Academic English Skills with Dr. Byrnes

  Problem: R epeating the same words Let me ask you something: Have you ever finished a TOEFL essay and realized you kept repeating the same words over and over? Don't worry—we’ve all been there. Today, we're going to talk about how to fix that and impress TOEFL raters by showing lexical variety. What's that? Well, it just means using different vocabulary to express similar ideas. And trust me—this is one of the key things TOEFL raters are looking for. It's especially important in the Integrated Writing Task, where you need to summarize both a reading and a lecture. Let me show you what I mean. Here’s a repetitive version of a TOEFL response: "The passage talks about the disappearance of sea otters in North America. One theory for the disappearance of sea otters is that pollution caused it. The professor in the lecture disagrees with the idea that pollution caused the disappearance of sea otters. Instead, the professor maintains that predators like sea lions are th...

  Key to Speaking Fast in English: Weak Form Good day, everyone. Today, I want to talk about an important aspect of the TOEFL Speaking section: delivery—specifically, how to improve your speaking speed. As you may already know, one key factor for achieving a high score in TOEFL Speaking is maintaining a high WPM (words per minute)—ideally around 150 words per minute. In my experience, speaking speed often matters more than perfect pronunciation. That is, faster speakers tend to score higher than slower, overly careful ones. Why? Because the tasks require you to summarize content effectively, and to do that, you must convey as many ideas as possible—which means saying more in less time. Understanding English Rhythm To speak English faster, you need to understand how English rhythm works. Linguists categorize languages by their rhythmic patterns, which is to say what provides regularity in speech. In English, such regularity is achieved by making stressed syllables occur in the same...