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Independent Tasks:
Expansion Practice
A lot of students have trouble adding details to stories. In order to speak about your opinion to a simple
question for one minute, or to write about the same question for 30 minutes, you have to provide a lot of
details. If you’re still struggling to expand your responses, this exercise will help.

If I ask one of my advanced level English students what they did yesterday, they usually respond:

“I don’t remember.”
Or, if I ask a student why she is late, she usually responds:

“The train got delayed.”

In these kinds of responses the vocabulary and grammar are fine, but they won’t help you on the TOEFL.
Not only will clipped answers hurt your TOEFL score, but it’ll also hurt your chances to make friends with
native English speakers. If you expect to speak like a native, you need to keep the conversation going with
more details. So, how can you expand on your answer?

Think about it…

In the space provided below, make a list of ways to

make your answers to simple questions longer.

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I’ve given some advice all ready in the independent speaking and writing sections:

1. Give examples
2. Express emotion (be careful on the TOEFL, you may go off topic with emotion)
3. Add details
4. Speak the truth

Remember, you also want to try to answer as many of the following questions as possible:

Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

Thinking of ways to answer all of these questions is a great way to expand your answer time and your
fluency. However, even after I tell students how important it is to expand, I still get truncated speaking and
writing responses. For example, the question:

Why were you late for school yesterday?

The response:

Yesterday I went to school with my friend. —Who and When

We took the train but the train got delayed. — What
We were stuck on the train for an hour. — Where
There was a lot of train traffic. —Why
We waited. After we waited we came to school. — How

This is an incredibly boring story.

Take a minute and try to make this story longer. You’re going to have to lie a bit in order to expand since
this isn’t your story, but use your imagination and add details. Think to yourself, “What would make this
story more interesting? What information is missing that the reader would like to know?” Use the space
provided below to tell a story that would take at least 90 seconds to recite. (On the TOEFL you only need to
speak for 45 or 60 seconds, but you should get used to speaking for a longer amount of time for these simple
questions.)

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How did it go? Did you improve the story? Let me remind you again of the student’s initial response:

I went to school and the train got delayed. I got to class an hour late… finished.

And after some instruction, here’s the same student’s second response:

Yesterday I went to school with my friend. We took the train but the train got delayed. We were
stuck on the train for an hour. There was a lot of train traffic. We waited. After we waited we came
to school.

Even after instruction, the student still provides a story that’s short and uninteresting. We need to try to
make our personal examples detailed, interesting and related to the topic. Let me show you an example of my
own response. The left side is how I would take notes for the speaking and the right side is the story
completely wri\en out.

Speaking Writing

-school w/ Yoon, Astr I was on my way to school yesterday with my friend

Yoonji. We almost always ride the train together in the morning
since we both live in Astoria. Everything was fine until we got
-Lex ave. to Lexington Avenue. We started to leave the station and then
the train jolted to a sudden stop. I lost my balance and bumped
into the person next to me. It wasn’t a big deal though because
-train traffic everyone was surprised. But the worst part was the wait
afterward. The conductor kept saying that there was train traffic
ahead and we’d get moving soon, but nothing happened for 5
-long wait minutes, then 20 minutes and after 30 minutes people finally
started to complain to each other. I was shocked because
commuters usually don’t talk to each other. But everyone was
-commutrs talk feeling kind of nervous, I guess. I’m not claustrophobic or
anything, I’ve been riding trains my whole life, but I started to
have a bit of anxiety too. I wondered if we were ever going to
-nervs move, and I imagined being stuck in the train forever. Yoonji
and I tried to talk to each other most of the time so we wouldn’t
have to think about the wait. Finally, after almost an hour, the
-talk Yoonji train started to move. I think everyone’s anger turned into relief
because no one spoke to each other after that.

You may have noticed that my notes aren’t structured the same way as I teach (refer to page 4 of
the Independent Speaking section). You could use that structure with some of the questions in this
exercise, but for the most part these questions are designed to be simple enough for you to answer
with a real example that you can stretch out, add details to and make more interesting. If you want to
practice structure, you can refer to the Question List handout, which includes over 150 real
independent section TOEFL questions.
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Exercise Directions: The following is a list of 15 simple questions that have very boring answers. Work on
expanding these responses and making them more interesting. You can use this exercise to practice with either
your speaking or writing responses. If you’re practicing speaking, you should just write down a few notes
that’ll help guide you as you speak. If you’re practicing writing, then you should write everything out. Try to
make your responses 90 seconds or at least 200 words. If you’re practicing speaking, be sure to record yourself.
If you’re practicing writing, find someone who can correct your grammar and overall structure.

Also, don’t just try to rewrite the sentences or supplement words with more difficult synonyms. Instead,
use the sentences provided as prompts to help you launch a more interesting story. For example:

“The student didn’t know how to do it.” ———> “The student was unsure how to perform a task.”

INSTEAD…

“The student didn’t know how to do it.” ———> “No maWer how hard she tried, the student in Mr. Mac’s
class couldn’t figure out how to do long division.”

***Note that for some of the questions I don’t ask about you personally, but instead ask about ‘he’ or
‘she’ or ‘the student’ or ‘the lecturer’ because you will have to speak and write about other people
besides yourself on the TOEFL.

1. What’s one skill the student didn’t know how to do but now knows well?

The student didn’t know how to do it. She asked someone to teach her. She worked hard. She
tried to learn. In the end, she could do it.

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2. Where did you go on your last vacation?

I went to a new place last year. I went with many people. We saw some new things. We came
back home two weeks later.

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3. What happened to the author after she left work yesterday?

She left work. It was a normal commute. However, she was surprised when she came home. She
wasn’t happy about the surprise.

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4. Has something unexpected ever happened to the student on her way to school?

The student walked to school. She suddenly had a problem. She had to solve the problem. She
found a solution to the problem.

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5. What is the professor’s first childhood memory?

She saw a horse. The horse ran fast. Someone tried to catch the horse.

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6. How was your weekend?

I woke up, took a shower and brushed my teeth. I cooked, cleaned and watched TV. I did my
laundry. It wasn’t much fun.

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7. What was the last book you read?

It was about a man. The man was very smart. But people lied to him a lot. He almost died. He
kissed a girl at the end.

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8. Why doesn’t she like her hometown?

She grew up in the town. She had many friends. In high school there was an accident. Now she
lives far away. She’ll never go back to her hometown.

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9. How did your best friend become your best friend?

One day I needed something. None of my friends had it. One friend knew someone who had it.
I met him. After that, I met him more often.

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10. What was the strangest place you’ve ever visited?

I went to a weird shop in another country. There were so many things I had never seen. Some
things even made me uncomfortable. I bought some things for my friends back home.

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11. Talk about a time when the lecturer broke the law.

The lecturer was always normal. One day he left the house and did something bad. Everyone
was surprised. The police had to come and stop him.

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12. What was the worst date you’ve ever been on?

I met a guy on the Internet. We met. We stayed at the restaurant for a while. After that, we went
to another place. It was one of the worst nights of my life.

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13. When was the last time the student got in a fight with his parents?

The student came home late and his father was angry. He told his father what happened. His
father didn’t believe him.

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14. Talk about an interesting thing that happened to you when you first arrived in a new
place.

I went away to college. I met my roommates. We didn’t like each other at first. Later, we became
great friends.

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15. What’s the most embarrassing moment of your classmates’ life?

One day, when he was very young, he was standing in front of the entire school. Something
unexpected happened to him. For the rest of his life, his classmates called him a cruel nickname.

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