Australian Immigration Daily News

If your clients are taking the TOEFL iBT^® test for skilled migration or other visas, they need to know what to expect on the test, especially the Writing section. 

What is the Writing section like?

The total time for the Writing section is 50 minutes. Test takers are asked to write responses to 2 writing tasks: the Integrated Writing task and the Independent Writing task.

• For the Integrated Writing task (20 minutes), the test taker will read a short passage and listen to a short lecture, then write in response to what has been read and listened to.
• For the Independent Task (30 minutes) the test taker will write an essay in response to a Writing topic.

The responses are typed on the computer keyboard and sent via the internet to ETS for marking.

How are Writing responses scored?

• Writing responses are each scored holistically on a scale of 0 to 5. The scores are converted to a single scaled score of 0 to 30 for the Writing section.
• The holistic scores are based on 3 main criteria: development, organization, and language use. See the Writing Rubrics document for more details about each score level.
• Test takers are not expected to produce a comprehensive essay about a specialized topic — the response is recognized as a good first draft. It is possible to receive a high score with an essay that contains some minor errors.

Learn more about the content and scoring of the TOEFL iBT Writing questions by watching the Inside the TOEFL Test videos here:

https://youtu.be/-hKJTJv4bjY

https://youtu.be/zx3AXbGWNbA