Being one of the most well-known English tests all over the world, the TOEFL test not only prepares you for your academic life but also enables you to use all four skills of English language – listening, reading, writing and speaking – in your daily life. Having been considered as effective language users by the employers is generally an additional value for the TOEFL test takers, especially the high scorers, and it eases the painful period of job seeking.

Preparing for the TOEFL test requires hard work and concentration, though. Before you start to prepare by using all those books, compact discs and videos, you should get the idea behind the test. In other words, you must understand what the test wants you to do clearly. If you haven’t get hold of yet, do not panic. In this article, we will share critical points of the test one by one.

First section on the TOEFL test is reading and in this section your ability to understand academic texts in English is measured. Each passage is approximately 600-700 words long and their subjects vary from history to geography and all the way down to music. After each reading passage you are asked a number of questions, worth one point each and you are generally expected to finish this section within 60 minutes. On average, 3 reading passages are included in the reading section. Apart from studying this section from your course books and materials, it is also recommended to read periodicals such as National Geographic or The Economist.

After completing reading, you make your way to the listening section on the TOEFL iBT test. That means you will be made to listen some passages in English and then be asked some questions about what you heard. Since, the TOEFL test aims to prepare you to the academic career the listening topics are all about campus life and lectures. Better to say, the questions types in this section are divided mainly to conversations and lectures. Each conversation is followed by 5 and the latter one is followed by 6 questions. Conversations are generally between a student and a professor, discussing something about the course or assignment, between a student and a university attendant, talking about some kind of services at the university, and between two or more students talking about campus life or a lecture. And lectures may be about all kinds of subjects from American History to Zoology. Best way to prepare for this part of the test is, other than your course book listening tracks, listening to authentic academic English and you can find different sources on the internet. This section is generally between 60 and 90 minutes.

Between reading, listening and speaking, writing you are given a 10 minutes coffee break.

Just after you turn from your break, a 20-minute-long section welcomes you. In the Speaking section you do not just speak as the name implies. There are totally 6 questions and while two of them are called independent tasks, the rest are named integrated because they require not only speaking but also reading and listening. In the first two questions you are asked to speak about general topics like where you would like to visit on your next holidays or what the good characteristics of a good neighbor are in your opinion. In this type of questions you are supposed to speak for 45 seconds. And in the integrated speaking questions, you sometimes read some notice on the door of the professor’s office and then answer the question related to the notice, or sometimes you both read about some regulations on the campus and then listen to two people discussing about that and at the end you are supposed to speak for 60 seconds. One effective way for this section is to find a speaking buddy who is also preparing for the TOEFL iBT and practice with them.

The last but not the least section is writing, divided into two parts which are called independent and integrated. Actually, some people say writing section is similar to speaking in some ways because just as speaking section, in the independent question of the writing section you are supposed to write about a general topic and in the independent you have an academic passage to read, then an lecture to listen in order to make you write an essay comparing the information disclosed in both reading and lecture. In total you are given 50 minutes, 20 for integrated and 30 for independent which means independent essay must be longer than the integrated one. Reading previously written TOEFL essays and modeling them is considered a useful way for the reading section of the TOEFL iBT test.

As you see TOEFL aims to measure all four skills in English so it requires a lot of preparation and this may not be easy at times. But you shouldn’t lose your concentration and keep working because if you ace the TOEFL test, it will be easier to be accepted by most of the renowned universities and institutions all over the world. Good luck!

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