The speaking part of TOEFL may be the most difficult part because speaking is not taught well in Japan. Many speaking classes in Japan try to create a comfortable speaking environment with encouragement, smiling teachers, lots of eye contact, and nodding heads, but these encouragements are not available when students take the TOEFL test. The most effective way to speak English in a stressful environment is to practice. Students improve when teachers quickly correct grammatical mistakes. Students who can create original English sentences with speed and grammatical accuracy are more likely to get higher TOEFL scores.
Author: Mark McCracken is a corporate trainer and author living in Higashi Osaka, Japan. He is the author of thousands of online articles as well as the Business English textbook, "25 Business Skills in English".