all about toefl

TOEFL

The TOEFL, the Test of English as a foreign language evaluates the ability of an individual to use and understand English in an academic setting. It evaluates how well an individual can combine listening, reading, speaking, and writing skills to perform academic tasks. It is an admission requirement for non-native English speakers at many English-speaking colleges and universities abroad.

Additionally, institutions such as government agencies, licensing bodies, businesses or scholarships may also require TOEFL. A TOEFL score is valid for two years. You can retake the test as many times as you wish.

The TOEFL test is a registered trademark of Educational Testing Service (ETS) and is administered worldwide. The test was first administered in 1964 and has since been taken by more than 23 million students. The test was originally developed at the Center for Applied Linguistics led by the linguist, Dr. Charles A Ferguson.

TOEFL Structure

The TOEFL Internet-Based Test (iBT) since its introduction in late 2005, has progressively replaced both the computer-based (CBT) and paper-based (PBT) tests, although paper-based (PBT) test is still used in selected areas where Internet is not available. TOEFL iBT has been introduced in phases, in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, and Italy in 2005 and the rest of the World (including India) in 2006, with test centers added regularly.

The four-hour TOEFL 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 higher education environment. TOEFL includes the following four sections:

LISTENING

The Listening section consists of 6 passages, 2 student conversations, and 4 academic lectures or discussions. The duration of the listening section is 3-5 minutes, and includes questions about the passages.

• A conversation involves 2 speakers, a student and/either a professor or a campus service provider.
• A lecture is 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 stimulus is heard only once. Test takers may take notes while they listen, and may refer to their notes, when they answer the questions.
• Each conversation is associated with 5 questions and each lecture with 6. The questions are meant to measure the ability to understand main ideas, important details, implications, relationships between ideas, organization of information, speaker's purpose, and speaker's attitude.

READING

The Reading section consists of 3-5 passages, each approximately 700 words in length and questions about the passages.

• The passages are on academic topics, they are the kind of material that might be found in an undergraduate university textbook.
• The 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.

SPEAKING

The Speaking section consists of 6 tasks, 2 independent tasks, and 4 integrated (for example combining the reading and listening tasks).

• In the 2 independent tasks, test takers answer opinion questions on familiar topic(s). They are evaluated on their ability to speak spontaneously and convey their ideas clearly and concernedly.
• 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 notes 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 are evaluated on their ability to appropriately synthesize the information.

WRITING

The Writing section measures a test taker’s ability to write in an academic setting and consists of 2 tasks, 1 integrated task and 1 independent task.

• In the integrated task, test takers read a passage on an academic topic and then listen to a speaker discuss the same topic. The test taker will then write a summary about the important points in the listening passage and explain how these relate to the key points of the reading passage.
• In the independent task, test takers must write an essay that states, explains and supports their opinion on an issue, supporting their opinions or choices, rather than simply listing personal preferences or choices.

• TOEFL Scoring

  The ibt version of the TOEFL test is scored on a scale of 0 to 120 points. A score ranging from 90-100 is above average and a score of 100 plus is excellent.
  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.
  Speaking is initially given a score of 0 to 4, and writing is initially given a score of 0 to 5. These scores are converted to scaled scores of 0 to 30.
  One can check his/her score online after 15 days of examination and also receive TOEFL score sheet after 20 - 25 days of examination.