SPEAKING - Chapter 1 - Theme: History

Content and Function Words

Two of the speaking tasks that are covered in this lesson include:

• Describing Something from Your Own Experience
• Summarizing a Lecture

Whether a word in a sentence is stressed or unstressed in spoken English depends on several factors. One factor is the importance of the meaning of a word to the phrase or sentence in which it appears. Which words or phrases do you think are the most important for the meaning of the following sentence?

America was the underdog in the War of 1812.

The words that carry more meaning are in bold in the sentence. The other words contribute less to the overall meaning of the sentence, though they convey grammatical meaning.

The words that carry the meaning of a sentence are called content words. Content words are often nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. The words that convey grammatical meaning are called function words. Articles, conjunctions, and prepositions are often function words. A tendency in spoken English is to stress many of the content words. The function words generally remain unstressed, but this dependes on the context and message being conveyed.

Describing Something from Your Own Experience

There are 6 tasks in the Speaking section of the TOEFL. The first requires a 45-second speech sample based on personal experience.

The first question of the Speaking section asks you to talk about something from your personal experience. You will be asked to describe or explain somethng about yourself, your family, your country, or some similar topic.

Summarizing a Lecture

There are 6 tasks in the Speaking section of the TOEFL. The sixth requires a 60-second summary of an academic lecture.

The sixth question on the Speaking section asks you to summarize information from a short lecture. You will listen to a short lecture. As you listen, you should take notes on the main idea and important points. Then you will present a summary of the lecture.

When taking notes:

• Identify what kind of lecture it is: descriptive, cause and effect, informative, narrative, etc.
• Identify key parts by listening for stressed words and phrases
• Note key pieces of information such as names, dates, and places
• Identify how the lecture is organized, what the main points are, and what are examples

When summarizing:

• Present the main idea of the lecture
• Paraphrase some of the examples and details