The TOEFL is an English proficiency test used by universities worldwide for admission. It runs 120 items across four sections in under 90 minutes, and is scored on a 1–6 band scale. Below: how it is built, how the new scoring works, and the free tools and guides we have for it.
Reading and Listening are two-stage adaptive: a routing stage decides whether you receive the lower or upper difficulty module. Speaking and Writing are linear.
Reading is one of the two adaptive sections on the 2026 TOEFL. You take a routing stage first, and your performance there determines whether you receive the lower or upper difficulty module — which is why two people can sit the same section and see different questions.
Listening spans two quite different demands: following a conversation between two people, and following an extended academic monologue such as a lecture. Like Reading, it is adaptive — a routing stage sets the difficulty of what follows.
Speaking changed more than any other section in 2026. It is now an interview-format section of 11 items answered spontaneously, in roughly eight minutes — down from about sixteen, and structured quite differently from the old independent and integrated tasks.
Writing is now two quite different things in one section: ten grammar-focused sentence reconstruction items, and two written responses to situations in academic contexts. The long independent essay of the old TOEFL is gone.
Each section gets its own band. Your overall score is the average of the four, rounded to the nearest half band — not a sum, which is the biggest single difference from the old scale.
Work out your overall band with the TOEFL score calculator, convert an old 0–120 score with the score converter, or read the scale in full on TOEFL score range.
Applying to US graduate programmes?
Most also require the GRE, which ETS administers alongside the TOEFL. Our GRE course covers Verbal and Quant in full, with adaptive practice tests and instant scoring.