Hi, everyone!
To be honest, it’s pretty hard to put your thoughts together and express them in a good way when you have a 30 minutes’ limit.
What I am trying to do is to review the others’ essays and pick out the expressions I find useful, then I try to see which topics I can use them in . For instance, I’ve come across a good linking phrase :“I find myself favoring …(smth, it could be anything)” over “again …smth”. So, I try to use it in every statement , when I need to express my opinion. We can do it with all the phrases we come across. The more topics I try to embed these phrases in, the easier for me will be to reproduce them in the shortest time possible.Thus, we creating a kind of link between a number of topics.
Also, I am trying to keep in mind a scheme suggested by Englishraven
youtube.com/watch?v=_ow5qLHj … re=related
I find it really useful.
Another thing I try to keep to is using complicated structures i.e. conditionals, complex sentences, clauses, that will work in our favor. Also, a variety of synonyms is essential, for instance with the word “knowledge” (which is the most common issue in many topics) we might use not only “good”, but fundamental, profound ,effective . It’s good to find as more synonyms as possible so that we can be armored with a bunch of related words in case we forgot one.
As for reading , we definitely have to find time for this.
A lot of thanks should be sent to our mentor and guide Kitosdad and his great work.
Thank you , Richard, this discussion is very useful!
Good luck to everyone,
Alina
Hey~I am here as I promised!
The most useful tip for the writing is practice I think. Practice makes perfect!
Besides, we should review the previous work, especailly those revised by others. That’s really helpful! This helps us not to make the same mistake again, such as, the Internet!!hahaha
We can also improved our writing by reading and listening. For example, I have a cute small notebook, which give the the impulse to write something on it…haha. Whenever I read some good structures or sentences, even in the reading exercise of toefl, I would write them down on the notebook and I always take the notebook with me, so I can read it every time I am free.
I am also a big fan of American TV shows. This not only help me to improve my english listening, but also let me know more about the Western Culture. Here is a nice website where you can download all the latest episodes for free: eztv.it
And try to write down the useful stuctures of what you heard from the Tv shows, which are quite daily talk and useful!
Ahh, and for toefl listening, the podcast of American science is very effective for improving that. These topics are quite similar with the lectures of toefl listening. The speed is a little bit faster, but good for improving ourselves. You can find them in the Itune podcast. 
To put all into a nut shell~~~hahahaha,I haven’t use this phrase for a while…
That’s basically all I use la!
Hope it would be helpful for you guys!!
Good luck!!
Hi there. Thanks for all tips. I have wondered of what tips i can give. Well my English teacher here in Sweden told me to “just lie my teath out” on exams. It’s not important that you wright about your own experiance. So just lie. One other thing is that i like to find “good words” to improve my English. I did it so much so i just forgott the simpliest thing, write so people understand and just make it simple. There is no point of making it so difficult so nobody understands it. I like to do crosswords in English you can find some at bbc.com.
Have fun
Thanks ever so much for all your help my friends. 
Always welcome and appreciate your useful advice