my name is Steve Ford

and welcome to another How to pass the TOEFL speaking section video

Above all else, the speaking section is about feeling comfortable

My aim is to pass on some tips to you so that you can be ready the day of your test

Today I will be going over an independent speaking question

Remember that independent speaking questions are basically divided into two types

proving or disproving one side of an argument or talking about a personal experience

Let's listen to the question, the student's answer

and afterward I will make some comments and suggestions

Here's the question:

OK! Let's look at our student's intro.

So "there have lots sight things" should be changed to "there are lots of tourist attractions"

The next part "and lots of friends who like to look at the things" could be

and lots of tourists who like to check them out"

That's a good phrasal verb right there "check out"

you really wanna focus on phrasal verbs to make sure that you can boost your score

So our student's first point covers the Kremlin as a tourist attraction and he says:

I like how he has introduced his first point "first of all", that will help you to stay focused.

We can add in "the" Kremlin whenever that's mentioned.

The odd mistake with articles and prepositions is OK, but if it's constant, it can drive your score down.

Next, "it's like a hub" Good simily, good word choice!

He can give himself a pat on the back for that one

"you can easy get by subway" that's pretty close, you could say, "you can EASILY get THERE by subway"

The next part is good, "you have some stations right beneath the main square."

"right beneath", couldn't have said it better myself! Sounds like a native speaker!

"And you can know the Red Square" "know" is not the right word choice when we are visiting a place.

I know it's used in other languages, but we need to change this to "and you can visit Red Square".

second point: "People who come to Moscow like to have some trips" here I would change "have some trips" to go sightseeing"

"breathtaking pictures" "breathtaking" is an awesome word choice

watch out for the pronunciation: breath(noun), breathe(verb) breathtaking.

the main store our student is referring to is a huge department store in downtown Moscow

and many other parts of Russia cities called GUM(according to Wikipedia)

if you're gonna make a local reference like that you wanna make sure you spell it out for your rater(evaluator)

third point: "You know there are a lot of churches, you can see some historyЕ.you can perceive history of Moscow and Russia by having a trip to the Kremlin."

So he talks about the many churches of Moscow and "perceive history" "I'm gonna change that to "get to know the history of Moscow and Russia"

one last thing I'd like to add in is

"having a trip to the Kremlin" is the wrong word choice and you should say "taking a trip to the Kremlin"

After the student's introduction, which was a little confusing, I found his answer to be cohesive with three separate examples, that's great!

giving some description to back them up

The student's word choice at times was unclear, but nothing major

There was a pretty good pace in his speaking, no long pausesЕ.umЕ..ahЕЕ

and there were no real issues regarding pronunciation

I liked how the student was able to compare some of the tourist attractions to something in his imagination

I really like that: "the Kremlin is sort of like a castle" and "it's like a hub".

This shows that the student has the ability to quickly think in an abstract way in English

not an easy task considering he only had 45 seconds to do it

By the way, this student already got the score he needed as he did considerable practice from the time of this recording

If you can pay attention to word choice, it will definitely boost your score.

Well everybody, we'll keep this short and sweet and I look forward to our next test prep. Video!

Bye for now!