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Multimodal Literacies MOOC’s Updates

Update #2 Learning to Read – The Toefl Approach

The TOEFL iBT ®

Talking from my experience as an English Teacher, one of my responsibilities is to train students for the TOEFL Exam.

The Reading Part of the Exam consists of three sections “Academic Reading Skills” each with specific timing to complete:

Reading to find information
Basic Comprehension
Reading to Learn

It has three different kinds of question or formats.

Questions with 4 choices and a single answer in multiple-choice format
Reading to learn questions with more than 4 choices and more than 1 correct answer.
Questions with 4 choices and a single answer that ask you to insert a sentence where it fits best in a passage.

I will like to make a stop here, just to give an example of what I have encountered checking the “insert the sentence” exercise. This particular way of evaluating has to do with the student train of thought at conceiving a structure that makes sense to him as individual, therefore, almost all my students get it wrong, and constantly give me their valid reasons to support their answers.

I could go on giving more detailed information about how students are scored. I understand it is a global exam with a specific purpose of certifying English Language knowledge in order to get into an academic or working guild.

I find this test outdated in many ways, whereas during my teaching practice at a High School we use all the newest materials regarding Reading. We obviously have text but paired with of videos, images and hyperlinks.

As I advance in this course, the more several situations during my practice make sense. While I teach my students to infer and interpret, which will always be based on their particular experience, giving them different “aids” besides the text. The most popular Exam is still the TOEFL, where the reader’s decoding is expected to be “decoding the author view”.

Some links to the this approach:

About the TOEFL iBT® Test

https://www.ets.org/toefl/teachers-advisors-agents/about

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2F5t6r0wU4Xv8%2Fmaxresdefault.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D5t6r0wU4Xv8&tbnid=acRDiWReoi3tPM&vet=12ahUKEwj10NbvndP4AhVLa80KHSMPAyIQMygCegUIARDBAQ..i&docid=oeEZKWN1urxgAM&w=1280&h=720&q=toefl%20video%20reading%20section&ved=2ahUKEwj10NbvndP4AhVLa80KHSMPAyIQMygCegUIARDBAQ

1:02:41

TOEFL Practice Test - The Reading ...

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