This blog post contains a model TOEFL speaking response.
TOEFL Speaking Topic
The model TOEFL speaking response is based on the following prompt:
- Do you think the government should spend money saving endangered animals, or does the money has to come from private sources? Use examples and reasons to support your argument.
TOEFL Model Speaking Response
Governments should spend more money saving endangered animals because these civil conservationists can protect the environment.
I watched a documentary on National Geographic Channel about how the US government has committed money to protect the endangered wolf population in Yellowstone national park. Using taxpayer funds to reintroduce these predators, according to the documentary, has resulted in restoring the vegetation, allowing endangered animals such as wolves to slowly replenish their dwindling numbers.
To sum up, if government funds had not been allocated for the protection of the endangered wolf, this enormous mission would have been fiscally impossible for any private organization.
Features of this High-Scoring Speaking Response
First of all, the language use in this response will get the attention of SpeechRater and TOEFL iBT human raters:
- The response uses thirty words which have at least three syllables; therefore, the average word length in this response is quite high at 5.8 characters.
- In addition, the average sentence length is 28.2 words; as a result, the response demonstrates syntactic variety with good control of basic and advanced grammar.
- With a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 17.9, this response definitely uses advanced vocabulary and grammar.
Second of all, clearly addressing the speaking prompt, the response is coherently organized with the clearly appropriate example of how the government used money to save the Yellowstone wolf from extinction:
- The most important words from the speaking prompt are repeated/rephrased throughout the response to give the task a unified, coherent response that clearly addresses the task: government (3 times), money (4 times), money (5 times), endangered (4 times), animals (4 times), and private (1 time).
- The example of the how the government has used funds to raise the Yellowstone wolf from extinction has specificity, elaboration, relevance.
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