Book Review Skills for the TOEFL iBT Test Listening and Speaking (Collins)

Book Review Skills for the TOEFL iBT Test Listening and Speaking (Collins) My overall grade for Skills for the TOEFL iBT Test Listening and Speaking: AI like this book! If youve been reading all my TOEFL book reviews you might think I hate everything, but I really appreciate what Collins has managed to do with its Skills series in general, and the entry focusing on listening and speaking in particular.Just note that Im only reviewing the speaking section of the book. The chapters focusing on listening look okay, but that isnt really my area of expertise.The biggest strength of this book is its concise organization. It doesnt waste time on a lot of skills building activities. I guess the authors looked at a lot of other books and came to the conclusion that such content is confusing and a waste of time. Instead, they focus on breaking down the structure of each question type so that students are as comfortable as possible going into the test.In the book is a short chapter on each question type. They flow as follows:Quick Guide (describes the question and an swer requirements)Walk through (a sample question, sample student notes, and a sample answer)Get it Right (one page of concise tips)Progressive Practice (three sample questions and a template)At the end of the book there is a sample test with one question of each type.And thats it. But it really works. In about ten pages per question students get an accurate depiction of how each question is structured, and a fairly good template they can use to answer the question on test day. The sample answers are complete, and sufficiently long (unlike, say, the answers in Cracking the TOEFL).I really want to draw attention to how rare it is to find such accurate questions. Most major books I have looked at (Kaplan, Barrons, Princeton, etc) all contain inaccurate questions which make student study time EXTREMELY INEFFICIENT. The authors of those books dont even seem to have taken the test, and so their work makes students confused and frustrated.When students study accurate questions they can av oid wasting time. That is the strength of this book.It is clear that four questions of each type might not be enough for students to master the test, but once they have a decent understanding of how the questions are put together they will be able to supplement this book with content from the Official Test Collection books (10 questions of each type, in total).Just note that starting August 1 of 2019 this book will be somewhat out of date because the TOEFL will change.