ABC Inglés

TOEFL TIPS

TOEFL stands for "Test of English as a Foreign Language". The test was developed by Educational Testing Services, or ETS, and has been used by universities and colleges for many years as a way to judge the English ability of potential students.

The old paper-based TOEFl tests are being phased out in favour of the TOEFL iBT (internet based test). The test is divided into four sections and takes about four hours to complete. Here are some things you should know about the new test:

The new Speaking section includes independent and integrated tasks.
There is no longer a Structure section. Grammar is tested on questions and tasks in each section.
Lectures and conversations in the Listening section are longer, but note-taking is allowed. In fact, note-taking is allowed throughout the entire test.
The speech in the listening material sounds more natural. Also, there are new questions that measure understanding of a speaker's attitude, degree of certainty, and purpose.
The Reading section has new questions that ask test takers to categorize information and fill in a chart or complete a summary.
The Writing section requires typing. There is an integrated task in addition to the current independent task, and the scoring guides (rubrics) used for rating are different from the current test.

The Speaking Section

The new speaking section contains six tasks. Each task is rated on a scale of 0-4. The answers are rated by real people and then the average of your scores in converted onto a scale of 30.
The total score for the test is out of 120 and is good for two years.