Posts Tagged: essay

Toefl – End result

On August 6, 2006 by Anant With 2 Comments - Studies, Yours Truly

Toefl went well. It is much more easy than I expected. But it’s not like I aced it and will max it.

Reading section was pretty easy although I was a bit nervous at first because I had heard or rather read on the Toefl forums that sometimes instead of the regular 3, 5 essays are given in this section for the same amount of time. Well I got only 3 so I was relieved when the section started.

Listening was a breeze although I might have gotten a couple of inference questions incorrect.

Speaking! This is the section I did the worst on. In one of the questions, I got a bit flustered and so forgot what I wanted to say. In another, I could not finish what I had to say in the allotted time so it was kinda incomplete.

Essay writing was pretty easy. The summarizing section was easy enough. The opinion essay was a cracker. The topic was such a trivial one that I initially did not know what to write. However I managed to wrangle something out and write a decent enough essay (Due to the NDA, I cannot disclose what the topic was)

Ps. Received my GMAT essay score. Scored a 5 on 6. Much better than I expected

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Toefl – Cbt vs iBT

On June 18, 2006 by Anant With 8 Comments - Uncategorized

Since my Toefl is coming up and when I booked it, I could not get a slot for the CBT but only for the iBT. Hence I set about finding out the differences between the two versions of the test.

The main reason why I could not locate a CBT slot was because it has been discontinued since the introduction of the iBT which will happen from the coming July. Now on to the main differences.

The single biggest difference is the introduction of the new Speaking section which will test a candidates English speaking ability and hence moot the requirement for taking the TSE. This section consists of 3 parts in which,

  • The candidate has to speak based on a topic which he is familiar with.
  • Read a short passage and listen a talk related to the passage. Based on them, the candidate must answer questions.
  • Listen to a short lecture/conversation and summarize the key points of the audio.

Besides this, the TOEFL now consists of two essays instead of the earlier one. The scoring is also now on a scale of 0 to 120. I’m not sure of the earlier, but I believe it was a maximum of 300.

For score comparisons, ETS has released a score comparison table (Warning: PDF link)

Due to the addition of the essay and the speaking section, the TOEFL iBT is now four hours longs :O
That is one hell of a long test :(

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