You are required to focus on your personal experience for independent speaking and writing activities. You can also include examples from other people’s experiences to back up your claim. As a result, you will occasionally utilize examples from your own experience to emphasize your points. As you can see in the examples that follow, you need to use past tense verbs in these circumstances:
My roommate and I went to New York City to ring in the New Year last year.
I found that studying alone was considerably faster than studying in a group two weeks ago while I was getting ready for an exam.
Regarding verb tenses and the TOEFL independent speaking and writing tasks, remember the following:
Use past tense verbs in the phrases that follow any signal words, such as “last year,” “yesterday,” “last week,” and so on. Consistency in verb tenses demonstrates that you have good linguistic control. Additionally, maintaining consistency in verb tenses will help your sentences flow more naturally.
It can be difficult to distinguish between the past perfect (I had graduated by 2021) and simple past tenses (I graduated in 2021). Instead of the past perfect verb tense, choose the simple past tense if you’re unsure. In spoken and written language, the past perfect verb tense is dwindling in usage. It will eventually vanish from the English language. As a result, if you test negative, ETS won’t penalize you. Don’t forget to utilize the past perfect tense when it’s appropriate.
When discussing an action that had a distinct beginning and end in the past, avoid using the present perfect tense: 2019 saw my pharmacy school graduation.
The combined writing and speaking tasks
Compared to their standalone speaking and writing counterparts, the integrated speaking and writing assignments serve a different function. You are summarising the key ideas from reading and hearing passages rather than creating new stuff. Additionally, you set up the speaking and writing assignments to demonstrate how the ideas covered in the reading passage relate to the points made in the listening. In these situations, you should summarise this information using present tense reporting verbs.
Three answers are offered in the reading passage for
The speaker in the lecture questions each of the three explanations offered in the reading text for the declining numbers of grey wolves. Scope creep is a term used in academia that is defined in the reading, and the lecturer elaborates on the term with two examples.
Take note of the following information to assist you with TOEFL verb tenses and the integrated tasks: When summarising the information from the reading and listening passages, use simple present tense verbs rather than present progressive reporting verbs.
Simple present tense reporting verbs should be used to start your response and should remain in that tense throughout. NEVER use reporting verbs in the past tense.
When summarising, keep in mind to employ the third person present singular inflection – the speaker believes; material from reading and listening passages: “The text addresses….”
