Next up, a list of changes in Chapter 5 of the Official Guide to the TOEFL. This chapter is wonderful.
You can read the whole blog series on changes at the following links: chapter one, chapter two, chapter three and four, chapter five, the tests.
Again, note that I am focusing on changes other than the big test revisions that were implemented in July of last year.
Page 192-193: The example question about teamwork (which was quite inaccurate) has been replaced with a new question about “vitrified forts.”
Page 194: The guide used to say “typically, an effective response will be 150 to 225 words.” It now says “typically, an effective response will contain a minimum of 150 words.”
Page 194: The guide now notes that “the lecture usually contradicts or disagrees with the information in the reading passage.”
Page 194: The question prompts for the integrated task have been revised to emphasize that the lecture challenges the reading. A new prompt called “solutions and their weaknesses” has also been added
Page 194: The “as you write your response” section is updated to include new “the best way to organize the response…” tips about how to organize the essay properly.
Page 196: The word count change is repeated.
Page 197-198: This section on how responses are scored is all-new. And it is beautiful. Among other things, it notes:
“It is important to include all the most important details from the lecture, not only the main ideas”
“Within each body paragraph, consider devoting the first sentence or two to summarizing the idea the reading is expressing, and then explain in detail how the lecture responds to that idea”
“You should devote most of each paragraph to conveying information from the lecture”
“A concluding paragraph for your essay is typically not necessary”
Page 201-205: There are sample responses for the new integrated writing task (see above)
Page 205+: The new WAD task is described.