WHAT IS TOEFL IBT, WHO CAN TAKE IT?

The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is a standardized test designed to evaluate a student's abilitY to understand and use English as it is used in a college and university environment -- particularly in the USA and Canada. TOEFL is administered by Educational Testing Service (ETS), the testing organization that also conducts GRE, SAT and other standardized tests.

If a student is applying for admission to a University or college in these countries, his or her TOEFL score will help the admission authorities to determine whether he or she has adequate academic background of English language skills necessary for admission. Also over 5000 colleges and accredited educational institutions across 90 countries, including: the UK, other European countries, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore accept TOEFL scores.

TOEFL iBT (Internet Based Test0 measures both the receptive (reading and listening) and expressive (speaking and writing) skills of university aspirants. The TOEFL score is equally divided between receptive skills and expressive skills, and therefore, a student must do well in all sections.

FEATURES OF TOEFL IBT

The Writing section has been expanded to include one integrated writing task in addition to the independent writing task.

The Reading section usually consists of 3 passages (sometimes 5), each of around 700 words. This section includes categorization of information and/or filling in a chart or completion of a summary.

Lectures and conversations in the listening section are a little longer than earlier, but speech is more natural. Although the focus of the listening tasks remains American, there is likely to be at least one lecture in British /Australian accent. There may be questions that measure understanding of a speaker's attitude, degree of certainty and purpose.

There will be fixed dates for TOEFL iBT and the students have to make their choice out of the same. Depending upon the number of test takers and the capacity, a test center will normally have 30 to 40 test dates in a year.

TOEFL iBT scores are reported online. Students can view their scores within 15 working days of the test and will also receive their score-sheet by mail.

For more information : www.ets.org