Reading and Listening are multistage adaptive. Writing and Speaking are linear. The January 2026 redesign replaced the old integrated Speaking tasks entirely.
If you are working from a preparation book printed before 2026, its Speaking chapter describes a test that no longer exists. The independent task, the campus-situation task and the academic-lecture summary have all gone. What replaced them is shorter, faster, and gives you no preparation time at all.
7 sentences, each played once, each repeated back exactly. The recording allowance grows with the sentence — from 8 seconds for the shortest band to 12 for the longest — so the time you get is a clue to how much you were meant to retain.
4 questions in sequence, 45 seconds for each answer, and no preparation time between hearing a question and answering it. It is the closest TOEFL has ever come to the IELTS interview, with the examiner removed.
The redesign moved sections onto a 1–6 scale, but most published admissions requirements still name the legacy total. ETS publishes a concordance between the two and it runs through 2028, so an offer letter quoting the old scale remains readable — Overall 4.0–5.0 (legacy ~72–100) is the range a competitive application usually sits in. Check the requirement against the scale your university actually wrote it in, not the one on your score report.
The January 2026 redesign replaced the integrated Speaking tasks entirely. The independent opinion task, the campus-situation task and the academic-lecture summary have all gone, along with preparation time on every task. What replaced them is Listen and Repeat and Take an Interview.
About eight minutes, covering 11 items — seven Listen and Repeat sentences and four interview questions.
No. The 2026 format removed it entirely. You answer each interview question immediately after hearing it, which is the single biggest change for anyone preparing from a pre-2026 book.
45 seconds, with four questions in sequence. That is roughly four to six sentences at a natural pace — enough for a position, a reason and an example, and not enough for a preamble.
New score reports use a 1 to 6 band per section. ETS publishes a concordance to the legacy 0 to 120 total that runs through 2028, so a university requirement quoting the old scale is still readable — but it is not what your report will print.
Our TOEFL mock runs Listen and Repeat and Take an Interview on the current format and timings — no preparation time, 45 seconds per interview answer — and returns a section band from 1 to 6. The first session is free.
This guide is written from the TOEFL iBT test format published by ETS, in our own words. For the official wording, see the ETS test content pages. MockLive AI is an independent practice tool and is not affiliated with ETS.