TOEFL iBT | Everything to Know

Test of English as a Foreign Language

TOEFL is an English language proficiency test accepted worldwide by various institutions. It is used to quantify your English language skills across 4 sections – Reading, Listening, Speaking, and Writing.

Since these skills are required in a classroom setting, most of the universities require this test for admissions.

TOEFL – Reading

The reading section of TOEFL iBT is the first part of the test and meant for accessing student’s ability to read, understand and analyze the similar materials that they are expected to encounter during their study in the college.

The reading section will include 3 or 4 reading passages of each approximately 700 words long and will have 10 questions per passage. You will have 54-72 minutes time to answer all the questions.

The content of the passages can differ widely, but in order to answer the questions you will not need to have definite knowledge of the content and all the necessary answers can be found in the passage itself.

There may be some uncommon words in the passage and if you need the meaning of such words there is a glossary feature available to define the word. In the computer screen the passage displays on the right side of the screen and the questions on the left side.

TOEFL – Listening

The listening section of TOEFL iBT is the second section of the test. The purpose of this section is to measure your understanding of spoken English and your potential to answer the questions from the lecture and conversations you hear.

This section includes two types of listening items- lectures and conversations in a campus based language. The audio may be a conversation between teacher and student, a class discussion, lectures by professor or something similar. To give you an idea of how many people are speaking, there will be pictures in your computer screen.

Usually there will be 3-4 lectures of each 3-5 minutes long with 6 questions per lecture and there will be 2-3 conversations with 2 speakers of each 3 minutes long and 5 questions per conversation.

To complete this test section, you will have 41 to 57 minutes and you will only hear each of the recording once.

If you are thinking about the accents, the speakers will be native English speakers from North America, U.K., Australia or New Zealand to better reflect the diversity of accents you might come across while studying abroad.

There will be a lot of information in the recording which may be relevant or irrelevant to the questions.  The main trick is to identify the correct information you need to answer the question.

TOEFL – Writing

There are two sections in writing in TOEFL, namely integrated writing and independent writing. You will be allocated 20 minutes for integrated writing, and 30 minutes for independent writing. There is an overall score of 0 to 5, and are rated on the basis of development, organization, and language use.

Section 1: Integrated Writing

In this section you will firstly need to read a passage about a topic, then after you will need to listen to a short lecture related to the same topic. You will be allocated 3 minutes to read the passage, and about 2 minutes to listen to the audio.

You will have 20 minutes to type your response onto the computer. Although there are no fixed word limits, a good writing section 1 is about 150 to 225 words long. The evaluation criteria will be based on accurate development, organization, and language use.

Section 2: Independent Writing

The question will be titled towards an argument on “whether you agree/disagree, what you prefer, or support or oppose this idea”. You will be allocated 30 minutes for this section.

A good response would usually be about 300 words long, and use of specific reasons and examples would support your argument. The overall score is rated on the basis of development, organization, and language use.

TOEFL – Speaking

This section in the TOEFL is to measure your ability to speak English effectively in an academic setting. There are 4 tasks that needs to be answered in the TOEFL speaking section.

The tasks resemble real life situations that you are likely to encounter inside and outside the classroom setting.

You will be required to speak into a microphone and the response will be recorded and sent to ETS. You will have 17 minutes to complete this section, and the marking criteria will be based on a scale of 0 to 4.

Question 1:

This is an independent speaking task. There will be no additional reading or listening passages. You will be required to draw entirely your own ideas, opinions and experiences.

You will have 15 to 30 seconds preparation time before you respond; your respond should be about 45 to 60 seconds long. This task will be evaluated on the basis of three factors – delivery, language use, and topic development.

Question 2:

This task will be about integrated speaking sections about campus situations. Firstly, you will be required to read a campus related passage; and secondly, you will be required to listen to a conversation about that topic.

You will have 30 seconds to prepare your response and 60 seconds to answer the question. You will be allowed to take notes, and use them while presenting your argument.

Question 3:

In this task, you are firstly given a passage about an academic subject to read, and secondly you will be given an audio. You will have 30 seconds to prepare, and 60 seconds to respond.

Question 4:

In this task, you will listen to a part of a lecture, and will have to respond on the basis of the audio. You will have to provide a summary to the lecture. You will have 20 seconds to prepare, and 60 seconds to speak your answer.

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