The TOEFL iBT Speaking section is designed to evaluate the English speaking proficiency of students like you whose native language is not English but who want to pursue undergraduate or graduate study in an English-speaking context. Like all the other sections of the TOEFL iBT, the Speaking section is delivered via computer.

In the Speaking section you will be asked to speak on a variety of topics that draw on personal experience, campus-based situations, and academic-type content material. There are six questions. The first two questions are called Independent Speaking Tasks because they require you to draw entirely on your own ideas, opinions, and experiences when responding. The other four questions are Integrated Speaking Tasks. In these tasks you will listen to a conversation or to an excerpt from a lecture, or read a passage and then listen to a brief discussion or lecture excerpt, before you are asked the question. These questions are called Integrated Tasks because they require thai you integrate your English-language skills—listening and speaking, or listening, reading, and speaking. In responding to these questions, you will be asked to base your spoken response on the listening passage or on both the listening passage and the reading passage together.

The Speaking section takes approximately 20 minutes. Response time allowed for each question ranges from 45 to 60 seconds. For Speaking questions that involve listening, you will hear short spoken passages or conversations on head¬phones. For Speaking questions that involve reading, you will read short written passages on your computer screen. You can take notes throughout the Speaking section and use your notes when responding to the Speaking questions. For each of the six questions, you will be given a short time to prepare a response. You will answer each of the questions by speaking into a microphone. Your spoken responses will be recorded and sent to a scoring center, and they will be scored by experienced raters. Your responses will be scored holistically. This means that the rater will listen for various Features in your response and assign a single score based on the overall skill you display in your answer. Although the scoring criteria vary somewhat depending on the question, the raters will generally be listening for the following features in your answer:

• Delivery: How clear your speech is. Good responses are those in which the speech is fluid and clear, with good pronunciation, natural pacing, and natural-sounding intonation patterns.
• Language Use: How effectively you use grammar and vocabulary to convey your ideas. Raters will be looking to see how well you can control both basic and more complex language structures and use appropriate vocabulary.
• Topic Development: How fully you answer the question and how coherently you present your ideas. Good responses generally use all or most of the time allotted, and the relationship between ideas and the progression from one idea to the next is clear and easy to follow.

It is important to note that raters do not expect your response to be perfect, and high scoring responses may contain occasional errors and minor lapses in any of the three areas described above.

Edited by
Katherine Protsenko,
TOEFL-consultant

From The Official Guide to the New TOEFL IBT