During a panel discussion included in EFL Magazine’s TOEFL Training Summit last week, participants were asked about possible gaps in the TOEFL training market that prospective teachers could fill.
My response was that teachers need not look for specific gaps, as the main weakness of the overall market is simply a lack of qualified and visible online tutors. I mentioned that even though the TOEFL test is taken more than a million times a year, there are really just a small handful of talented and highly-visible TOEFL tutors online. Therefore, even new teachers with the required expertise (and a decent online footprint) can attract enough clients to keep themselves busy for a long time.
So how does one acquire this expertise and get noticed online? Well, here’s what has worked for me.
1.Read Everything
To teach the TOEFL test, you need to know the TOEFL test. Eventually, you should read everything published by ETS about the TOEFL, but start by getting copies of both Official iBT Tests books. Make sure you get the most recent versions (look for their green covers).
Go through these two books with a highlighter and notepad, and try to “diagram” the ten tests they contain. Read the passages and questions line by line, and word by word. This will teach you the techniques ETS uses to create TOEFL test items every week. Note how details and examples are presented in each question type. You’ll learn that the TOEFL is a very formulaic test and that you can use the formulas to demystify the test for your students. Surprisingly, a lot of teachers and content-writers haven’t done this, which weakens their materials and methods.
Another source of information is the Official Guide to the TOEFL. It describes the test in detail and contains four more practice tests you can pore over. Just be careful with the very first practice test, as it was created even before the launch of the iBT back in 2006 and contains a few inaccuracies.
As you continue your reading, you’ll learn that ETS has published research articles about every aspect of the test, as well as book-length studies of the software used to automatically score in the speaking and writing sections of the test. These will all increase your level of expertise. Perhaps in a future article, I’ll provide a reading list of items for TOEFL tutors who really want to get into the weeds.
Note that you should be very careful when using the above strategy to analyze unofficial third party TOEFL textbooks, as many of them are inaccurate and flawed.
2.Understand Grammar
Don’t be the sort of teacher that says “that’s just how we say it in English” when a student asks a question about a certain correction.
Try to become a grammar expert as well as a TOEFL expert. Everyone makes mistakes, of course, but you should learn the proper terminology and rules needed to explain why you have made a certain correction to a student’s practice essay or recording. For this purpose, I strongly recommend finding a copy of Michael Swan’s “Practical English Usage” (published by Oxford University Press). It contains easy-to-understand answers to almost all of the grammar questions my students ask me. The new fourth edition even contains a special section dedicated to the most common problems.
3. Have an Online Footprint (I) – Your Website
Once you have mastered the design of the TOEFL test, start writing about it! Launch a website and publish detailed articles on a regular basis. Students are hungry for good articles that help them understand the test and improve their scores.