With the introduction of the Computer-Based TOEFL, the opportunity to gain experience taking a computer-assisted model test has also become important to student confidence and success. In short, more and more teachers have begun to support the in¬clusion of a TOEFL preparation course in the ESL | 86 PREVIEW OF SPEAKING Integrated Speaking Directions In the integrated speaking tasks you will hear a lecture or read a passage about an academic topic or you may listen to a lecture and read a related passage about an academic topic. You can take notes to prepare your answer. After each lecture or reading passage you will hear a question that requires you to respond by speaking. You will have 20-30 seconds to prepare your answer and 60 seconds to record it. This is an example of a lecture professor Okay. Let s continue our discussion about the way that psychologists gather information. First let me remind you that many of us reject the idea that the social sciences can be studied with the same methods that scientists use in the natural or physical sciences. We believe that human behavior is contextualized that is that the behavior is intensely personal and subjective and must always be studied within the natural context of the behavior not in an artificial experimental setting. So that said let me talk about a couple of methods that we use. One of the most useful methods is the interview. Unlike surveys that contain set answers from which the subject must select the interview allows us to ask open-ended questions. This gives subjects the option of explaining why they hold a certain opinion and that can be very useful in understanding what motivates people and what would be likely to change their behaviors. Of course the problem is that it is extremely time consuming as compared with something more quantitative like say the survey. So one way to interview a larger number of people more efficiently is to bring them together in a focus group. Focus groups are situations in which groups of people are brought together with a researcher to focus on a topic not only to articulate their opinions but also to explain them to each other. The researcher learns by listening to the group and draws conclusions from their interactions. The advantages are obvious focus groups .
