In TOEIC Tips 2, we talked about managing your time. It was pointed out that your best bet when preparing for your TOEIC exam is to use a flexible schedule that lets you adjust to all the different things that will happen during your day. Tight schedules can just make you give up on time management when you find it hard to stick to them. Choose and schedule the top three activities each day that will bring you the closest to a high score on your TOEIC test.

Now we're going to look at some specific advice for tackling the TOEIC test questions. One of the big secrets about standardized exams like the TOEIC is that there are two ways to sail through them: you can either know the answers to the questions or you can know how to answer the questions. (You should be somewhat competent in both areas.) What's the difference? Well, if you know the answers to the questions 100% of the time on the TOEIC, you don't need a formula. But if you don't know the answers to the questions, the formula will help you to find them. To do well on essay questions on the TOEIC exam, the formula is in the structure. If you have the structure right, finding the right facts and arguments to slot into place will be easy. Here's how to create a structure that you can use to perform well on any essay question on the TOEIC test.

1. Take a look at as many past TOEIC exam papers as you can lay your hands on; most people look at one old TOEIC exam or set of practice questions before a test. You want to find about five (or even more if you can). When you look at a lot of old TOEIC questions, you'll start to see a pattern. If you can't get your hands on an old exam paper, you should be able to get one from an online TOEIC source (I will post an old test paper in this group at a later date). It should be a well-researched study guide that teaches you test content and has practice question that are similar to ones on the actual TOEIC exam. There's always a pattern to the questions in the TOEIC. If there were no pattern, the examiners wouldn't be able to compare results from one year to the next. That's why they call it a standardized test. When essay questions have a pattern, so do the answers.
2. In TOEIC essay answers, create an answer using this pattern: Argument, Counter-Argument, Knock-Out Argument, Conclusion. If you can identify the pattern of the questions and if you can see how they're all asking a similar question, you should be able to put together the kind of answer that the examiners are looking for. If you can't see how all the questions lead to the same answer pattern, you can use this answer pattern: Paragraph 1: Introduction, Paragraph 2: Argument For, Paragraph 3: Argument Against, Paragraph 4: Knock Out Argument (For or Against), Paragraph 5: Conclusion. You can think of this formula as a kind of skeleton key that opens the door to success on almost any TOEIC essay question. That's it. In the time that you have available in the exam room, no one can possibly expect you to do any more than that. Once you've understood this structure, you simply need to...
3. Slot in the facts with the right structure, slotting in the facts is going to be very easy. Even if you know nothing about the subject, you can use your imagination to try to figure out what the most likely arguments for and against might be. The right structure makes it easy to guess the right facts. And even if you get the facts partially wrong, you'll still get
points for structuring your argument correctly.

Doing well on the TOEIC multiple choice questions is even easier than performing well on the essay questions. There's a special process of elimination that increases your chances of choosing the correct answer choice. Let me put it this way: If every multiple choice test you took contained just two answer choices, you could get about 50% right without even studying (or even going to college for that matter). When you use the right process of elimination, while everyone else is starting with a 20 or 25 percent start, you're starting at 50 percent. That means you only need to know half as many correct answers to get the same score! Here's how it works:

1. Remove the silly answers. Many multiple choice question on the TOEIC have at least one wild-card answer that looks nothing like any of the others and couldn't be right in a million years. Anyone that's a little familiar with the content of the exam won't choose it. Cross that one out first.
2. Remove the answer that's "almost" right Examiners know that some people will look at the question, have a quick think and look for the answer that's within an acceptable or similar range. That's why they include an answer choice that's only half-right. Half-right is wrong and it is a trick answer put in to fool you. Find that answer and remove that next.
3. Look for two answers that look similar. By now, your options should include two choices that look very similar. One of those answers is right. The other is almost-right. This is the real trick between performing well and excelling at multiple choice questions on the TOEIC test: every right answer has a wrong answer that looks almost exactly like it. If the answer you're thinking about choosing doesn't have a partner like this, it's probably wrong. When you see two answers that look very similar, one of them is likely to be the right one. When you've got these two answer choices in mind, you've got a 50 percent chance of picking the right one. And that's already a good start. This doubles your chances of choosing the correct answer and achieving a high TOEIC score even if you're not 100% prepared or sure of all the answers.