture or a conversation about campus life and then respond to a question about what they heard. In the integrated tasks, test-takers are evaluated on their ability to appropriately synthesize and effectively convey information from the reading and listening material. Test-takers may take notes as they read and listen and may use their notes to help prepare their responses. Test-takers are given a short preparation time before they have to begin speaking. The responses are digitally recorded, sent to ETS’s Online Scoring Network (OSN) and evaluated by three to six raters.

4. Writing

   The Writing section measures a test taker's ability to write in an academic setting and consists of two tasks: one integrated task and one independent task. In the integrated task, test-takers read a passage on an academic topic and then listen to a speaker discuss the same topic. The test-taker will then write a summary about the important points in the listening passage and explain how these relate to the key points of the reading passage. In the independent task, the test-taker must write an essay that states, explains, and supports their opinion on an issue, supporting their opinions or choices, rather than simply listing personal preferences or choices. Responses are sent to the ETS OSN and evaluated by four raters.

   
   

   
   

   
   

   Ref : Wikipedia

 

 

Writing Bad News Messages

USING THE THREE-STEP PROCESS FOR WRITING BAD NEWS MESSAGES 

Communicating negative news is a fact of life for all business professionals, from rejecting job applicants to telling customers that shipments will be late to turning down speaking invitations. Bad news messages are challenging to write because we know our readers will not be happy to receive the news. These messages say "no" to the reader:

No, you will not get your loan 
No, you aren't being hired 
No, you didn't get the scholarship
No, you aren't accepted into the college of business 
No, I can't give a donation
No, I can't help you

Bad news means the reader will not be able to accomplish his/her goals. For example, without a loan, a student may have to postpone plans to graduate on time because now the person has to go to work to raise the money. The homeless shelter that doesn't get your donation now has to worry about how it's going to feed its clients. 
But news can't always be good. In life, we do have to reject less-qualified applicants, we don't have unlimited funds to give money to every deserving charity, and we can't always fill a customer's request on time. 
When we need to say "no" to our readers, we usually mean "not under these circumstances." "No" now isn't necessarily "no" forever. If the student were to get a co-signer, he/she might be able to get the loan after all. Perhaps we'll be able to send a donation to the homeless shelter next month, after we've paid our own bills first. 
So how do we give bad news without destroying our business relationship? You can see in list at the top of this page that stating bad news directly can often be very damaging and unnecessarily hurtful. When you need to deliver bad news, you have five goals:

1. to convey the bad news
2. to gain acceptance for it
3. to maintain as much goodwill a possible with your audience
4. to maintain a good image for our organization
5. if appropriate, to reduce or eliminate the need for future correspondence on the matter.

Five goals are clearly a lot to accomplish in one message. However, by learning some simple techniques, you can develop negative messages that reduce the stress for everyone involved and improve the effectiveness of your communication efforts.

Step 1: Plan Your Message 

When planning your message, you can't avoid the fact that your audience does not want to hear what you have to say. To minimize the damage to business relationships and to encourage the acceptance of your message, analyze the situation carefully to better understand the context in which the recipient will process your message. 

Be sure to consider your purpose thoroughly – whether it's straightforward (such as rejecting a job application) of more complicated (such as creating a negative performance review, in which you not only give the employee feedback on past performance but also help the person develop a plan to improve future performance.) Similarly, your audience profile can be simple and obvious in some situations (such as rejecting a credit request) and far more complex in others (such as telling a business partner that you've decided to terminate the partnership.) 

With a clear purpose and your audience's needs in mind, identify and gather the information your audience will need in order to understand and accept your message. Negative messages can be intensely personal to the recipient, and in many cases recipients have a right to expect a thorough explanation of your answer. Empty clichés such as "Due to circumstances beyond our control" are vague because they don't tell the reader anything of substance. 

Selecting the right medium is critical when delivering negative messages. For example, you might badly damage a business relationship if you use voice mail to reject a long-time employee's request for a promotion. Since the employee would surely have some important questions to ask, and you would certainly want to soothe hurt feelings, a face-to-face meeting would be the best choice for this situation. However, if your company received 10,000 credit applications a month, you can't afford to engage every rejected applicant in a one-on-one conversation. A well written form letter that limits response options from your readers – so that you don't have to explain the reasons for your decision already covered in your letter – is a better choice.

Step 2: Write Your Message

When adapting a negative message to your audience, every aspect of effective, diplomatic writing is amplified; after all, our audience does not want to hear a negative message and might disagree strongly with you. Be sure to maintain the you-attitude, and strive for polite language that emphasizes the positive whenever appropriate.
 
If your credibility hasn't already been established with an audience, lay out your qualifications for making the decision in question. Recipients of negative messages who don't think you are credible are more likely to challenge your decision. That's why, for example, messages related to late payments are often signed by a higher executive. And as always, projecting and protecting your company's image is a prime concern. If you're not careful, a negative answer could spin out of control into negative feelings about your company. 

When you use language that conveys respect and avoids an accusing tone, you protect your audience's pride. In addition, you can ease the sense of disappointment by using positive words rather than negative, counterproductive ones (see Fig. 1 below.) 

Chances are you'll spend more time on word, sentence, and paragraph choices for negative messages than for any other type of business writing. People who receive bad news often look for subtle shares of meaning, seeking flaws in your reasoning or other ways to challenge the decision. By writing clearly and sensitively, you can take some of the sting out of bad news and help your reader to accept your decision and to move on.

Step 3: Complete Your Message 

Your need for careful attention to detail continues as you complete your message. Revise your content to make sure everything is clear, complete, and concise – bearing in mind that even small flaws are magnified as readers react to your negative news. Produce clear, professional documents, and proofread carefully to eliminate mistakes. Finally, be especially sure that your negative messages are delivered promptly and successfully. Waiting for bad news is hard enough without wondering whether a message was lost.

TOEFL

• Pengertian TOEFL

Test of English as a Foreign Language disingkat TOEFL adalah ujian kemampuan berbahasa Inggris (logat Amerika) yang diperlukan untuk mendaftar masuk ke kolese (college) atau universitas di Amerika Serikat atau negara-negara lain di dunia. Ujian ini sangat diperlukan bagi pendaftar atau pembicara yang bahasa ibunya bukan bahasa Inggris. Ujian TOEFL ini diselenggarakan oleh kantor ETS (Educational Testing Service) di Amerika Serikat untuk semua peserta tes di seluruh dunia.
Jenis tes bahasa Inggris TOEFL ini pada umumnya diperlukan untuk persyaratan masuk kuliah pada hampir semua universitas di Amerika Serikat dan Kanada baik untuk program undergraduate (S-1) maupun graduate (S-2 atau S-3). Hasil tes TOEFL ini juga dipakai sebagai bahan pertimbangan mengenai kemampuan bahasa Inggris dari calon mahasiswa yang mendaftar ke universitas di negara lain, termasuk universitas di Eropa dan Australia. Secara umum, tes TOEFL lebih berorientasi kepada American English, dan sedikit berbeda dengan jenis tes IELTS yang berorientasi kepada British English. Tidak seperti tes IELTS, tes TOEFL ini pada umumnya tidak mempunyai bagian individual interview test.
Biasanya tes ini memakan waktu sekitar tiga jam dan diselenggarakan dalam 4 bagian, yaitu bagian:

• listening comprehension,
• grammar structure and written expression,
• reading comprehension, dan bagian
• writing.

Nilai hasil ujian TOEFL berkisar antara: 310 (nilai minimum) sampai 677 (nilai maximum) untuk versi PBT (paper-based test).

• Contoh Soal TOEFL dan pembahasannya

1. He ..bacon and eggs every morning.
A. is used to eat                             C. has been used to eating
B. hadused to eat                         D. use to eating

 Jawaban C
Kata “used to “ digunakan untuk membandingkan waktu lampau dan waktu kini, dan seringkali menunjukkan makna kebiasaan atau pengulangan. (Zandvoort, 1980:84).

2. The team really looks good tonight because the coach had them.. every night this week.

A. Practice                                        C. Practiced

B. to practice                                    D. thepractice

 jawab: Jawaban A

 Kata “had” dalam kalimat tersebut berarti “menyuruh” dan membentuk struktur “causative”aktif, sehingga kata kerja dibelakangnya harus berbentuk infinitive tanpa “to”, yaitu “practice” (berlatih).  

3. You…. your seatstodau if you want to go to the game.
A. had better to reserve            C. had to better reserve
B. had better reserve                  D. had to reserve better

Jawaban B
Salah satu ungkapan bahasa Inggris untuk menyatakan “lebih baik” adalah “had better +V1”. Jadi , “had better reserve” (lebih baik memesan) merupakan pilihan yang tepat untuk kalimat tersebut.
 

2. She hasn’t seen her family….three years ago

A. since                                            C. for

B. from                                             D. before

jawab:  Jawaban A 

Kalimat tersebut berbentuk Present Perfect Tense (hasn’t seen). Jika keterangan waktunya menunjuk pada suatu titik waktu tertentu (“three years ago”, misalnya dihitung dari tahun 2008 titik waktunya adalah tahun 2005), maka kata depan yang harus dipakai adalah “sejak” (since).

 4. Your sister used to visit you quite often A. didn’t she                                    C. wouldn’t she
B. doesn’t she                                                D. hadn’t she
Jawaban A
Kata bantu dalam “question tag” didasarkan pada kata kerja dalam kalimat yang terkait. Kata kerja dalam kalimat positif tersebut berupa V2 (past tense) “used to”, sehingga kata kerja bantu yang digunakan untuk melengkapi QT-nya yang tepat adalah “didn’t.  Apabila kata kerja nya kalimat positif adalah V1 plus “-s”, maka QT-nya “don’t”. Jika kata kerjanya V1 plus “-s”, QT-nya “doesn’t”. Apabila kata kerja kalimat berupa be (can, will, could, would), maka cukup menambahkan not setelahnya untuk membentuk QT.

 6. . It is…day that travel advisories have been issued for most themajor highways.

A. such snowy                               C. such a snowy

B. so snowy                                    D. such snowy

jawab:  Jawaban C 

“Such” digunakan secara khusus untuk menunjukkan suatu cirri bentuk benda tertentu (identity of type). Contoh lain:  “They regulary get “ The Daily Courier’. I wouldn’t read such a paper” (Quirkm 1972:703) 

5. Mr. Reagan was… the long chain of unfortunate events A. the first to break                      C. firstly broken
B. the first breaking                     D. breaking the first
 Jawaban A
Ungkapan “the first to break” dalam kalimat terebut berasal dari bentuk panjang “the first man who broke”. Frasa “man who broke” dengan kata kerja bentuk lampau ini dapat diganti dengan struktur “to +V1”, yaitu “to break”.

6. There is often disagreement as to … is the better students, Bob or Helen
A. whom                                           C. who
B. whose                                          D. which
Jawaban C
Kata ganti orang yang paling tepat adalah “who”, karena berfungsi sebagai pengganti subjek dalamanak kalimat tersebut.

7. A few of….are planning to drive to Florida today.
A. we girls                                        C. girls us
B. girls we                                         D. us girls
 Jawaban D
Kata “of” sebagai kata depatn jika diikuti kata ganti orang, maka harus berbentuk objek, sehigga pilihanyang tepat adalah “us girls”.

8. Please go to … to pick up your ID card.
A. third window                             C. window third
B. the window three                   D. the third window
Jawaban D
Kata bilangan penunjuk urutan (ordinals)biasanya didahului sebuah kata sandang tentu ( definite determiner) yaiut “ the “. (Leech, 1979:254).

9. It’s a shame that you have….time in New York on the tour
A. so few                                          C. a few B. solittle                                          D. a little
Jawaban B
Kata “time” termasuk kata benda tak dapat dihitung (uncountable), jadi untuk menyatakan “begitu sedikit waktu” yang tepat adalah “so little time”. “Little” hanya digunakan pada kata benda tak dapat dihitung.

10. She hasn’t seen her family….three years ago A. since                                            C. for
B. from                                             D. before
Jawaban A
Kalimat tersebut berbentuk Present Perfect Tense (hasn’t seen). Jika keterangan waktunya menunjuk pada suatu titik waktu tertentu (“three years ago”, misalnya dihitung dari tahun 2008 titik waktunya adalah tahun 2005), maka kata depan yang harus dipakai adalah “sejak” (since).

11. this coffee tastes a little…to me.
A. strongly                                      C. so strong B. Strong                                          D. too strong
Jawaban B
Kata “tastes” (terasa, rasanya) harus diikuti jenis kata sifat,yaitu “strong” (kental).

12. It is…day that travel advisories have been issued for most themajor highways.
A. such snowy                               C. such a snowy
B. so snowy                                    D. such snowy
Jawaban C
“Such” digunakan secara khusus untuk menunjukkan suatu cirri bentuk benda tertentu (identity of type). Contoh lain:  “They regulary get “ The Daily Courier’. I wouldn’t read such a paper” (Quirkm 1972:703)

13. I like these dises, but…is a little too small A. the tea cup                                C.thetea’s cup
B. cup of tea                                   D. thecup for the tea
 Jawaban A
Frasa kata benda dalam bahasa Inggris pada umumnya berstruktur hokum MD (yang diterangkan terletak dibelakang (yang menerangkan ). Jadi, berbalikan dengan frasa kata benda bahasa Indonesia yang berstruktur MD. Kata “tea” adalah menerangkan (M) dan “cup” adalah yang diterangkan (D). Struktur “noun phrase” seperti ini dalam bahasa Inggris dikenal sebagai “Modifier-Head” (MH).

14. I will return your notes assoon as …copying them.
A. I will finish                                  C. I finish
B. I do finish                                   D.I finished
 Jawaban C
Kalimat itu tepat jika dilengkapi dengan subjek dan kata kerja berbentuk waktu Simple Present Tense, yaitu “I finish”.

15. Although she is very popular, she is not…her sister.
A. more pretty than                    C. pretty as
B. as pretty like                             D. prettier than
Jawaban D
Kalimat itu menggunakan Comparative Degree. Jika terdiri dari dua suku kata, untuk menyatakan lebih, maka cukup member imbuhan “-er” dan diikuti “than”. Jadi, pilihan yang benar adalah “prettier than”.

Ref.

wikipedia.com

http://rasz17.blogspot.com

http://fachrurrozyezy740.blogspot.com