TOEFL WR: The Write an Email task

 Here are some notes / advice on the TOEFL email writing task.

This task is from ETS’s Teachers Resources, Test 1.

You are planning a business trip to another city. Your colleague, Maria, recently traveled to the same city for work. You want to ask her recommendations for places to eat and things to do during your free time.

Write an email to Maria. In your email, do the following.

• Explain why you are traveling to the city.

• Ask for her recommendations about restaurants and activities.

• Mention what you’d most like to do and what you’d like to avoid.

To: Maria

Subject: Recommendations for Upcoming Business Trip

***

Here are some annotated notes and an answer that I wrote.

You are planning a business trip to another city (1). Your colleague, Maria (2), recently traveled to the same city for work (3). You want to ask her recommendations for places to eat and things to do (4) during your free time (5).

(1) The prompt doesn’t provide the city name. I would choose a specific city. Yes, I would invent a detail, but I’d use a real city name.

One of the new words that ETS has introduced in the new 2026 rubrics is “elaboration.” (入念)

• A 5.0 essay: “elaboration is effective.”

• A 4.0 essay: “adequate elaboration.”

• A 3.0 essay: “elaboration partially supports the [email].”

• A 2.0 essay: “limited or irrelevant elaboration.”

Since Tokyo is familiar to my students, I’m using that.

(2) If the prompt gives you the email receiver’s given (first) name, you should use it in your email.

• In this case, I would use “Hi Maria.”

• If I’m contacting my boss, I think I’d use “Mr. Johnson” or whatever name is provided.

• If it’s to a professor, I’d use “Dr. Johnson.”

You don’t want to write too formally to a friend, and you don’t want to write too casually to a supervisor or professor.

(3) This is the reason that you are contacting her, and it should be in your email.

(4) Note that there are two requests for information: places to eat and things to do.

(5) The prompt doesn’t tell you when the free time is, so you should invent that detail. It’s a business trip, so I’d assume that the free time is on the weekend.

The writing task:

Write an email to Maria. In your email, do the following.

• Explain why you are traveling to the city.

• Ask for her recommendations about restaurants and activities.

• Mention what you’d most like to do and what you’d like to avoid.

In the following essay that I wrote, the invented details (elaboration, 入念) are underlined.

To: Maria

Subject: Recommendations for Upcoming Business Trip

I’ve got a business trip to Tokyo next month. I’ll be meeting our Japanese partners for ten days. And I wonder if you can help me plan part of my trip. I remember that you said you had a good stay there last year. I’ve heard that Tokyo has a good restaurant culture, so if there are any restaurants that you recommend, I’d love to hear about them. I like fish and salads, but I don’t really like spicy food. Also, I’m curious about what weekend activities you’d recommend. We spend so much time in the office, so I’d like to get outside and experience the local culture if possible.

Cheers!

Donald Miller

110 words

Common INT WR Topics

ETS likes some topics better than others, and one of them is the "vanished civilization." These topics can appear on the reading, listening, and writing sections. When they appear on the integrated writing task, the reading passage will provide three hypotheses for why the civilization disappeared, and the lecture will show why each hypothesis is unlikely. So I was interested to find this video on YouTube this morning and thought I'd share it with you. Enjoy!

Academic Discussion #2 (again): another experiment

 Hans did another experiment on ETS's practice academic discussion #2. 

This has 120 words, and he deliberately tried to write in generalizations, with little concrete detail. E-rater gave it 4.0.

Academic Discussion 12

The content of this essay is deliberately bad. The question was the best way to evaluate teachers. I wrote that the best teachers allow their students to play video games instead of studying. Perfect grammar, dumb content. You can read it for yourself. 

155 words, 9 minutes, 5.0.

So you can fool e-rater with nonsense. The AI is not evaluating content, only grammar.

 

Academic Discussion 11

Here's my academic discussion essay for task 11. There's nothing surprising here. 153 words, 6 minutes, 5.0 score. I think I've got a pretty good handle on what the AI is looking for: you need 130+ words with few misspellings and grammar errors for a top score.

iBT Academic Discussion Writing Task (a summary)

 So I've written essays on the first ten topics that ETS has posted online (link: https://www.ets.org/toefl/ibt-enhancements/prep.html). Here are some results:

1. Every essay that has been 130+ words and grammatically accurate has scored 5.0.
2. One essay at 132 words, that had at least nine grammar mistakes and eight spelling mistakes got 4.0.
3. Essay 5 had 119 words and no grammar mistakes and got 5.0.
4. Essay 8 had 121 words and no grammar mistakes and got 4.0.
5. Every essay that had fewer than 119 words has scored 4.0.

Two easy generalizations:

1. You want to write more than 130 words in your essay to get 5.0 from e-rater.
2. You can't make too many grammar and spelling mistakes.

Next question: is e-rater assessing vocabulary level? 

• If you write 130+ words with only one and two syllable words, can you still get 5.0? 
• If you write 100 words and use a lot of long and academic vocabulary, can you get 5.0?

We'll find out soon.

Task 10 + grammar errors

 This time I took the basic content of the previous task 10 essay and re-wrote it, adding grammar and spelling mistakes. Five minutes, 132 words. I count at least nine grammar mistakes and eight misspellings.

Score: 4.0

Task 10

 Here's my task 10 essay. Six minutes to write and two minutes to get the word count down to 132 words.

Score: 5.0.

So it appears that you need 130+ words to get 5.0, with no grammar mistakes. Let check grammar next.

Task 9

 Here's my task nine essay. It took five minutes, is 120 words long, and has no grammar mistakes. 

Score: 4.0.

I guess when ETS says, "An effective response will contain at least 100 words," their definition of "effective" is 4.0.

New Academic Discussion writing tasks

 As of late June 2023, ETS has published 23 Academic Discussion tasks for TOEFL Writing. They are in the subjects of:

• business

• education

• ecology

• economics

• political science

• psychology

• public policy

• sociology

In other words, social sciences. It makes sense for ETS to use social science topics because they are topics that people disagree about. I will not be surprised to see tasks from other social sciences, such as anthropology, geography, law, and linguistics.

It seems to me that the hard sciences and literature/history are too difficult for this task. Also, there are already plenty of biology and paleontology tasks on the integrated writing task.

The questions are similar to the independent writing questions in the Official Guide to TOEFL iBT. Some of them are open-ended (you can write about anything you like), and some of them are forced choices (choose one of two choices).

With this logic in mind, I’ve written 32 academic discussions (and am continuing to write more). E4TG will begin offering an online (by email) Academic Discussion scoring service in late July, 2023.

For more information, contact Donald at toeflcoach@gmail.com.

Independent Writing

As I've explained on the homepage, templates are not a good idea for writing (or speaking). On this past weekend's test, after the independent writing question, the directions said something like:

"Answer the question and do not reproduce an answer you have memorized. "

The Official Guide says the same thing. You've been warned!

TOEFL Writing Question

Here's a good student question via email and my answer from a student:

Dear X,

Thanks! There is a BIG difference in the general English levels of the students in the WR class.

I want to know what ETS is interested in for a good essay.

They want to know if you can answer the questions and write well. That means concrete examples, logical progression, appropriate word choice and grammar, and it should be around 350-400 unique words. Fewer words than that is insufficient for most people.

There are many ways to write a good essay! Some questions lend themselves to problem-solution writing, like IND103, others are better written with intro-reason 1-2-3- conclusion. Others are easier if you talk about both sides. So I think you want to master a variety of organization strategies too.

Please use English well!

TOEFL WR Introduction

We're starting the TOEFL Writing Class and the first independent tasks are in. 

Here's the question:

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Two people can become good friends even if one has more money than the other.

Here's a kind of introduction which several people used. The grammar is not edited.

In discussion of friendship, a controversial issue is whether people can be friends with a person who has much more money than they have. Some people say that it is impossible, but others contend that how much money a person have does not affect on relationship with other people. If asked, both groups could present logical reasons to support each opinion. Considering my experiences, I disagree with the statement that two people, one of which has more money than the other, can be good friends.

I don't think this is a good introduction. Here's why:

In discussion of friendship, a (1) controversial issue is whether people can be friends with a person who has much more money than they have. (2) Some people say that (3) it is impossible, but others contend that (4) how much money a person have does not affect on relationship with other people. If asked, (5) both groups could present logical reasons to support each opinion. Considering my experiences, I disagree with the statement that two people, one of which has more money than the other, can be good friends.

1. Is this controversial? I don't think it's controversial. I have friends who have more money than I and friends who have less money than I have.
2. Who says this? Who are "people?" The question is about YOUR opinion, not other people's opinions.
3. It is certainly not impossible. This is factually wrong.
4. “It doesn't affect” is not the question. The Q is about making (becoming) friends.
5. How does the writer know that those "other people" would give logical reasons?

I think that there is a lot of irrelevant detail in this paragraph. I recommend that you just state your opinion directly in the introduction, like this:

I don't think it's difficult for two people with different levels of wealth to be friends.

That's all you need. A simple introduction saves time for you (1) to add more details or examples in the body paragraphs or (2) to check your essay for grammatical and word choice errors.

Please use English well!

TOEFL Writing Class

We've thought about offering a TOEFL writing class for a while, but we haven't had the staff to do it until recently. We'll add our fifth instructor in August 2014, so I'm pleased to announce that E4TG is starting a TOEFL writing service. The service will be:

1. 8 independent and 4 integrated tasks in 4 weeks, with strict due dates (so the instructor doesn't get overwhelmed).
2. 2 question and answer feedback classes per 4 weeks on Thursday nights during which students can ask questions about their writing mistakes.
3. Competitive price of ￥21,600 (including tax) per month.
4. There will be at least 4 months of materials.
5. Priority is given to past and current E4TG TOEFL speaking students.

The August 2014 classes are full, and the wait list for September is filling up. You can contact me to get on the wait list. If you are not a past or current E4TG student, you must use your WORK email address (仕事のメール). I will not reply to web-based email addresses (gmail, Yahoo, etc.) if I don't know you.

I'll be posting more TOEFL writing advice in August. Here's the most important advice: Learn from your writing mistakes and don't repeat them!

I want to be a person?

Here's a common mistake from a student in class last week:

• "I want to be a person who can succeed in the world."

It's a translation of "~のような人になりたい," or something to that effect. The sentence is grammatical, but the style is poor.

1. First, it's unnecessarily complex. You don't need a relative clause (関係代名詞) to express this idea. "I want to be a success in the world," is better.
2. Second, it's imprecise. What does "succeed in the world," really mean? This is better: "I want to be a success in global banking."
3. Third, there are too many nouns in this sentence. I've explained elsewhere that you should prefer the verb to the noun in English. So this is best: "I want to succeed in global banking."

This is not an isolated example. All three problems are common among Japanese speakers of English. You should guard against them in your writing and speaking.

Please use English well!

Two ways to improve your TOEFL essays

Several students have recently asked me how to improve their TOEFL writing scores. Here are two pieces of advice:

1. Learn from your grammar mistakes and don't repeat them. Making a grammar mistake once is good, because it's an opportunity to learn. But I've seen many students repeat errors again and again.
2. Use more examples and details. A student recently asked me to look at an essay that had this in it:

First, television gives me topics to talk about with my friends and family. Television provides lots of programs, such as news, movies, documentaries, etc. I like to talk about the programs I watched with my friends and family. 

There are NO examples of news, movies, or documentaries in this. It would be easy to add: "My friends and I like to watch baseball games together and talk about our favorite teams and athletes."

If you are using a copy & paste writing template, you are going to need around 500 words to get a top score because the copied & pasted words don't count. But if you don't use a template, like my strategy, 370 words is fine.

7/31 TOEFL Results

As I mentioned, I took TOEFL on July 31. My score was 119 (30, 29, 30, 30). Here's what we learned:

1. Reading: I deliberately missed one question and still got 30.
2. Listening: I deliberately missed one question and got 29. I might have missed more, but I don't think so.
3. Speaking: once again, my strategies worked perfectly. Of course! My Integrated Speaking answers were 40~51 seconds long. You do NOT have to use the entire 60 seconds, but you do have to provide complete and accurate answers.
4. Integrated Writing: We had to use 助動詞 to answer this task. I think this is why several students dropped from GOOD to FAIR. If you used a template and wrote: "The professor argues/insists that ~," then you made a mistake. This professor did NOT argue or insist. I wrote about this in a different blog post.
5. Independent Writing: 370 words, no template, all simple sentences （重文なし） and simple vocabulary.  Some writing instructors say don't use "And" at the start of a sentence. I used "And," "But," and "So" at the start of sentences and did not use more academic transitions like "However," "On the other hand," etc. Here's more on my Independent writing strategy.

Please use English well!

Testing the TOEFL test

I took TOEFL on July 31, and I did several tests on it:

1. I deliberately missed one reading and one listening question to see if I can get 30 without getting every question correct.
2. I ignored the dummy questions (choose the top answer choice for each).
3. I used between 40 and 51 seconds for all 4 INT SP questions.
4. I am sure I got 5.0 on INT WR, so I tested the IND question by writing a short (370 word) essay with very simple grammar and word choice. I used my TOEFL Writing strategies for both.

Let's see what my score is next week!

Independent Writing

Most of my students are using an Introduction – Reason 1, 2, 3 – Conclusion template for the Independent Writing task.  If you are using this and just copying and pasting your content, you will need around 500 words for a top score.

 

There is a better (and I think easier) way to write the IND essay. The 5.0 sample essay in the Official Guide is organized as a Five Part Essay.  You can find the Wikipedia article on the five part essay at the bottom of this page. Several students have use this to score 29-30 on the writing section recently.

There are five parts:

¶1: Introduction: Narrow the topic down from a universal idea to a specific idea.

¶2: Narration: Provide background information which is relevant to the essay.

¶3: Affirmation: Give a reason and explain your opinion (one strong reason is enough).

¶4: Negation: Provide evidence or arguments against your opinion, followed by either

1.      A refutation of the evidence, or

2.      A concession that exceptions exist.

¶5: Conclusion: Summarize the opinion, relating it to broader but related issues.

The Five Part Essay is more sophisticated because it is more balanced and fair. It acknowledges the complexity of the question because it forces you to address objections to your opinion (in ¶4). So you will need to discuss both sides of the topic.

But since you aren't copying and pasting, you will only need around 350 words to get a top score.

I'm not planning to teach TOEFL writing, but if I were, this is what I'd recommend.

Please use English well.

TOEFL Integrated Writing

I'm going to provide some writing tips. I don't have time to help students with writing, but there are some very silly misconceptions about the TOEFL writing tasks.

Here's the structure I would use (and have used) on TOEFL Integrated Writing task:

 

¶1: The reading said ~ (summarize the main point & don’t copy). But the professor disagreed with this idea.

¶2: The reading said ~ . But the professor said ~ (main point and as many details as possible)

¶3: The reading said ~ . But the professor said ~ (main point and as many details as possible)

¶4: The reading said ~ . But the professor said ~ (main point and as many details as possible)

One silly misconception about the Integrated WR task is that you should use "On the other hand, the professor argued that ~" or "In contrast, the lecturer insists that ~" in the body paragraphs.

What is the problem with using "argue" or "insist"? They are often inaccurate.

"Argue" means to provide reasons for an opinion, but the professors in INT WR do not always do this. Sometimes they simply provide a counter-example. That was exactly what happened to me when I took TOEFL in 2010.

"Insist" means to say something forcefully or persistently. But sometimes the professor doesn't do this. Sometimes the professor says we don't have enough knowledge or that the point in the reading is not always true.

However, "say" has a very broad usage and it's always accurate.

The fact is that using synonyms for "but" and "say" is not going to help you get a high Integrated writing score, and might lead to mistakes which hurt your score.

You get a high score by (1) selecting the important information from the lecture, and (2) presenting it in contrast to the relevant point from the reading passage.


Please write English well.