Category Archives: Speaking

Toefl speaking question 5 - unwanted pregnancy

By Salsita Says | Published: July 5, 2009

Hi Toefl takers. A quick warning about this sample question before you listen to it. It contains references to abortion that some people may find offensive. Please remember that while it is created in a similar format to TOEFL speaking question 5, the real TOEFL iBT questions will always be much more ‘moderate’ in their [...]

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Reading pride and prejudice part two

By Salsita Says | Published: May 2, 2009

Last week’s conversation class about the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen was quite successful. We met at the Egdgware arms pub in Second Life and spent about an hour discussing the first chapter. We mostly spoke about social changes, particularly the role of women in society in the past 200 years. The discussion [...]

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Conversation hour pronunciation practice

By Salsita Says | Published: April 22, 2009

Have you seen the video below before? It’s the flight attendant onboard a South West airlines flight who is ‘rapping’ the welcome aboard message.
Come along to conversation hour and learn how to ‘rap’ this song. I’ve posted the words below the video.
When? Tuesday 21st April, PST 11pm
Where? The airport at languagelab.com (Click here to teleport)
YouTube [...]

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Reading Pride and Prejudice part one

By Salsita Says | Published: April 19, 2009

I am going to run a new and experimental class at languagelab. The aim of the class is to read, study, discuss the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
How can I participate?
1) Make sure that you are a student at languagelab.com. Click here to read more about this virtual school that you can attend [...]

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Salsita Says conversation hour - RSS and Internet censorship

By Salsita Says | Published: March 27, 2009

Class topics at the last conversation hour ranged from camel riding, to Internet censorship by governments (most recently the Chinese government’s censorship of You Tube) and how to use RSS. The class culminated in a very interesting debate about culture, religion and whether or not some religious or social customs can intefere with a person’s [...]

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Making a good summary

By Salsita Says | Published: March 19, 2009

Yesterday in class we practiced summarizing, comparing and contrasting information in preparation for answering question four (speaking) of the TOEFL ibt. We used a practice example taken from Jason Renshaw’s TOEFL practice website. Click here to see the sample question.
In the ‘real’ test students are only given a very short amount of time to read, [...]

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