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TOEFL integrated tasks: read, listen, then answer using both Vibedu CounsellingBook Free Counselling
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TOEFL integrated tasks: read, listen, then answer using both

The integrated tasks are what separate TOEFL from every other English test — and they are learnable.

9 min read

TOEFL iBT runs about two hours across reading, listening, speaking and writing, scored 0–120 with each section out of 30. What makes it distinctive is that several tasks are integrated: you take in material and then use it, rather than answering about yourself.

Integrated writing. You read a short academic passage, then hear a lecture that usually CHALLENGES it, and you write a summary explaining how the lecture responds to the reading. The marks are for accurately reporting the relationship — not for your opinion, which is not wanted here at all. Note-taking is the skill: three points in the reading, three responses in the lecture, paired.

Integrated speaking. A campus situation or an academic concept is presented in reading plus listening, and you speak for about a minute using both. Again: report, do not evaluate.

The note-taking system matters more than the English. Use a two-column page — reading on the left, lecture on the right, so the pairs sit opposite each other. Write in abbreviations you actually read back. Practise the layout until it needs no thought, because you cannot invent a system while the audio is playing.

A template helps in the integrated writing, and templates are allowed — but only the joining sentences. "The lecturer casts doubt on the reading's claim that …" is a frame; the content after it must be the actual content. An answer that is 70% template scores as an answer that is 30% yours.

Reading is long. Passages run to several hundred words with ten questions each, and the last question is usually a summary or table task worth more than one point. Budget for it rather than arriving at it with two minutes left.

Do this now

Five to ten minutes. This is the part that moves your band.

Find any short academic article and a talk on the same topic. Take two-column notes — article left, talk right. Then write 150 words on how the talk responds to the article, with no opinion of your own. Twenty minutes; this is the whole integrated task in miniature.

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