TOEFL iBT

Speaking Section
 The TOEFL iBT Speaking section measures your ability to

speak English effectively in academic settings. The four

What is it?
questions/tasks resemble real-life situations you might

encounter both in and outside of a classroom.

  Question 1: Independent Speaking Task — requires you
to draw entirely on your own ideas, opinions and
experiences when you respond.
Types of
Questions  Questions 2–4: Integrated Speaking Tasks — require
you to combine your English-language skills — listening
and speaking, or listening, reading and speaking — just as
you would in or out of a classroom.
  The Speaking section includes native-speaker English
accents from North America, the U.K., New Zealand or
Australia to better reflect the variety of accents you might
encounter while studying abroad. Only the first of the four
items may have accented speech.

Basic  Below are two examples, both of which use accents from
Information to the U.K. In each instance, the example is 15 seconds long,
and you would have 45 seconds to respond.
have in mind:
Accents If friends from another country
Some people enjoy taking risks
and trying new things. Others
were going to spend time in
are not adventurous; they are
your country, what city or place
cautious and prefer to avoid
would you suggest they visit?
danger. Which behaviour do
Using details and examples,
you think is better?
explain why.
Explain why.
  Prep time: You'll get 15–30 seconds of preparation time before
each response, and your response will be 45 or 60 seconds long.

 Speaking response: To respond, you'll speak into the

Basic microphone and your responses will be recorded.

Information to  Test time: You have 17 minutes to complete the Speaking

have in mind section.

 Scoring: Speaking tasks are scored based on the Speaking

Scoring Guides by a combination of AI scoring and certified
human raters. Raw scores are converted to a scaled section
score of 0–30.
  You’ll be given a topic to speak about with no additional material
(reading or listening passages).
 You’ll have 15 seconds to prepare your response and 45 seconds to
Question 1 speak your answer.

Independent  In this question, you’ll be presented with two situations or

opinions. You’ll be asked which you prefer and you need to explain
Speaking your choice.
Some people think it is more fun to spend time with friends in restaurants or
cafes. Others think it is more fun to spend time with friends at home. Which do
you think is better? Explain why.
 Here are some tips for how to approach these kind of speaking
questions.
 Use the preparation time to organise your thoughts and maybe
write down some notes. Don't try to write a full response because
you won't have time, and the raters scoring your response want to
hear you speaking, not reading, and they can tell the difference.
Question 1  Don't memorise responses before the test, especially ones that you
get from the Internet or from test prep instructors who say that's a
Independent good idea. It's not, and it will lower your score. It's very easy for ETS
raters to identify memorised responses because they sound
Speaking different and the content is different from responses that are more
natural and spontaneous.
 It's not necessary to organise your response into an introduction, a
middle and a conclusion like you would with a written essay. Just
speak naturally and use common connecting words. Some of those
are: because, so, after that, on the other hand, I want to mention,
and what this means is.
  Before the test, make sure you understand what the raters are
looking for and how the questions are scored. In the speaking
section, all responses are scored on a scale from zero to four, and
they're scored holistically, which means the raters listen for
various features in your response and then give it an overall score.
Question 1  Although there are some variations depending on the questions,
raters will be looking for three main things.
Independent  First, delivery: Your speech needs to be clear and fluid with good

Speaking pronunciation. The pace or speed of your speech should be natural,

and you should have good sounding intonation patterns.
 Second, language use: This is mainly how you use grammar and
vocabulary to express your ideas.
 And third, topic development: This is mainly how fully you answer
the question, how clearly you express your ideas, and how you can
connect one idea to the next in a way that is easy to follow.
 Some people think it is more fun to spend time with friends in
restaurants or cafes. Others think it is more fun to spend time with
friends at home. Which do you think is better? Explain why.
Question 1
Independent I actually only spend time with my friends in restaurants
and cafés, almost never at home because my apartment is
Speaking – very small and there is just almost nothing to do. On the
Example of outside and café and restaurants, it's much more — there
are more people. The atmosphere is usually good. Maybe
“perfect-score” there's some music playing. Usually we meet to discuss
things and meet other people and meet people we do not
answer know, possibly. There's always a chance to get to know
someone and it's always exciting. For me, it's much more
exciting than just staying at home in the environment that I
know and am familiar with. I think that's boring.