TOEFL

Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) assesses the possible success of a person to apply and comprehend English at the institute level. It is an important criterion for foreign national applicants have to clear in many English-speaking institutes, colleges and universities. Apart from the universities, various government agencies, businesses, or scholarship programs also accept this test. A TOEFL score remains eligible for two years and thereafter is withdrawn from the official database. Colleges and universities usually consider only the most recent TOEFL score.

Internet-Based Test

TOEFL was first introduced in late 2005, since then the Internet-Based test (iBT) has increasingly made the computer-based (CBT) and paper-based (PBT) tests redundant.

The demand for the test seats has remained very high, earlier candidates had to hold back for months, now it has become possible to take up the test within one to four weeks time in majority of the countries. The test duration is four-hours and consists of four sections, each section assessing chiefly one of the basic language skills (though few tasks may ask for the multiple skills) that concentrates on the language practiced in the higher-education and an academic environment.

Reading

This section has got 3–5 long passages and one has to answer questions related to the passages. The passages might be from topics in different field; the level of the passage material is the one that is found in any undergraduate university textbook. The aspirants are required to answer questions related to primary ideas, details, inferences vocabulary, sentence restatements, sentence insertion, function and gross ideas. Apart from these the iBT includes fresh Kind of questions that require completing summaries, filling out tables, or paraphrasing.

Listening

The listening section includes six long passages and questions related to the passages. The passage has got two student conversations and four academic talk or discussions. The questions expect the students to ascertain primary ideas, details, function, view, inferences, and gross organization.

Speaking

The speaking section includes six tasks, two tasks are independent and four tasks are integrated. The two tasks which are independent expect the students to answer opinion questions related to some aspect of academic life. The two integrated tasks that include speaking, listening, and reading tasks, students should read a passage, listen the passage carefully, and then speak about how the relation that lies in the ideas given in the two passages. The two integrated tasks of listening and speaking, students are suppose to listen to the long passages and accordingly summarize the passage in form of opinions about the information given in the passages. Examinees are supposed to express the information, state ideas, and defend opinions precisely, logically, and veraciously.

Writing

The Writing Section is inclusive of the two tasks, one task is integrated and one second one is independent task. When it comes to the integrated task, students are expected to read an academic passage, listen the passage, as well as write about the relation between the ideas in the two passages. Lastly, in the independent task, students should pen down a personal essay.

One should take note of the fact that at least one section of the test will consist of an extra and uncounted material. Educational Testing Service consists of extra material to attempt material for the tests in future. If the examinee is given a longer section, he should work hard on all the given materials as he does not know which material will be counted and which material is extra. Take for example, if four reading passages are given in place of three, three of the passages will be counted and one passage will not be counted. The uncounted passage can be any one of the four passages.

Internet-Based Test

• In TOEFL the iBT version is measured on a scale of 0 to 120 points.
• The four sections (Reading, Listening, Speaking, and Writing) & each of them are scaled on a score of 0 to 30. The scaled scores from the four sections are added together to determine the overall score.
• Initially, speaking is evaluated on a scale of 0 to 4, and writing is evaluated on a scale of 0 to 5. These scores are later on modified to scaled scores of 0 to 30.
• Generally, the marking scheme of TOEFL examiners tends to be more lenient in comparison to the SAT examiners. For example, an examinee who scores 1700 in SAT can as well score 110 in TOEFL.

Computer-Based Test

• Three sub-scores of Listening, Structure/Writing (combined), and Reading are obtained, each of which is measured on a 0–30 scale. The average of the sub-score is taken to obtain the final score, which is measured on a 0–300 scale.
• The score of the writing forms the score component of the Structure Section. Even if the institute, college or university where the aspirant applies did not want a score for Writing, the examinee has to write an essay in order to complete the test successfully.
• The Writing test is evaluated on the scale of 0 to 6. A score of 6 depicts strong written skills, 5 average written skills, and 4 minimal written skills. A score of 3, 2 or 1depicts lack of writing skills. The essay is assessed by two test evaluators. The evaluator gives score to the essay. The two scores given by the evaluators are averaged to bring about the final Writing scores. If the evaluators’ scores are more than 1 point different than a third evaluator scores the essay.

Paper-Based Test

• The final score of Paper-Based Test lies in the range of 310 and 677 and is composed of three sub-scores: Listening (31–68), Structure (31–68), and Reading (31–67). In contradiction with the Computer-Based Test, the Writing section score (also Known as the Test of Written English, TWE) does not find place in the final score. The Writing section score is evaluated separately on the scale of 0–6.
• The examinee has to score in the Listening, Structure and Reading parts of the TOEFL test which is not the percentage of the correct answers. The score is than modified taking cue from the fact that few tests are more arduous than others. The modified score takes care of the differences. So, the modified score more correctly reflects the test takers ability than the correct answer score represents.

ETS publishes tables to convert between iBT, CBT and PBT scores
TOEFL which is now a computer adaptive test and can be at any time of the year.