The Most Effective Way to Improve Your TOEFL® and SAT® scores

There's one little secret that almost nobody talks about. And it's not complicated.

Girl reading in a library — Read and enjoy

SAT & TOEFL Preparation

What is the most effective way to improve TOEFL® and SAT® scores?

Answer: READ more.

You might be thinking "THAT'S not great advice. Everybody knows that!"

Yeah, like everybody KNOWS that exercising more is the best way to be physically and emotionally fit and healthy, yet most people just don't do it.

It doesn't matter who you are, how old you are, or what SAT or TOEFL level you are at; if you read daily, your ability to understand written material, your ability to write better, your ability to use effective vocabulary, and your ability to think effectively, will ALL improve.

As a side-effect, your TOEFL® and SAT® scores will increase.

You won't be able to avoid improvement. It'll happen by default. You won't even be conscious that it is happening. If you read things that are interesting for YOU, you'll enjoy the process too. Enjoy the process and you won't have to worry about the result. Trust the process and the results will come.

Contrast that with grinding through a vocabulary workbook. Here in Japan, we often see students suffering through vocabulary memorization using workbooks that include a sheet of clear red plastic. It's excruciatingly boring. It's one of the reasons, in my opinion, that so many students in Japan, without exaggeration, say that they HATE learning English.

Two Japanese students in a classroom — Learning Doesn't have to Be Boring

What an awful approach to learning a second language.

Now, that might be a great way to cram for a multiple-choice vocabulary test that's similar to the TOEIC® or EIKEN®, or high school style vocabulary tests, but it's a poor way to build vocabulary effectively enough to get a high score on the TOEFL® or SAT® and then go through a 4-year degree at an American or Canadian university.

The next question that students then often ask is "what should I read?"

Read things that you find interesting. Read a variety of reliable news sources. If you read across a wide spectrum, you'll be better informed and have better thinking skills.

These days, just about every mainstream news source has a left-wing bias, while there are others that are clearly biased to the right.

Getting the facts without the distortion can be a really tough task. Who has the time to sift through all of it? I don't, and you probably don't either.

I recommend "Ground News." It's a news aggregator that analyzes various sources and then presents them along with the bias analysis. You can then see for yourself what might not be "true."

Since the SAT is an American-based test that often contains American cultural references, it'll be advantageous to you to read books that deal with topics related to 20th century American political and cultural history. That's one approach to take to get started.

Here's a short list of books that I've always recommended to my students. These cover a wide variety of relevant topics, including social history, economic history, cultural history, twentieth-century culture and politics, personal development and motivation, and more.

I consider these books real page-turners that, by dipping your toes into the waters of their pages, may spark interests and ideas in your mind that will pull you into the world of improving your mind, thinking, vocabulary, and much more.

And your scores will improve.