TOEFL Writing

DESCRIPTION OF THE WRITING SECTION
The TOEFL iBT tests all the basic skills that you will need while attending a college or university. This last section of the TOEFL iBT exam tests your ability to write essays. This section requires that you write for a total of fifty minutes. In many ways taking the Writing Section is made easier because it tests the same skills that you have already mastered in the first three sections. In fact, the two questions that you will encounter in the Writing Section are incredibly similar to Questions #1 and #3 of the Speaking Section. The primary difference is that you will be typing your responses rather than saying them. In other words, these questions should not intimidate you because your responses to the two writing tasks will follow the same patterns as your responses in the Speaking Section. If you want to know how to structure your responses to the Writing Section, look at how sentences and paragraphs are structured in the Speaking Section and follow the examples. With a little practice using the correct structures, many students find mastering the Writing Section to be quite easy.
Your first writing task will require you to both read and listen to passages on a related topic, so you will need to leave your headset on. Your essay must be typed so you should have some familiarity with the style of keyboard you are going to use before you take the TOEFL iBT. Although the program used for the TOEFL Writing Section has cut, copy, and paste functions, the TOEFL Master strongly suggests against using these function for two reasons: First, it is much more difficult to restructure something when it is already written. In other words, it is far easier to write your original ideas without copying anything from the text. Second, if you copy too much from the original text and make it your own, you could receive a score of “0” on this task. Once you enter a college or university, copying material and representing it as your own is known as plagiarism and is a big academic no-no. A student can be punished for such an offense and even be expelled from the college
or university. What’s more, once being expelled for plagiarism, a student may find it incredibly difficult to be accepted by any other college or university because the new school would request any transcripts and official documents from the first institution. Therefore, follow the instructions in this chapter to assure a high Writing Section score without any problems