I got today the results of the TOEIC test I took last week in Dublin. I am very happy and here are my tips so that you are as happy as I am
I am from France, and I have been living in Ireland for one year. My score is detailled as follows:
Listening 495 / 495
Reading 450 / 495
I did not study for the TOEIC specifically, in my case to live in Ireland for 1 year was enough. But I bought a book of practice tests (Longman - more practice tests + AUDIO CD) and I prepared myself to perform well the day of the TOEIC exam.
I am just giving here my tips to succeed as well as possible the day of your exam with the english skills you have, but of course the first step is to improve english.
First of all you should take an entire pratice test, take as much time as you need to finish it, read the questions first for part 3 and 4 (but only one listening for each conversation) and calculate your score. That gives you a good idea what your english level is. I took the first practice test of the book with unlimited time and my score was around 950 (very similar to what I got the day of the exam).
For the exam day here are my tips that I used:
[size=150]Listening section[/size]
Part 1 and 2: I have no particular tip, answer directly on your answer sheet and if you don’t know, pick randomly an answer. Answer immediately as there is no point in coming back on these parts later.
Part 3 and 4: they are not easy, my recommendations are:
-
read the 3 questions and all available answers before the conversation starts. It will be much easier if you do this way.
-
in order to save time and stay focused, do NOT answer on your answeer sheet immediately, circle the right answer on the question sheet while the record is running. When the conversation is finished, circle quickly the 3 answers on the answer sheet and then immediately move onto the next 3 questions (read in advance the 3 questions and answers) while the speaker on the record is reading the 3 questions for the previous conversation.
-
if you could not answer to some questions while the record was running, do not spend more time after the converstion is finished, it is much more useful to spend time reading the next 3 questions. But after the whole listening section is over, you can come back on the questions that you could not answer previously and guess the answer. Most of the time you can eliminate some answers that are obviously wrong and pick the one that seems to be the most suitable.
[size=150]Reading section[/size]
- for the reading part, you must pay attention to the time you spend on each part. I saw on the internet the following time management and it worked fine for me:
[list]Part 5 (40 questions) + Part 6 (12 questions) : 30 min
Part 7 (48 questions) : 40 min
[size=75]well actually I did not have time to complete the last 8 questions because I was getting tired so I was very slow for the last 20 min…[/size]
-
quickly read the questions and answers before reading the documents.
-
we are often tempted not to read the entire document to save time, but it is not a good idea you must read everything and then answer the questions
-
in case you are running out of time to finish the reading section, search for questions that you can answer without reading the document (such as a vocabulary questions) and pick randomly an answer for other questions. [/list:u]
To sum up, your main ennemy that you must defeat the day of the TOEIC exam is THE TIME. Every second counts, use them all efficiently.
That’s it. I cannot think of any other useful tip. I wish you to succeed as well as I did. If you have got the opportunity to go abroad for a few months to improve english, do it! It is worth it. Choose the country, contact an english school and you will have a good time while you learn english.
Happy studying.