Listening

The TOEFL iBT Listening section is designed to measure your ability to understand conversations and lectures in English. It includes listening for:

• Basic comprehension
• Understanding the speaker's attitude and degree of certainty
• Connecting information

Listening questions

You’ll hear lectures and conversations in this section. Both use campus-based language.

• 3 lectures, some with classroom discussion, each 3–5 minutes; 6 questions per lecture
• 2 conversations, each 3 minutes; 5 questions per conversation
• You can take notes on any audio item throughout the test to help you answer questions.

Test time: It should take about 36 minutes to complete the Listening section.

Speaking

The TOEFL iBT Speaking section measures your ability to speak English effectively in academic settings. The four questions/tasks resemble real-life situations you might encounter both in and outside of a classroom.

Question 1: Independent Speaking Task — requires you to draw entirely on your own ideas, opinions and experiences when you respond.

Questions 2–4: Integrated Speaking Tasks — require you to combine your English-language skills — listening and speaking, or listening, reading and speaking — just as you would in or out of a classroom.

Prep time: You'll get 15–30 seconds of preparation time before each response, and your response will be 45 or 60 seconds long.

Speaking response: To respond, you'll speak into the microphone and your responses will be recorded.

Test time: It should take about 16 minutes to complete the Speaking section.

Scoring: Speaking tasks are scored based on the Speaking Scoring Guides (Rubrics) (PDF) by a combination of AI scoring and certified human raters. Raw scores are converted to a scaled section score of 0–30.

Reading

The TOEFL iBT Reading section assesses how well you can read and understand materials used in an academic environment.

It includes two reading passages, each approximately 700 words long, with 10 questions per passage. It should take about 35 minutes to complete the Reading section.

Reading passages are excerpts from university-level textbooks that would be used in introductions to a topic. The passages cover a variety of subjects. Don't worry if you're not familiar with the topic of a passage. All the information you need to answer the questions will be included in the passage. There is a glossary feature available to define words not commonly used, if you need it.

Writing

The TOEFL iBT test Writing section measures your ability to write in English in an academic setting, and to present your ideas in a clear, well-organized way.

There are two writing tasks.

• Integrated writing task (20 minutes) — read a short passage and listen to a short lecture, then write in response to what you read and listened to.
• Writing for an Academic Discussion task (10 minutes) — state and support an opinion in an online classroom discussion.

You'll type your responses on a computer keyboard.

Test time: It should take about 29 minutes to complete the Writing section.

Scoring: Writing tasks are scored based on the Writing Scoring Guides (Rubrics) (PDF) by a combination of AI scoring and certified human raters. Raw scores are converted to a scaled section score of 0–30.