About the test

TOEFL iBT is the English test most often accepted by universities in the United States, and it is taken all over the world. It does not test what you know about English. It tests whether you can use it: read a page from a textbook, follow a lecture 讲座, answer an email, and speak back.

• It is made by ETS, an American organisation, and it is taken on a computer at a test centre or at home.
• Almost every Chinese student applying to a university in the United States or Canada may use it. Many universities in the UK, Australia and Europe accept it as well — but always check the page for your course, because the number they ask for is written there and nowhere else.
• Four skills are tested in one sitting: Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking, in that order.

⚠ The test changed in January 2026, and most advice on the internet is older than that. If a book, a video or a shared question file talks about a 0 to 120 score, or about an "Integrated Writing" task where you read a passage and hear a lecture, it is describing the old test. The sections below describe the test you will actually sit.

The test is now adaptive 自适应: it looks at how you are doing and gives you items at a level that matches you. Two students sitting on the same day do not see the same questions.

• ETS asks you to allow about two hours in total. The exact time and the exact number of items vary, because the test adapts as you go.
• Two things follow from "adaptive", and both change how you should practise. First, you cannot work out your score from a number of right answers — the same 30 correct answers mean different things depending on how hard the items were. Second, the test gets harder when you do well. Meeting difficult items is a good sign, not a bad one.
• Notice how much of the test is now everyday English 日常英语: a notice, an email, an announcement, a short conversation. The old test was almost entirely academic. Practise both.

• You get four section scores and one overall score. Each runs from 1 to 6 in half-point steps: 4, 4.5, 5, 5.5, 6.
• The overall score is the average of the four sections, rounded to the nearest half point. So 5.5, 5, 5.5 and 5 average 5.25, which is reported as 5.5.
• The scale is lined up with the CEFR 欧洲语言共同参考框架, the ladder used across Europe:

• ⚠ Universities usually set a minimum overall score and a floor on each section. An overall 5 with a 3.5 in Speaking is not the same application as a flat 5 — the weakest section decides the result. Work on the lowest number, not the average.

• Until January 2028, every score report shows three things: your CEFR level, your 1 to 6 scores, and a comparable 0 to 120 overall score.
• That third number exists because universities write their requirement years in advance. A course page that still says "100 on the TOEFL iBT" can be compared against it.
• So when you read an offer, check which scale it is written on before you decide whether you have met it. The safest move is to look at the university's own page in the month you apply.

• The four sections that follow are one per skill, in the test's own order. Each explains what the tasks ask for, what the marker is actually looking at, and the mistakes that cost Chinese candidates marks most often.
• A number in these notes is a format fact, and format facts change. Every one here was checked on the ETS website on 13 September 2026. Before you book, check the two pages below yourself — it takes five minutes and it is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy.

• Do not buy a practice book printed before 2026. It is not a slightly old book; it is a book about a different test.
• Decide early which scale your universities use, then write the target number on the first page of your notebook. A target you can see is a target you work towards.
• Practise everyday English deliberately. Chinese candidates usually arrive strong on academic reading and weak on emails, notices and short conversations, because that is what school rewarded. The new test rewards both.
• Type, do not write. The whole test is on a computer, including the two writing tasks. If you type slowly in English, that alone costs you marks in a 23-minute section — practise on a keyboard from today.
• Sources, checked on 13 September 2026: TOEFL iBT score scale update, TOEFL iBT content and structure.