While the world is slowly but surely recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic, international students' dreams of studying abroad have put on halt due to circumstantial delay in submitting the mandatory documents to universities, such as English Language Test scores, Medical Certificates, and a few others.
For students who have been dreaming of fulfilling their study abroad goals, the IELTS and TOEFL have initiated a special test that allows students to attend English test exams from the comfort of your home.
And guess what?
You can receive your test results within 10 to 15 days itself! As an aspiring student, one can opt from any of the two tests to crack admission into the desired university seamlessly.
So, are you pumped up to know about these tests and the process?
Here you go! Grab a cup of hot tea or coffee and read on.
To help students in this unprecedented time, TOEFL iBT has innovated a unique online test model to help students take up relaxed tests from the comfort of their homes. Here is the detailed information about the TOEFL online tests.
Internet-based TOEFL exam sections:
The TOEFL iBT online exam comprises four sections; reading, listening, speaking, and writing.
The objective of this task is to assess a student's reading skills. It involves reading comprehension on various topics including Psychology, Arts, Science, and History, etc. Every passage has around 14 questions. Most Universities accept international students who have scored a minimum of 20 marks in the reading section.
Time limit: 60-80 minutes
Questions: 36-56 questions
In the listening section of TOEFL iBT, each lecture has a time limit of 5 minutes with 6 questions to be answered. The conversation section is around 3 minutes, followed by 5 questions that are to be answered. Most universities accept a listening score of anything over 21.
Note: Audio clips will be played only once for each question.
Time limit: 60-90 minutes
Questions: 34-51 questions
The TOEFL iBT speaking section comprises six tasks under 2 categories, i.e. Independent tasks (Task 1 & 2) and Integrated tasks (Task 3 to 6). During the admission process, universities consider students who have scored over 22 marks in the verbal/speaking section.
Independent Speaking Task
Under the speaking test, students will be asked to perform tasks 1 and 2 (a combination of reading, writing, and listening). For both tasks, students get 15 seconds to prepare and 45 seconds to answer.
Integrated Speaking Tasks
For tasks 3 and 4, the following steps are involved:
Step 1 – 45 seconds to skim through a passage.
Step 2 – One minute to listen to an audio clip.
Step 3 – Half a minute to prepare.
Step 4 – One minute to answer the questions raised by the proctor.
For tasks 5 and 6, students will listen to an audio clip (around 2 minutes). Soon after hearing the audio clip, the proctor will initiate a 20-second timer where students will have to recollect the audio clip to answer the questions.
Note: The proctor will begin a timer of 60 seconds as soon as the students start to respond to the questions.
The TOEFL iBT test's final section is the writing section, where students will be asked to draft a couple of essays. One is integrated, and the other is an independent essay. The total duration of this task is around an hour.
TOEFL iBT Integrated Writing
Students will be provided with three minutes to read a passage of around 300 words under integrated writing. Following that, the proctor will play a lecture. Based on the lecture and the passage's input, students must frame an essay of around 220 words.
TOEFL iBT Independent Writing
Independent writing allows students to write their own thoughts and opinions. As a part of the task, students will be asked to write a 300-word essay in 30 minutes.
Over 30 years, the IELTS paper-based module has been one of the prominent English language tests that help students achieve their dream of studying abroad. With the advancements in technology, students can now take the IELTS test online via computers and receive their results quickly within 7 days. Students need to complete reading, writing and listening in one sitting. Besides, the speaking test has to be taken before the listening test or after taking the other 3 tests.
IELTS Listening Test (30 minutes)
Students will listen to 4 texts or conversations between native speakers, and they are asked to produce answers based on the conversation they heard. These questions will analyse students' ability to understand ideas, factual information, opinions, and the purpose of conversation. The listening test comprises 3 stages.
1st part – A casual conversation between two humans.
2nd part – A detailed speech.
3rd part – A conversation between people of different hierarchies (employer and employee)
IELTS Reading Test (60 minutes)
The Reading test in IETS consists of forty questions. During the test, a variety of questions will be put forth to test students' reading skills. The reading materials include 3 lengthy texts in the academic version, either factual, analytical, or descriptive. The texts are usually derived from journals, magazines, and newspapers.
IELTS Writing Test (60 minutes)
The Writing test of the IELTS Academic version consists of 2 tasks. All the chosen topics are suitable for students from all walks of life entering undergraduate or postgraduate courses.
Task 1: Students will receive a diagram/chart/table and are asked to summarise the context in their own words (formal tone).
Task 2: Students must write an essay based on an argument or problem statement during the test.
IELTS Speaking Test (11 to 14 minutes)
The Speaking test consists of 3 parts in IELTS. Each assesses a student's spoken English. Altogether it takes between 11 to 14 minutes to finish 3 parts of the speaking test. As a part of the practice, all speaking tests will be recorded by the proctor.
Stage 1 – Students will be asked to speak about themselves and for similar questions such as their family, studies, and interests. Ideally, this part consumes up to 4 to 5 minutes.
Stage 2 – In the next part, students will be given a topic prior to 2 minutes of stage 2 process. Here, the proctor gives students 60 seconds to think and answer one or two questions from the given topic.
Stage 3 – Here, students will be provided with an opportunity to converse some abstract ideas and thoughts. The time taken for this part is around 5 minutes.
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