TOEFL 114

Hi,

I got my TOEFL results and I made a 114. I was scared about the results as I was not very confident in the Speaking section and I had slightly messed up with the stuff I wrote in one of my essays in my writing section!
I had allotted 3-4 days for TOEFL preps and that is more than enough if you are fluent in English. I basically prepared from the Official Guide and Barron's. Make sure you give atleast 2 full length exams before taking the real one!
I would like to repeat some tips that have been said time and again on this forum.

1) Reading Section: 29
Read the questions first and then look for answers in the passage. The passages are very easy as compared to GMAT and since the questions are sequential, you will not miss the main idea of the passage even if you read the questions first and then look for answers! I made the mistake of reading the passage first and then answering the questions for the first 2 passages, but towards the end I suffered due to lack of time due to which I answered 2-3 questions in hurry, which explains my score. However for the next 2 passages I did not repeat the same mistake.

2) Listening: 29
Quite easy. Nothing much to prepare here. By the time I was taking the listening section, people had already started their speaking sections and some of them were on their 10 min break. That led to a lot of distraction, as my seating was very close to the door with people walking in and out every second. Earplugs helped a lot though. Don't forget to get a pair for yourself for the exam!Very useful!

3) Speaking: 27
I somehow dreaded this section. Most of my practice was devoted to speaking section, but still I ended up with the lowest score in this section!
I practiced a number of familiar topics(google for toefl speaking topics, you'll get ample idea), recorded a couple of my speaking sessions to see how it sounds! Please use the templates that you might find in this forum; that gives you a neat structure to what you speak.
Try practicing a lot for this section because even if you could speak about a topic confidently, you often run out of time and end up giving only the intro!

4) Writing: 29
I was confident about this section as I have given GMAT twice and in both the tests I got 6 in AWA. Hail Chineseburned! :D
However, towards the end I lost my patience completely and did not care much about what I wrote I just wrote a lot!
After I returned back from the exam, I realized that one of my examples in the 1st essay made absolutely no sense. I was worried if I would be penalized heavily for this, but thankfully it was only 1 point!

All in all, TOEFL is a very simple exam, but it tests your patience and concentration. It is very easy to lose patience towards the end in an 4.5 hrs exam. You also tend to be distracted easily by fellow exam takers as at a given point of time, all of them will not be taking same section as you. Earplugs help in such cases!

Finally, I would like to thank everyone at the gmatclub. It helped me immensely in both my GMAT and TOEFL preps. gmatclub truly rocks!

All the best guys!