TOEFL iBT
The TOEFL iBT is one of the two most widely accepted English proficiency tests for university admission worldwide, alongside IELTS. It is administered by ETS and accepted by more than twelve thousand institutions, scholarship programmes and immigration authorities.
On 21 January 2026 the test was redesigned, and the change was substantial: it is roughly half an hour shorter, Reading and Listening now adapt to your performance, several task types were retired and three new ones introduced, and scoring moved to a band scale. Preparation material written for the previous format describes a test that no longer exists.
Reading
Reading practice test
Original academic passages with an estimated band on the 1–6 scale.
Start →Writing
Academic Discussion
Join a class discussion · ~100 words · 10 minutes · instant AI feedback on the 1–6 scale.
Start →Test format from 2026
The whole test runs about 90 minutes with no scheduled break. The four sections come in a fixed order, and because Reading and Listening adapt, the exact question count and timing vary from one candidate to another — most people see somewhere between 35 and 48 questions in total.
Reading
~18–27 minAcademic and everyday texts with comprehension questions, plus the new Complete the Words task, where you fill in the missing halves of words inside a paragraph. Multistage adaptive: the first stage determines the difficulty of the second.
Listening
~18–27 minAcademic lectures and campus conversations, adaptive in the same way as Reading. Question types cover main ideas, detail, speaker attitude and purpose, alongside newer task types drawn from everyday situations.
Speaking
~8 minShortened from 16 minutes. Brief, practical responses rather than the long integrated tasks of the old format, including the new Listen and Repeat task.
Writing
~23 minTwo short, practical outputs: Write an Email and the Academic Discussion task carried over from the previous format, plus the new Build a Sentence task. The independent essay is gone.
How the adaptive sections work
Reading and Listening are delivered in stages rather than as one fixed set. Everyone begins at a standard difficulty, and performance on that first stage determines whether the second stage is drawn from an easier or a harder pool.
This has a consequence worth planning around. The stage you are routed into sets a ceiling on the band you can reach. A candidate sent to the easier second stage cannot achieve the top band however many questions they go on to answer correctly, because those questions are not difficult enough to distinguish that level of performance. The opening minutes of each section therefore carry more weight than their share of the questions suggests.
Speaking and Writing are not adaptive. They are the same for everyone.
Scoring on the 1–6 band scale
Each section is reported on a 1.0 to 6.0 scale in half-point steps, aligned to the CEFR framework. The overall score is the average of the four section bands, rounded to the nearest half band. During a transition period running to 2028, score reports also carry a comparable score on the legacy 0–120 scale, so universities that still publish requirements in the old numbers can convert between the two.
C2 — Mastery
Highly selective postgraduate
C1 — Advanced
Most competitive universities
B2 — Upper-intermediate
Standard undergraduate minimum
B1 — Intermediate
Foundation and pathway programmes
Check the requirement published by the university you are applying to, and check which scale it is written in. Many institutions are still updating their pages, and a requirement quoted as a 0–120 total will not translate directly into a band without their own conversion table.
What our practice covers
The Reading practice uses original academic passages with the comprehension question types the section is built on, delivered as a fixed set rather than with the adaptive routing of the real test. It is there to build the underlying skill; the routing is something you meet on the day.
The Writing practice covers the Academic Discussion task, which survived the redesign, with instant feedback on the band scale. Listening and Speaking require audio and microphone input and are not part of the simulation.
Choosing between the tests
TOEFL is not the only option, and which one suits you depends on what your university accepts and on how you prefer to be assessed. IELTS keeps a face-to-face speaking test; the Duolingo English Test is shorter and taken at home.