Aim for English
TOEFL iBT Test Overview
A summary of the new iBT TOEFL test, including a few general tips and strategies.
TOEFL iBT at a glance
Back to the TOEFL resource homepage
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- TOEFL iBT overview and general tips
- The language you'll need in TOEFL
- Independent tasks in TOEFL iBT
- Integrated tasks in TOEFL iBT
- The importance of taking notes
- Understanding inferences in TOEFL
- Understanding stated details
- Understanding main ideas
- Summarising
- Know your own English
- Skills you'll need in iBT
- Writing in TOEFL
- Speaking in TOEFL
- Listening in TOEFL
- Reading in TOEFL
TOEFL iBT tip of the month
TOEFL assesses your ability to communicate in an academic environment. There are similarities in reading, listening, speaking and writing questions. While your English has to be very good, the test won’t be impossible if you learn a few skills and do as much practice as possible.
More TOEFL links
1. TOEFL iBT Test Overview
TOEFL asks you to combine skills you’ll need for communicating at university.
There are campus situations talking about issues students have to deal with.Sometimes you’ll listen to a student talking with a professor; other times you’ll read a notice from campus administration. You’ll definitely be asked to give advice on a problem a student is having. You’ll also need to understand the attitudes of students and professors.
Then there are academic topics, such as lectures and formal texts. You’ll need to show that you can understand them quite quickly, and be able to talk and write about them. All of the topics can be understood by people who’ve had a good level of high-school education, so you won’t need any specialist knowledge in physics, economics or other areas. You will need, however, general academic vocabulary and the ability to see how information is presented.
The whole test takes approximately four hours, so here’s another skill you need: the skills to pace yourself and keep your energy up throughout the test. You should do lots of test practice once you’ve understood the standard types of questions in each section. First is reading, where you get three to five texts in 60 to 100 minutes. Then there is listening to several conversations and lectures in 60 to 90 minutes. If you get more reading then you’ll get less listening, or vice versa. It’s not a memory test, so note-taking is allowed.
You’re given a ten-minute break before the speaking section. In this, you’ll speak on your own ideas in two questions. A further four questions ask you to react to reading or listening material. The two writing questions are similar: discuss something you’ll read and listen to, and then write on your own ideas.
It’s all about creating a mini-experience of being on an English-speaking campus.
We’ll show you the way.