Congratulations on your awesome improvement! You did all the hard work - you should be really proud of yourself! Thank you so much for telling me about what you’ve done.
Improving speaking through self-study is possible, but you’ll need to be super sensitive to everything you say in your practice sessions. Here are a few simple but important steps:
1) You must speak English out loud every single day. Ideally, that will include TOEFL practice under timed conditions. The more you speak, even if it is unfocused speech, the better your fluency will be. There are two main ways to improve fluency:
First, you can simply say what you are thinking out loud. You can say things like what you are doing, what you want to do, what is happening, what you think will happen, etc. Simply doing this for one week will improve your fluency an incredible amount.
Second, you can practice what I call the “Fluency 大招” technique - basically, you randomly choose one word from a book or website (the source doesn’t matter) and—without preparation—you say whatever you can that is related to the word. You could explain something, you could tell a true (or invented) story, you could teach a principle, etc. The important thing is that you stay on topic, don’t stop speaking, and don’t speak Chinese. This is one of the best ways to practice for Q1,2&5 because it develops your ability to think quickly and say something related to the question. Then, your speech won’t become too choppy (卡卡的) in Q1,2, or 5. When you do this practice, your focus is 100% on fluency, not on grammar, so don’t correct your grammar. Just keep speaking.
2) It is possible that you have issues with your pronunciation. If the ETS raters cannot understand what you’re saying because of unclear pronunciation, then increasing your fluency (or improving your content) will not improve your score. The ONLY way to improve your score in this case is to improve your pronunciation. If money is not an issue, then a speech therapist or a pronunciation teacher (either native speaker or non-native speaker with native-speaker pronunciation) is best. Their coaching can probably get you better results than you can get on your own.
If you must study on your own, though, I have a couple of suggestions. First, I recommend the YouTube channel “Rachel’s English.” If possible, try to figure out what specific pronunciation issues you have first and then watch the relevant videos and practice with her. Working on pronunciation directly in this way can be very tiring and boring for some students, so it’s important to take it slowly - no more than about 5-10 minutes per practice session. It can also take months to improve in certain areas of pronunciation. However, if it’s important, persist. You will be forever grateful if you keep with it.
Second, you can practice “mirroring” (or “shadowing” or “echoing” as the technique is called). Find a YouTuber or TV personality who has the accent you want and who has a similar voice to your natural voice. As you are male, do not choose a female. (Of course, females should copy females). Then play and pause: play a sentence or part of a sentence, and then repeat it, trying to copy the person’s intonation, rhythm, and pronunciation. Play around with it - vary the length of time that you play. When you get good at it, play continuously and try to keep up with the speaker, speaking about half a second after the person. It’s hard in the beginning, but after a few days (or weeks), you’ll start to get better at it. Eventually, that speaker’s tone, rhythm, and accent will become a part of your natural speech.
3) Record your answers. This technique is TOEFL (or IELTS) specific. You do a question and record your answer. Now, you have several options:
First, you can fix your content issues. Listen very carefully to what you said in your answer, and think about it extremely critically, as if you were an ETS rater. Use the Speaking Rubrics to guide you. Is what you said really accurate? Are you really answering all parts of the question? Have you missed important points from the listening or reading? After you have analyzed your answer, do it again. Try to avoid writing scripts because you’re trying to improve your SPOKEN English, not your WRITTEN English. Keep doing the same question, recording it, and analyzing it until you’re satisfied with the content and the timing.
Next, you can fix grammar issues, if you have any. This is massive task, though, so only attempt it if you think that grammar is definitely the source of your low score. Remember: you have been speaking with your current grammar for years, so changing these grammatical habits will take considerable time. Still, it’s worth it if it’s really important to you on a personal level or if your grammar is causing misunderstanding (misunderstanding = low score). Record your answer and write out every single word, every single grammatical mistake, and every single “umm” that you say. Don’t leave anything out! Now, read what you have written. This can be a shock because most people don’t realize how many mistakes they make. Next, focus on one grammatical mistake to correct. Re-record the same question, and focus completely on fixing that one grammatical mistake. Listen and check. Repeat this until you aren’t making that grammatical mistake in that question, and also do it with other questions until you don’t make this mistake anymore. This can take weeks of focused effort, but I have had students correct grammatical errors in this way before, so it is definitely possible for you, too.
4) Understand how to answer TOEFL questions correctly. Basically, make sure you give the raters what they want. Fulfill the requirements of the rubrics and answer every part of the questions. Even if you’ve heard “experts” say that you must say, “….,” think for yourself. Is that really answering the question? Is that what the rubric wants? Remember that there is no such thing as a 萬能理由/萬用模板. Templates must be used with considerable thought and adaptation. If you unthinkingly use a template, it will almost certainly lower your score, but if you adapt a template to suit the question, and the template sentences are grammatically correct and appropriate, then it will help you answer questions with more certainty. Finally, templates must be internalized (內化), otherwise they’re almost useless and obvious to the rater.
I hope that these tips will be helpful to you. After you’ve used them for a while, let me know how it’s going.
If you diligently practice these tips, your TOEFL score will improve. If you don’t sense any improvement after seriously working on them for over a month, it could be that you’re missing something.
Enjoy
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