TOEFL iBT Practice & Vocabulary

TOEFL iBT: the academic English test built for North American admissions

TOEFL iBT (Internet-Based Test) is ETS's flagship academic English assessment, accepted by 11,500+ US institutions and required by most American graduate programmes. It is structured around **academic context**: lecture excerpts, campus dialogues, integrated speaking-and-writing tasks that combine reading + listening + speaking. If your destination is a US PhD or research master's, TOEFL is the default choice; if your destination is Australia, NZ or the UK, IELTS or PTE is usually preferred.

Two structural features distinguish TOEFL from IELTS. First, the **integrated tasks** (especially Speaking Q2-Q4 and Writing Task 1) ask you to summarise content from a reading passage and a related listening clip. This rewards note-taking skill as much as language skill — many candidates lose points not because their English is weak but because they cannot triage the right information in the limited prep time. Second, all sections are computer-delivered with no paper option, and speaking responses are recorded and scored by both a human rater and an AI scoring engine averaged together.

Our intensive-listening tool is well-suited to TOEFL listening practice because the engine builds the same skill TOEFL tests: parsing connected speech at academic pace and capturing key information without re-listening. Our pronunciation self-check trains the speed-and-clarity balance the speaking section rewards. For Writing Task 2 (the independent essay), our word counter aligns to the typical 300-word target with type-token-ratio feedback that flags overuse of common words.

Two practical notes most candidates undervalue. First, the **speaking task scoring rewards explicit structure**: state your position in one sentence, give two supporting reasons each with one concrete example, and conclude in one sentence. Templated? Yes. Effective? Also yes — TOEFL speaking is short enough (45–60 seconds per task) that structural clarity dominates lexical creativity. Second, in integrated writing, paraphrase the lecture's counter-arguments to the reading; do not just summarise both. The task wants you to show comprehension of *how* the lecture responds to the reading, not just *what* each says.

Frequently asked questions