Read Everything. Listen to Everything

When you are studying for the TOEFL, it is not good enough to just listen to and read things that you enjoy and are interested in. You need to build your vocabulary, so you need to read about a variety of topics.

Four excellent resources on the Internet are BBC News,. Many of the articles on the VOA and NPR websites also have .mp3 files so you can listen at the same time.
If you have just started studying for the TOEFL and it is difficult for you to read (or listen to) some of the resources above, that’s OK! There are still lots of resources available to you:

The English Teacher Melanie Podcast – Each episode is a short story about something that happened in my daily listen. I use core vocabulary and I speak naturally with a standard American accent. Each episode also includes a short pronunciation lesson.
The TOEFL has teamed up with a company called Lexile to help you find books at your reading level. If you have taken a TOEFL practice test or the actual TOEFL and you know your reading score, you can type in your score and Lexile will suggest books on the topic of your choice at your reading level.
This is an essential skill you will need for the listening, speaking, and writing sections of the test, AND it is a skill you will need later on at an English-speaking university.
In each section where listening is required. You cannot go back and listen to it again and again. You will then have to answer questions on what you heard (listening section), speak about what you heard (speaking section), or write an essay based on what you heard (writing section). Therefore you will need to take good notes! People who take good notes get higher scores on the TOEFL.
This is a skill that takes a lot of practice.

Don’t try to write down anything and everything you hear. Don’t just write down words that you understand. Write down the essential information that you will need to understand the lecture later

Practice, practice, practice! Practice taking notes while listening to BBC, TED Talks, NPR, or VOA. Practice while watching TV. When you have finished listening, you can go back and compare your notes to the transcript.
If NPR, VOA and TED Talks are too long for you, practice note-taking with the shorter clips from Listen a Minute.

When you sit down to take the test, you will get 3 sheets of paper. Every time you put up your hand, the proctors are supposed to give you 3 more sheets of paper, but that doesn’t always happen. It may take a while for a proctor to see your hand, if they are paying attention at all. Use your 3 sheets of paper wisely! Don’t use all 3 pages on a single lecture or conversation.