TOEFL iBT Speaking Section

The TOEFL iBT Speaking section procedures your ability to interact in English effectively in academic classroom settings. These four tasks are based on real-life situations that you may encounter within and outside of the classroom.

Section	Time Limit	Questions	Tasks
Reading	54–72 minutes	30–40 questions	Read passages and respond to questions
Listening	41–57 minutes	28–39 questions	Answer questions about brief lectures or classroom discussions
Break	10 minutes	—	—
Speaking	17 minutes	4 tasks	Talk about a familiar topic and discuss material you read and listened to
Writing	50 minutes	2 tasks	Read a passage, listen to a recording, type your response

The TOEFL Speaking sections used to have 6 question tasks, and now the new iBT version reduces the questions to 4 tasks only.

Question 1: Independent Speaking Task – requires you to draw completely by yourself concepts, experiences and opinions when you respond.

Questions 2-4: Integrated Speaking Tasks – require you to integrate your English-language skills– speaking and listening, or listening, reading and speaking – just as you would in or out of a classroom.

Prep time: You’ll get 15– 30 seconds of preparation time prior to each response, and your response will be 45 or 60 seconds long.

Speaking response: To react, you’ll speak into the microphone and your actions will be recorded.

Test time: You have 17 minutes to complete the Speaking section.

Scoring: Speaking tasks are scored based on the  Speaking Scoring Guides (Rubrics) (PDF) by a mix of AI scoring and accredited human raters. Raw scores are converted to a scaled section rating of 0– 30.

Practice Your Speaking Skills from Alphabet Pronunciation

Accents and Pronunciation is important, watch our Alphabet Pronunciation video by Phoebe (Canadian Accent).

Practice Questions

Practice questions help you to better prepare for your TOEFL exam!

Recommend Read:

Learn how to prepare your answer format better by using a Speaking Template!