About TOEFL - SPECTACLES

TOEFL, WHAT IS IT?

TOEFL stands for "Test Of English as a Foreign Language". It’s an English Proficiency test, conducted to evaluate the English speaking and understanding ability of a candidate by analysing their English ability in terms of reading, speaking, listening and writing. It's designed to measure English language skills of non-native speakers.

Who takes the TOEFL?

Those who may take the TOEFL include:

· Students entering into a high school in an English speaking country
· Students attending 2-year community college programs in an English speaking country
· People who are looking to be licensed or certified in a particular field
· People who need to demonstrate their mastery of the English language for immigration purposes
· Those who simply want to assess their English language skills in a formal setting

The creators of the test recommend that students be at least in the 11th grade (or 17 years of age) before attempting to take the TOEFL. The test requires you to read some difficult passages and be familiar with some high-level vocabulary and most students are not exposed to this type of language before the 11th grade.

Why TOEFL is important?

Academic language is often dense and formal, so even people who’ve studied English for many years can struggle in an English academic environment. Before a university accepts you into an academic program, the admissions board wants to know that you can handle the course load of an English-based program: they use your TOEFL score as a standardized metric for your English skills.

9,000 universities in 130 countries accept TOEFL scores, including the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. All schools in the top 100 universities in the world accept the TOEFL. If you’re interested in attending an English language university, it’s likely that your school of choice will either require or accept TOEFL scores.

The result you receive in your TOEFL test will only be valid for two years, after those two years they are no longer recorded, so if you’re looking to apply to study abroad after this time, you will have to sit the test again. It is important to ensure you take the test in time for your application if the result is part of the requirements; if you are only studying a course which lasts a year the same TOEFL results could be used to improve your opportunities for work in a foreign country also.

FORMATS AND CONTENT

Formats And Content

The TOEFL iBT is formatted in four sections, each of which tests one language skill. The test isn’t adaptive, which means the questions don’t get harder if you do really well or easier if you get a few questions wrong. Multiple forms of the test exist and they change often, which helps to prevent cheating, but all of the tests are close to equally difficult.

1. The Reading Section

This first section tests your ability to understand academic written English. The material in this section may be different from the English you’ve read before, especially if you read fiction or popular literature, because it is based on material that English-speaking college students are expected to read and understand. So it’s a good idea to get familiar with this style of writing—here is some great advice for finding TOEFL reading practice. The reading passages can cover a wide variety of topics including art, history, science, and social sciences.

You will have one hour to read the three reading passages and answer the accompanying questions. After the full text is printed, questions will be grouped by paragraph, which saves you some time and makes it easier to find the information you need. You will see some unfamiliar words in this section, but that’s OK–if the word is necessary, can’t be figured out from context, and is specific to the topic of the text (not used in normal English), the test may allow you to click on the word and get a definition. Each question is worth the same amount, so don’t get stuck for too long on one question.

2. The Listening Section

Now that your language skills are warmed up, you’ll move on to listening, which will test your ability to understand both academic lectures and conversations related to university life. Like the reading section, the listening section will last about an hour. Throughout the entire test, you will have the option of taking notes; in the listening section, this will be essential. Practice listening and writing at the same time, because the lectures are 3-5 minutes long, and you will not be able to remember all the necessary information.

3. The Speaking Section

It will involve some independent tasks, which require you to express an opinion briefly (you will have up to a minute to speak), and some integrated tasks, in which you will need to use information from reading and listening in your spoken answers. There are two questions that require you to read, listen and speak, and two that require you only to listen then speak. In all you will answer 6 questions in the speaking section.

4. The Writing Section

The independent task is a persuasive essay, meaning you should express and support an opinion. The integrated task will give you an excerpt from a lecture, an excerpt from a written article, and a question. Your task will be to combine the information from the lecture with that from the written article in order to answer the question. Manage your time well! On the TOEFL you will use a standard QWERTY keyboard. If you need to, now is a good time to practice typing in English, as you will not want to waste time searching for the right letter on the keyboard.

Internet test (TOEFL IBT)

· A reading section of between 60-100 minutes which involves reading 3-5 passages, containing 12-14 question in each
· A listening section of between 60-90 minutes which involves 6-9 passages, containing 5-6 questions in each
· A speaking section which lasts 20 minutes and involves 6 spoken tasks
· A writing section which last 50 minutes and involves 2 tasks which need completion

Paper-based test (TOEFL PBT)

· A listening section of between 30-40 minutes consisting of 3 parts
· A structure and written expression section lasting 25 minutes which includes 15 exercises of sentence completion and 25 examples for error identification
· A reading section which lasts 50 minutes and includes answering 50 questions about passages
· A writing section which lasts 30 minutes, which involves one written essay containing around 250-300 words
· The main difference between the two formats is the spoken section of the test which is replaced by structure and written expressions section in the paper-based test.