TOEFL iBT Speaking

Students aspiring to study abroad must polish their English speaking skills. This will give them confidence to speak fluent English within their college campus as well as with the natives. And in order to assess their English speaking skills, the TOEFL Speaking section is designed.

This is the third and shortest section in the TOEFL Exam, summing up to 17 minutes in length. It is planned and designed in a way to measure your effectiveness of how well you can speak English in an academic environment based on Personal experience, Campus situations and Academic subjects.

Overview of TOEFL Speaking Section

The above-mentioned four tasks are based on real-life situations which you might encounter in a classroom, campus or personal environment. In order to answer these speaking tasks, you will be provided a headset. Further, you are allowed to speak and record your responses in the given time frame into your microphone attached to your headset. You get time to speak your response depending on the task type. And to deliver your speech effectively, you get a few seconds to plan and prepare your response.

All your responses are recorded and sent to the ETS for scoring purposes. In order to ensure fairness and accuracy, your speaking responses are scored by a combination of AI scoring and certified Human Raters.

Now, let’s understand the types of tasks that are there in the TOEFL Speaking section.

Tasks in TOEFL Speaking Section

TOEFL Speaking broadly consists of two tasks types, ie. Independent Speaking Task and Integrated Speaking Task.

Independent speaking task is about sharing your personal opinion on a general topic. Whereas, by Integrated speaking task it means that you are required to combine and link in order to respond the following combination of English language skills:

• Listening and speaking
• Listening, reading and speaking

Task 1: Independent Speaking Task      

Preparation time: 15 seconds

Response time: 45 seconds

In the Independent speaking task, you are asked a general question on a topic and you have to give your personal opinion or view about that. Here, you will not be given any reading or listening passages. You have to answer purely based on your personal experience. This question tests your ability to think quickly and how well you can express your thoughts in English.

Further, you will be given 15 seconds to think and plan your response. You are then required to speak and record your response of 45 seconds into the microphone and submit it.

Task 2: Integrated Speaking Task

(Reading, Listening & Speaking)

Preparation time: 30 seconds

Response time: 60 seconds

This integrated speaking section is about Campus Situations. Here, you are required to summarize and combine information from two sources, ie. a reading passage and a listening conversation.

To answer the question, you will be asked to read a passage and listen to a conversation on the same campus-related topic. You will then get 30 seconds to prepare your response and 60 seconds to speak your answer into the microphone.

Task 3: Integrated Speaking Task  

(Reading, Listening & Speaking)

Preparation time: 30 seconds

Response time: 60 seconds

Task 3 is about an academic subject or an important academic concept from a first-year college textbook. Here, you get a reading passage about an academic subject and you have to listen to part of a lecture on that same subject. You will then be given 30 seconds to plan and prepare your response well and 60 seconds (1 minute) to speak your answer.

Task 4: Integrated Speaking Task

(Listening & Speaking)

Preparation time: 20 seconds

Response time: 60 seconds

Task 4 is also related to academic subjects where you have to listen to part of a lecture and speak your answer. Note that, you will not be given any reading passage in this task.

Further, you will be given 20 seconds to prepare and 60 seconds (1 minute) to speak your answer well. Generally, you will be asked to provide a summary of the lecture through your answer.

Next, let’s explore this video featuring actionable tips and tricks to score well in the TOEFL speaking section.