托福好考吗

Is the TOEFL Easy?

托福简单么？

When it comes to preparing for the TOEFL, the difficulty of the test is the elephant in the room (meaning everyone is wondering about it, but no one quite knows what to do). Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer to this question. The research that has been done on the subject has one major, unavoidable flaw: it’s very difficult to scientifically determine language difficulty. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the individual sections of the test and consider their difficulty as best we can.

当人们开始着手准备托福时，考试的困难之处就像屋中象（意思是每个人都想要去知道它，可是没人知道到底该去做什么。）。不幸的是，这个问题没有简单的答案。在这个问题上所做的研究有一个重大的、不可避免的缺陷:很难科学地确定语言的难度。考虑到这一点，让我们来看看考试的各个部分，并尽可能地考虑它们的困难程度。

How Hard Is the TOEFL Reading Section?

托福阅读部分到底有多难？

Generally speaking, TOEFL reading is near the same difficulty as reading authentic American news sources, although the subject matter and vocabulary aren’t exactly the same. News media are not as focused on science and history as the TOEFL is.

一般来说，托福的阅读和阅读权威美国新闻资源几乎是一样的困难，尽管主题和词汇并不完全相同。新闻媒体不像托福那样注重科学和历史。

That academic focus is a large part of the difficulty. According to a study from 2012, TOEFL reading is slightly more difficult than the average written English text, largely because the reading section uses more academic vocabulary. But this sense of “difficulty” depends on your native language, in part. That’s because there is no conversational, informal English in the text—only material you might find in a book that you read for a university class. And if your native language has Latin roots (e.g. Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, or French), then academic English may be easy compared to informal English, because academic English often has Latin roots. If your mother tongue isn’t Latin-based, though, those academic words are more difficult, because they are rare in general English. Words like “comprise,” for example, show up more often in TOEFL reading, but only rarely in relaxed speech.

很大一部分困难来源于学术上。根据2012年的一项研究，托福考试比一般的书面英语测试要略微难一些，很大程度上是因为阅读部分使用了更多的学术词汇。但这种“困难”的感觉，在某种程度上取决于你的母语。这是因为在你为大学课程所读的书中，你可能会找到一种只有文本的材料，而不是那种只有对话的、非正式的英语。如果你的母语有拉丁词根(如西班牙语、意大利语、葡萄牙语或法语)，那么与通俗英语相比，学术英语可能比较容易，因为学术英语通常有拉丁词根。如果你的母语不是拉丁语系，那么这些学术词汇就更难了，因为它们在一般英语中是很少见的。例如，像“comprise”这样的词在托福考试中经常出现，但在不严格的口语交谈中却很少出现。

Meanwhile, the timing of the reading section can also cause some serious trouble. You must be able to read those academic texts at a natural pace. Maybe you can work slowly through an article in the New Yorker with the help of a dictionary, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get a top score on TOEFL reading. You have to read 750 words and answer 14 multiple choice questions in just 20 minutes.That said, the TOEFL reading is easier than reading comprehension on the GRE, GMAT, or SAT, because you don’t need to understand as many subtle details. You only really need the plain information that is written, rather than the author’s intentions.

与此同时，阅读部分的时间控制也会带来一些严重的问题。你必须能够以自然的速度阅读那些学术文章。也许你词典的帮助下慢慢的去完全的理解一篇《纽约客》上的文章，但这并不表示你将在托福考试中获得高分。你必须在20分钟内阅读750个单词，并回答14个选择题。也就是说，托福考试比GRE、GMAT或SAT的阅读理解要容易，因为你不需要理解很多微妙的细节。你只需要了解字面上显而易见的信息，而不是作者的意图。