Taking
the TOEFL test is a very important part of your journey to studying in an
English-speaking country or program. The basics of the TOEFL test: The
TOEFL test measures your ability to use and understand the English language as
it’s read, written, heard and spoken in the university classroom. As the most
accepted English-language test in the world, more than 9,000 universities,
agencies, and other institutions in more than 130 countries accept the TOEFL
test as part of their admissions criteria, including nearly every college and
university in Australia and the UK.
Test
of English as a Foreign Language or TOEFL,
is a standardised test of English language proficiency for
non-native English language speakers wishing to enroll in U.S. Universities.
The test is accepted by many English-speaking academic and professional
institutions. TOEFL is one of the two major English-language tests in the
world, the other being the IELTS.
TOEFL is a trademark of ETS (Educational Testing Service), a private non-profit organisation,
which designs and administers the tests. The scores are valid for two years;
then they are no longer reported.
In
1962, a national council made up of representatives of thirty government and
private organizations was formed to address the problem of ensuring English
language proficiency for non-native speakers wishing to study at U.S.
universities. This council recommended the development and administration of
the TOEFL exam for the 1963-1964 time frame. The test was originally developed at the Center for Applied Linguistics under
the direction of Stanford University applied
linguistics professor Dr. Charles A. Ferguson.
The TOEFL test was first administered in 1964
by the Modern Language Association financed by grants from the Ford Foundation and Danforth Foundation. In 1965, The College
Board and ETS jointly
assumed responsibility for the continuation of the TOEFL testing program. In
1973, a cooperative arrangement was made between ETS, The College Board, and
the Graduate Record Examinations board of advisers to oversee and run
the program. ETS was to administer the exam with the guidance of the TOEFL
board.
To the
present day, college admission criteria for international students who are Commonwealth of Nations nationals are exempted from taking the
TOEFL exam - nations which are part of the Anglosphere (from Commonwealth
realms to former British colonies e.g. Hong Kong SAR or former protectorates of
the United States) where English is the de facto official language
automatically grants a TOEFL exemption with some restrictions (e.g. residents
of Quebec are required to take TOEFL while the rest of Canada is exempt).
v Formats and
content
1.
Internet-based test
Since its introduction in late 2005,
the TOEFL Internet-based Test (iBT) format has progressively replaced the
computer-based tests (CBT) and paper-based tests (PBT), although paper-based
testing is still used in select areas. The TOEFL iBT test has been introduced
in phases, with the United States, Canada, France, Germany,
and Italy in
2005 and the rest of the world in 2006, with test centers added regularly. The
CBT was discontinued in September 2006 and these scores are no longer valid.
Initially, the demand for test seats
was higher than availability, and candidates had to wait for months. It is now
possible to take the test within one to four weeks in most countries. The
four-hour test consists of four sections, each measuring one of the basic
language skills (while some tasks require integrating multiple skills), and all
tasks focus on language used in an academic, higher-education environment.
Note-taking is allowed during the TOEFL iBT test. The test cannot be taken more
than once every 12 days.
a.
Reading
The Reading section consists of questions on 4–6
passages, each approximately 700 words in length. The passages are on academic
topics; they are the kind of material that might be found in an undergraduate
university textbook. Passages require understanding of rhetorical functions
such as cause-effect, compare-contrast and argumentation. Students answer
questions about main ideas, details, inferences, essential information,
sentence insertion, vocabulary, rhetorical purpose and overall ideas. New types
of questions in the TOEFL iBT test require filling out tables or completing
summaries. Prior knowledge of the subject under discussion is not necessary to
come to the correct answer.
b.
Listening
The Listening section consists of questions on six
passages, each 3–5 minutes in length. These passages include two student
conversations and four academic lectures or discussions. The conversations
involve a student and either a professor or a campus service provider. The
lectures are a self-contained portion of an academic lecture, which may involve
student participation and does not assume specialized background knowledge in
the subject area. Each conversation and lecture passage is heard only once. Test-takers
may take notes while they listen and they may refer to their notes when they
answer the questions. Each conversation is associated with five questions and
each lecture with six. The questions are meant to measure the ability to
understand main ideas, important details, implications, relationships between
ideas, organization of information, speaker purpose and speaker attitude.
c.
Speaking
The Speaking section consists of six tasks: two
independent and four integrated. In the two independent tasks, test-takers
answer opinion questions on familiar topics. They are evaluated on their
ability to speak spontaneously and convey their ideas clearly and coherently.
In two of the integrated tasks, test-takers read a short passage, listen to an
academic course lecture or a conversation about campus life and answer a
question by combining appropriate information from the text and the talk. In
the two remaining integrated tasks, test-takers listen to an academic course
lecture or a conversation about campus life and then respond to a question
about what they heard. In the integrated tasks, test-takers are evaluated on
their ability to appropriately synthesize and effectively convey information
from the reading and listening material. Test-takers may take notes as they
read and listen and may use their notes to help prepare their responses.
Test-takers are given a short preparation time before they have to begin
speaking. The responses are digitally recorded, sent to ETS’s Online Scoring
Network (OSN), and evaluated by three to six raters.
d.
Writing
The Writing section measures a test taker's ability to write in an academic
setting and consists of two tasks: one integrated and one independent. In the
integrated task, test-takers read a passage on an academic topic and then
listen to a speaker discuss it. The test-taker then writes a summary about the
important points in the listening passage and explains how these relate to the
key points of the reading passage. In the independent task, the test-taker must
write an essay that states their opinion or choice, and then explain it, rather
than simply listing personal preferences or choices. Responses are sent to the
ETS OSN and evaluated by at least 3 different raters.
|
Task
|
Description
|
Approximate time
|
|
Reading
|
3–5 passages, each containing 12–14 questions
|
60–100 minutes
|
|
Listening
|
6–9 passages, each containing 5–6 questions
|
60–90 minutes
|
|
Break
|
Mandatory break
|
10 minutes
|
|
Speaking
|
6 tasks
|
20 minutes
|
|
Writing
|
2 tasks
|
50 minutes
|
One of the
sections of the test will include extra, uncounted material. Educational Testing Service includes
extra material to pilot test questions for future test forms. When test-takers
are given a longer section, they should give equal effort to all of the
questions because they do not know which question will count and which will be
considered extra. For example, if there are four reading passages instead of
three, then one of the passages will not be counted. Any of the four could be
the uncounted one.
2.
Paper-based Test
The TOEFL® paper-based Test (PBT) is available in
limited areas. Scores are valid for two years after the test date, and test
takers can have their scores sent to institutions or agencies during that time.
a.
Listening (30 – 40 minutes)
The Listening section consists of 3 parts. The first
one contains 30 questions about short conversations. The second part has 8
questions about longer conversations. The last part asks 12 questions about
lectures or talks.
b.
Structure and Written Expression (25 minutes)
The Structure and Written Expression section has 15
exercises of completing sentences correctly and 25 exercises of identifying
errors.
c.
Reading Comprehension (55 minutes)
The Reading Comprehension sections has 50 questions
about reading passages.
d.
Writing (30 minutes)
The TOEFL PBT administrations include a writing test
called the Test of Written English (TWE). This is one essay question with
250–300 words in average.
v Test scores
1. 1. TOEFL iBT Test
The TOEFL
iBT test is scored on a scale of 0 to 120 points. Each of the four sections
(Reading, Listening, Speaking, and Writing) receives a scaled score from 0 to
30. The scaled scores from the four sections are added together to determine
the total score. Each speaking question is initially given a score of 0 to 4,
and each writing question is initially given a score of 0 to 5. These scores
are converted to scaled scores of 0 to 30.
2. 2. Paper-based Test
The final
PBT score ranges between 310 and 677 and is based on three subscores: Listening
(31–68), Structure (31–68), and Reading (31–67). Unlike the CBT, the score of
the Writing component (referred to as the Test of Written English, TWE) is not
part of the final score; instead, it is reported separately on a scale of 0–6.
v Accepted
TOEFL Scores
Most colleges use TOEFL scores as only one factor in their admission
process, with a college or program within a college often setting a minimum
TOEFL score required. The minimum TOEFL iBT scores range from 61 (Bowling Green
State University) to 100 (MIT, Columbia, Harvard). A sampling of required TOEFL admissions scores
shows that a total TOEFL iBT score of 74.2 for undergraduate admissions and
82.6 for graduate admissions may be required.
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