Part Two: Improve without Studying

Ready for a bit more studying without having to crack open your text book? Here is part two of Ten ways to improve your TOEFL essays without studying!

1. If possible, write in the active voice. Writing in an active voice (he runs instead of he ran) show that you’re thinking beyond basic grammar or structure and making changes to the tone of your writing. As long as you’re using tense correctly, this will score you extra points.
2. Learn the function of a conjunction. If you didn’t know, conjunctions are words that link two or more ideas/phrases together (and, but, because, etc). One of the most common mistakes when writing is to start a sentence with a conjunction, but how can you start a sentence with a word that points to another idea? Don’t make this mistake!
3. Use proper essay structure. Think of your essay like a map, with the beginning, the middle, and ending showing the reader where to go. Make each of these sections clear to help the reader understand your thoughts.
4. Use topic sentences. Just as a essay’s structure provides a map for the entire essay, and topic sentence is a map for each middle (or body) paragraph. The topic sentence should tell the reader what is about to be discussed as well as state a reason that supports your thesis statement.
5. Use your comma properly. Adding commas to your writing will help create longer sentences, state multiple ideas, add flow, and generally breath life into your writing. Just make sure you haven’t fallen into run-on sentence territory!

Now that you’ve got all these new tips to put into practice, why not try a TOEFL Essay practice test?