TOTAL
107 - R:
28/30 L:
28/30 S:
23/30 W:
28/30
General tips- If you have a good Verbal score in the GMAT you don't need to study for the Reading, just a couple of sections to familiarize with the type of questions will be enough. I didn't studied for this section and you can see the result was quite successful.
- My strategy for Reading would be to read the whole text quickly and then focus on each question. IMO you have plenty of time to do this. If you just go straight into the question, you could end up without a global view of the text and the last questions (2-point questions btw) could be difficult to answer sometimes.
- In the Listening, I took notes as I listened because it helped me to concentrate (I get distracted easily), but I didn't use the notes to answer the questions, so do what you want. Got prepared though because it is really tough, 7 listenings of 5-7 minutes I guess. When I ended the fifth I thought it was done, and the last two were really heavy for me. (Because I couldn't stand it any more, not that they were difficult).
- Although the speaking section is obviously what makes my score not to be WOW, I am pretty happy with it, because my oral ability is quite terrible. It is the only section I trained in the 10 days I had to prepare for the exam. I have a cd from Barron that contains like 7-8 exams. I did all of the oral sections, some of them two times. The templates for oral questions in "Cracking the TOEFL" were really helpful to me, they help to have a clear organization for each type of question. However, don't follow them AS IS because you can get a Q that won't fit in such templates.
- I don't know if all the test centers will be like mine, hopefully not, but just in case be prepared for noise and confusion in the speaking section. I was in the first row, close to the door, and when the speaking section began it was a chaos. There were people in the rest room in front of me, like 3 meters away, talking and commenting their impressions on the exam while I was supposed to start talking. But that's not all, I had also like 3 or 4 guys around the room already answering the questions when I had to began. I felt VERY uncomfortable, apart from the stupidity you feel for talking with a computer.
There's a trick for the oral section that was somewhat helpful to me. This test was so badly organized that, as I stated above, there were people who had already started the oral section before I did. Given that the questions are the same for everybody (not adaptative as the GMAT), you can infer more or less what will be the question hearing the guy who is already answering. If you want to take advantage of the situation, you can become retarded for a few minutes and pretend to be reading the guidelines until you get something.
- Finally, the writing question is about templates. I will quickly outline the ones I used.
Integrated task
1) Intro: State main idea of the lecture. State the position of the reading towards that of the listening (support/undermine).
2) Body: 3 * [paragraph] Idea/Example of the listening. Explain the idea/example. Explain what says the reading about this, and why it supports or undermines the lecture points.
3) Conclusion: State that you have demonstrated how the lecture supports/undermines the passage.Summarize the main points.
Opinion task
1)Intro: State your opinion or position in the issue. Be clear, concise, etc. Make a short explanation of why you have this position/opinion without entering in details.
2) [at least] 3 * [paragraph] One reason (opinion) is that (reason). Explain the reason. Important: provide an example (this guys love examples). Contrast it with the other position/opinion (you can use a reversed example for instance).
3) State how successfully you have outlined the main points to support your opinion/position and not the other.
- About the words, I don't remember exactly but I wrote a lot more than what it suggested. I can recall like 380 for the first and 430 for the second more or less. I'd recommend to write all you can, always addressing the question.
And that's all folks, good luck to everyone!