IELTS & TOFEL
International English Language Testing System – IELTS – is considered to be the most popular of the examinations that are accepted by universities. Many universities in countries such as the United States of America, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Germany will want to know that their students have a good level of English and as a result they will expect to see qualifications for this in with their application. This paves a chance to show that you are potential enough to survive over there. It has been used for more than 21 years and is still the one that is used as a marker for testing nowadays.
IELTS is used by over 8,000 organizations worldwide and all are happy to accept that the results they are presented with are accurate and will ensure that the holder of the certificate will be able to speak, read and understand English to a level that will allow them to study and work as a professional.
The IELTS is managed by three main institutions: the British Council, IDP: IELTS Australia and the University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations (Cambridge ESOL).This is important to understand in order to prepare for what is essentially an examination of British and not American English.
EXAM PATTERN
Listening
This will take about 30 minutes and 40 questions need to be answered. There will be a few recorded texts that have to be listened to and they get harder as the IELTS test goes on. There will be various accents and some will be conversations, some will be dialogues. This section of the IELTS exam has four sections of its own, with the first two covering social needs and the second two covering training and educational subjects.
Reading
Again there are 40 questions to answer but on this occasion there will be an hour given to answer them. Three of them will be passages that have to be read and then there will be tasks.
Writing
It includes two tasks that will take an hour. For the first one there needs to be a report written and this must be 150 words and revolve around information that is outlined in a diagram. This will show the level at which the candidate can describe data and understand what is happening. For the second part of the IELTS exam– and this is the part that will take the most time – there needs to be an essay written and it should be around 250 words long.
Speaking
This is the shortest of the IELTS exam sections and will take around 14 minutes. There will be a conversation with the examiner and there will be a few short questions asked and they must be answered in English. The topic will be something that is familiar and there should also be an element of conversation between the two
TOEFL
Since its introduction in late 2005, the TOEFL Internet-based Test (iBT) format has progressively replaced the computer-based tests (CBT) and paper-based tests (PBT), although paper-based testing is still used in select areas. The TOEFL iBT test has been introduced in phases, with the United States, Canada, France, Germany, and Italy in 2005 and the rest of the world in 2006, with test centers added regularly. The CBT was discontinued in September 2006 and these scores are no longer valid.
Initially, the demand for test seats was higher than availability, and candidates had to wait for months. It is now possible to take the test within one to four weeks in most countries.[8] The four-hour test consists of four sections, each measuring one of the basic language skills (while some tasks require integrating multiple skills), and all tasks focus on language used in an academic, higher-education environment. Note-taking is allowed during the TOEFL iBT test. The test cannot be taken more than once every 12 days.[9]
- Reading
- The Reading section consists of questions on 3-5 passages, each approximately 700 words in length. The passages are on academic topics; they are the kind of material that might be found in an undergraduate university textbook. Passages require understanding of rhetorical functions such as cause-effect, compare-contrast and argumentation. Students answer questions about main ideas, details, inferences, essential information, sentence insertion, vocabulary, rhetorical purpose and overall ideas. New types of questions in the TOEFL iBT test require filling out tables or completing summaries. Prior knowledge of the subject under discussion is not necessary to come to the correct answer.
- Listening
- The Listening section consists of questions on six passages, each 3–5 minutes in length. These passages include two student conversations and four academic lectures or discussions. The conversations involve a student and either a professor or a campus service provider. The lectures are a self-contained portion of an academic lecture, which may involve student participation and does not assume specialized background knowledge in the subject area. Each conversation and lecture passage is heard only once. Test-takers may take notes while they listen and they may refer to their notes when they answer the questions. Each conversation is associated with five questions and each lecture with six. The questions are meant to measure the ability to understand main ideas, important details, implications, relationships between ideas, organization of information, speaker purpose and speaker attitude.
- Speaking
- The Speaking section consists of six tasks: two independent and four integrated. In the two independent tasks, test-takers answer opinion questions on familiar topics. They are evaluated on their ability to speak spontaneously and convey their ideas clearly and coherently. In two of the integrated tasks, test-takers read a short passage, listen to an academic course lecture or a conversation about campus life and answer a question by combining appropriate information from the text and the talk. In the two remaining integrated tasks, test-takers listen to an academic course lecture or a conversation about campus life and then respond to a question about what they heard. In the integrated tasks, test-takers are evaluated on their ability to appropriately synthesize and effectively convey information from the reading and listening material. Test-takers may take notes as they read and listen and may use their notes to help prepare their responses. Test-takers are given a short preparation time before they have to begin speaking. The responses are digitally recorded, sent to ETS’s Online Scoring Network (OSN), and evaluated by three to six raters.
- Writing
- The Writing section measures a test taker’s ability to write in an academic setting and consists of two tasks: one integrated and one independent. In the integrated task, test-takers read a passage on an academic topic and then listen to a speaker discuss it. The test-taker then writes a summary about the important points in the listening passage and explains how these relate to the key points of the reading passage. In the independent task, the test-taker must write an essay that states their opinion or choice, and then explain it, rather than simply listing personal preferences or choices. Responses are sent to the ETS OSN and evaluated by at least 3 different raters