One huge benefit of taking a TOEFL practice test is getting to see how close you are to meeting your score goals. But what happens when your practice test doesn’t give you the scaled, 0-30 score for each section? That’s where we come in! Here’s what you need to know about estimating your TOEFL score.
TOEFL Practice Tests Don’t Come with An Official Score Report
There are a few different good sources of TOEFL practice tests. You can get a total of 10 practice tests from ETS’s very own Official TOEFL iBT Tests Vol. 1 and Official TOEFL iBT Tests Vol. 2. These collections of mock TOEFL tests both have software that gives you a percentage score. The books also have printed answer keys so that you can calculate your raw points. Unfortunately, this two volume set doesn’t have any charts for estimating your actual scaled TOEFL scores.
Now, here’s some good news: the 2020 Official Guide for the TOEFL (Volume 6) does have score conversion charts. Not only that, but their score conversion tables have been updated for the current version of the TOEFL (post-2019!).
More good news: If you’ve already taken the practice tests in the Official Guide, try Magoosh’s free TOEFL Sample Test. Our premium TOEFL prep also offers practice tests and customized practice for you to take. (Try our one-week free trial to get a sense of how Magoosh TOEFL prep works.)
Estimating Your TOEFL Score for the Tests in The Official Guide to the TOEFL
The Official Guide to the TOEFL Test has a total of 4 practice tests. Each test in the book comes with a scoring guide to convert your score to the official 120-point scale.
Note that each test in the Official Guide to the TOEFL Test had its own score conversion charts. This is because the number of raw points in TOEFL Reading and TOEFL Listening varies from test-to-test.
Estimating Your Scaled TOEFL Score on Other TOEFL Practice Tests
If you are using a test other than the four in the official guide, there are two ways to estimate your scaled TOEFL score.
One way to estimate your TOEFL score for non-OG practice tests is to use simple math. The percentage of answers you get correct in Reading and Listening can be converted into a percentage of 30. This works, of course, because each section of the TOEFL has a maximum of 30 scaled points.
If you can get your TOEFL Speaking and Writing practice tests scored, you can also convert those scores to percentages of 30. (See our post on the math of estimating TOEFL scores.)
This “math only” approach can be useful. But there is a disadvantage.This method doesn’t help you estimate the way that ETS may adjust your score. ETS always makes slight adjustments when they calculate your official score; it’s never as simple as a percentage-to-scaled-score conversion.
Calculating Adjusted TOEFL Scores Based on Percentage Correct
ETS is pretty secretive about how they adjust your scores. Still, the score conversion tables in the TOEFL OG do give some hints as to how scores are adjusted.
Here at Magoosh, we’ve looked carefully at the score conversion tables in the Official TOEFL Guide. Based on those tables, we’ve made a chart for converting your percentage score to your adjusted scaled score.
Now remember, each individual practice test should be scaled a little differently. Because of this, the conversion chart below isn’t perfect. But this chart should give you a rough idea of your scaled, adjusted TOEFL score score.
TOEFL Reading and TOEFL Listening Score Estimation Table
| Percentage of correct answers in TOEFL Reading or Listening | Approximate scaled score |
|---|---|
| 95-100 | 30 |
| 86-95 | 28-29 |
| 76-85 | 26-27 |
| 66-75 | 22-25 |
| 56-65 | 18-21 |
| 46-55 | 13-17 |
| 36-45 | 8-12 |
| 20-25 | 1-2 |
| 15-20 | 0-1 |
| 0-15 | 0 |
Like I said, this chart is only a general guideline for your TOEFL scores. If your percentage is in the middle of its class, just estimate the scaled score. For example, let’s say that I scored a 72% on Reading and 68% on Listening. My scaled Reading score would be about 24, in the top half of the 66-75% range. My scaled Listening score would be a 22 or 23, closer to the bottom of its range on the chart.
Estimating Your TOEFL Writing Scores
For the Writing section, it gets a little fuzzier. Estimate your scores by comparing your essays to the examples given in the Official Guide, or to other scored examples from ETS. (Such as the ones in this practice set from the official TOEFL website.) Also carefully check the quality of your essays by consulting the official TOEFL Writing rubrics.
Note which characteristics mentioned by the raters are also found in your essays and give yourself a score. You will wind up with two numbers, one for each essay. Each number could be as high as 5. Add these together.
Once you have that number, you could just do the math. For example, if you think you have a 4 on the first writing task and a 3 on TOEFL Writing Task 2, you could add them to get 7/10. This is 70%, and 70% of 30 is 21. So that could be your estimated score.
Again though, ETS gives some clues about additional adjustments to your score. Or rather, ETS gave some clues in the past, in the form of an official ETS document entitled “TOEFL iBT Scores.” This document is no longer publicly available, unfortunately. The good news is that my colleagues and I were able to get a copy of the document back when it was still up on the ETS website.
By carefully analyzing the “TOEFL iBT Scores” document, Magoosh has created and additional chart for estimating your scaled, adjusted score for TOEFL Writing.
Use the table below to convert your score to the necessary 30-point scale (note that you will only get a score ending in .5 if you have two graders read your essays):
TOEFL Writing Score Estimation Table
| Raw TOEFL Writing Score | Scaled TOEFL Writing Score |
|---|---|
| 0 | 0 |
| 0.5 | 4 |
| 1 | 5 |
| 1.5 | 7 |
| 2 | 8 |
| 2.5 | 10 |
| 3 | 11 |
| 3.5 | 12 |
| 4 | 14 |
| 4.5 | 15 |
| 5 | 17 |
| 5.5 | 18 |
| 6 | 20 |
| 6.5 | 21 |
| 7 | 22 |
| 7.5 | 24 |
| 8 | 25 |
| 8.5 | 27 |
| 9 | 28 |
| 9.5 | 29 |
| 10 | 30 |
Let’s look again at the TOEFL Writing score of 7 I referenced before. Once again, let’s say you give yourself a 4 on the independent task and a 3 on the integrated task. This total of 7 is a 21 if you just apply the percentage to the 30 point total. But your 7 may actually convert to an adjusted score of 22, based on ETS’s data and the table above.
Estimating Your TOEFL Speaking Scores
The process for the Speaking section is similar to the Writing section; the only problem is that it’s harder to score yourself on speaking (this shouldn’t stop you from recording and critiquing your responses, though). If you know someone who can rate your Speaking responses for you, then tell them that each of the four Speaking tasks is worth a total of 4 points and show them the Speaking Scoring Rubric in the Official Guide. (If you don’t have the guide, the official TOEFL Speaking rubric is also available online.)
Once they’ve scored your responses, you can again simply apply percentages to the TOEFL Speaking section’s 30 point range. Or you can use Magoosh’s table below for estimating your TOEFL score, based on ETS’s Speaking conversion chart. (ETS’s original chart for Speaking scores was in the no-longer-available “TOEFL iBT Scores Document” I mentioned earlier, the one that was the basis for the Listening Score Estimation table above.)
Use the chart below to convert your TOEFL Speaking score to an adjusted scaled score:
TOEFL Speaking Score Estimation Table
| Raw TOEFL Speaking Score | Scaled TOEFL Speaking Score |
|---|---|
| 0 | 0 |
| 1 | 2 |
| 2 | 4 |
| 3 | 6 |
| 4 | 8 |
| 5 | 9 |
| 6 | 11 |
| 7 | 13 |
| 8 | 15 |
| 9 | 17 |
| 10 | 19 |
| 11 | 21 |
| 12 | 23 |
| 13 | 24 |
| 14 | 26 |
| 15 | 28 |
| 16 | 30 |
If you can’t get your speaking responses rated, then, as in the Listening section, use the sample answers and commentary provided in the section review to estimate your score.
If I continue my sample scores, I get the following results:
| TOEFL Section | Raw Score | Adjusted Score |
|---|---|---|
| Reading | 72% | 24 |
| Listening | 68% | 22 |
| Writing | 7 raw points | 22 |
| Speaking | 13 raw points | 24 |
Don’t forget that although these estimation charts are useful tools, the scores they give you are not official. On the actual test, your final score will depend not only on percentages and conversion charts, but also on the relative difficulty of the particular test you took. There may be also be other reasons that ETS could adjust your score. (Like I said, ETS is a bit secretive about their process.)
So calculate your practice test scores and use them to measure your progress and preparedness, but don’t be surprised if your official score is a slightly different number. Hopefully this will point you in the right direction, and ultimately keep you from needing to retake the TOEFL because you didn’t estimate correctly.
Another way to evaluate how ready you are to take the TOEFL is to sign up for Magoosh and take advantage of our customized practice sessions. The more practice that you do, and the more that you understand why you miss certain questions, the better you will perform on the TOEFL!
I have given one listening test from TOEFL official guide and i scored 24/33 points. Can you please tell me what is my score out of 30
There’s a conversion table in the “answers” section of each test in the official guide. 🙂 Just go to that section and it will tell you!
Hello, could you please tell me if the scores for the reading and listening sections are available right after the end of the exam (like the verbal and quantitative sections for the GRE) or they will be available with the scores of the other sections 10 days after the test date ? I have actually passed my test today and I am a bit worried because they weren’t shown when i reported my scores. Thanks a lot.
Hi Reda,
The TOEFL Scores take a bit longer to be delivered–you should get a score report 10 days after your test (so that they have time to grade the speaking and writing sectinos). For the paper-based test, you may have to wait for several weeks! You can see this ETS article for more informations: FAQs about the TOEFL Test. 🙂
I just gave my TOEFL exam yesterday. What my problem is my speaking section didn’t gone well. At 1st section of question it went worst due to some disturbance and second as well but from the 3rd question it slightly pickup the pace and I thought I spoke and response good than before. So, how does speaking marking goes? Out of 6 my 2 Question response went bad. I am feeling really worried about this. Although, my reading, listening, and writing section went well but speaking is doubtful.
Speaking is graded on a scale of 0 to 4, as explained in this document: https://www.ets.org/s/toefl/pdf/toefl_speaking_rubrics.pdf
After you have six marks, each from 0 to 4, they are averaged together and then the average is converted to the scaled 0 – 30 score. You can see that conversion table near the very end of this document: http://www.ets.org/s/toefl/pdf/toefl_student_test_prep_planner.pdf
I hope those help to clarify!
How much did you take on the speaking ?
what was your score?
I took the exam two days ago and made a big mistake in the writing section. I read the instructions and it said to write an essay with this many words, but I foolishly wrote a paragraph for the essay sections, both of them. The paragraphs were good though. Now I am worried that I did not write a five paragraph essay. What could my essay writing score be? I am really worried about this. I did fine on the rest of the sections though.
That’s a very good question, Said.
If your paragraphs were as long and complete as the average 3-4 paragraph TOEFL essay, you may only lose a few points for organization. If the paragraphs are shorter— more like normal-length paragraphs in an academic essay, it’s likely you’ll also lose points for not having a fully developed argument. If you haven’t done this already, I would look at the official TOEFL Writing rubrics: https://www.ets.org/s/toefl/pdf/toefl_writing_rubrics.pdf
Think about what you wrote, and how it might measure up to the ETS scoring guides. But try not to stress out too much. The truth is that you won’t know your score for sure until you actually get it.
I’ve some doubts about pointing scale. Because, according to the scale, if I have % 50 achievement rate from Reading Section, I get 9 points. I think it is really unlogically pointing system. So are you sure that your tables are correct? I hope if I do %50, I get 15 out of 30.
You’re right that TOEFL grading isn’t very intuitive. But the short answer is no, 50% correct doesn’t give you 15 out of 30. There are a couple reasons for that. First, if you choose randomly, you will on average get the correct answer 25% of the time. But random guessing should not give you points. So 25% correct should be much lower, near zero.
Secondly, the TOEFL is a standardized test. That means many different version of the TOEFL have to get the same scoring. So the truth is, every test converts to the 1-30 scale differently. No single table of percentage correct and score will be accurate for every version of the TOEFL, because there are some small differences in difficulty between different tests.
So no, the table is not perfect, but it is much closer to the truth than simply converting 50% to 15/30. I hope that makes some sense!
Dear Lucas,
i am really desperate because the school i applied to requires minimum 100 toefl score.
I took the first test and got R:25, L:26, S:23, W:24, total: 97. I took the second test a moth after and got R:25, L:24, S:20, W:27. Do you have any idea how the admission evaluate my score? Would it be possible for the admission to consider my highest score each section? R:25 L:26 S:23 W:27, so my total score will be 101? I sent both of my toefl scores though..
That does sound like a tricky (and frustrating!) situation. In unusual cases like this, some university admissions departments/programs are willing to bend the rules, and others aren’t. The best you can do is check with your prospective university and see what they say. It certainly doesn’t hurt to ask.
i have the similar query i need a score of 79, if i calculate my best scores from the two attempt, i am getting 77.
first time : 15 ®,13(L),23(S),20(w)
second time :19®,7(L),23(S),22(w)
what can be done now?
My score is low in toefl ibt. I got only 56 out of total. The universities I applied required minimum score of 61. Can I apply for any other universities with this score?
There definitely are some universities who will accept you with that TOEFL score. Generally, though, acceptance of students with lower scores will be conditional acceptance. This means you’ll likely be asked to take additional English classes before you begin your regular degree courses.
which universities you have applied, please let me know, i have a low score too of 71.
I took my Toefl yesterday,I made a terrible mistake by spending more times on some questions on the reading section,so I had to rush because the timer was going quickly and I lost my focus and just pick the answers without analyzing them.And also on the listening section I couldn’t concentrate myself to listen the lectures so I had to guess some answers.But I did very well on the speaking and the writing section.I need a score of 76.Do you think I can score it that way?
Congratulations on doing so well on Speaking and Writing— but sorry to hear that the Reading and Listening sections of your exam didn’t go so well. My answer to your question, Winn, would be “maybe.” I have certainly seen test takers get in the high 70s or low 80s with poor Reading/Listening scores, based on the strength of their Writing and Speaking sections. It all depends on exactly what your scores were in TOEFL Reading and Listening. Good luck!
Hi Winn! I have alson took the test on may 7th. Have you already received your score?
I scored 26 in writing. How is that possible? according to the chart you can’t get a 26. Has that rubric table conversion changed?
Hi Andrés,
Firstly, awesome job! That’s a great score for the writing section 🙂 To answer your question, it is possible to score 26 on the writing section. The charts on this blog are here to help you estimate your score and help you understand how the raw and scaled score. However, this can vary slightly from the actual scaling system used by ETS. Sorry for any confusion this caused!
Thanks for your help. Unfortunately I need 27…
hey I took my test today and the reading section was the problem I manage to answer the first two passages to my own understanding but the last passage I missed the last four questions but I did the listening writing and the speaking section I need a score of 80 pls do comment on this
Ouch! The last four questions include the two “Reading to Learn” questions at the end, which have more than one correct answer and are worth more points. Still, to get a 20 in TOEFL Reading (1/4 of the 80 you need for this 4-section exam), you only need to get around 67% of the answers right for the Reading section as a whole. So if you did reasonably well on the other Reading questions, you might still get that 20.
Even if your reading score is a little below a 20, I’d say you still have a chance at getting an 80 if you got higher than 20 in the other sections of the exam. You’ll have to wait until you get your score reports before you can be certain, though.
Hi!
I am going to give mt TOEFL on July 9th. I have been practicing the 5 official toefl tests and i reckon that the key provided by them is incorrect at few places.
Can you tell whether the answers given are correct which will help me identify my mistakes?
I’ve used both of the five-test books extensively (Official TOEFL iBT Tests Volumes 1 and 2), and I can definitely tell you that the answer keys are correct. In fact, you can always trust any answer keys that come form official, ETS-sponsored TOEFL sources. So if the answers seem to be wrong, really double check the answers in the key, and analyze why the TOEFL identifies them as correct. This can help you understand the test more deeply and refine your test strategies.
Hi,
I am preparing for Toefl iBT and have around 3 more weeks to prepare. I need high marks (equivalent to band 8 of IELTS). I am finding reading and listening a bit tough (need 29 and 28 points respectively). Can you please suggest how can I improve reading and listening in next three weeks.
Regards
Aseem
How you improve Reading and Listening depends a lot on your current ability in those sections. But I can give you some general rules. For one thing, it’s always a good idea to study multiple choice test strategy— these kinds of strategies can really boost your score. And test strategy can be learned quickly, which is great since you have just three weeks left.
For both of these sections, you’ll also want to study vocabulary (especially for Reading!) and learn how to understand vocabulary in context, so that you can make good guesses at the meanings of unfamiliar words in the passage and on the audio. Be sure also to understand how English intonation works, so that you can recognize important “content words” when you hear them.
I took the TOEFL IBT yesterday and the reading was too long, I don’t remember how many questions but they were 56 more or less…. I didn’t have time to complete the last 3 questions, and in some of them I needed to guess….
The problem is…. how can I calculate my reading score, if for example I got 45 ot of 56? I understand that the maximum score is 30 in each section…..
Thank you
Ah, math! Basically, you solve this by calculating the percent of questions you got right, and then applying that percentage to 30. In your case, 46/56 = 0.82, or 82%. 82% of 30 is 24.6, which would round up to a 25. There is also an additional complication to calculating your score in your situation, unfortunately. If you got 56 questions, that almost certainly means you got an extra-long experimental section of Reading, with four passages and four question sets, instead of the standard 3. This means one of the reading passages/question sets is experimental, and will not count toward your score. Which one? There’s no way of knowing, sadly.
Dear Expert Magoosh.
Your answer does not corresponds to the chart given. In this case you culculate proportionally. You Say that 82 percent correct answer is about 25, but based on the above chart you tell us that getting 82 percent correct in listening and reading gives you 26-27 score out of 30. which one is true?
Thank you for your answer,
Sincerely,
Shota
Hi Rami,
It’s important to recognize that these are all estimates. Each test will be scaled a bit differently in order to account for differences between tests. I know that’s not a very satisfying answer, but unfortunately I can’t say for certain which one is true.
Hi Estefi,
I took it the same day. You’re the reading part was too long, there were 56 questions. I think there was an experimental part. I hope you did it well.
For now, just to wait 10 days to get our score!
Take care.
YOU’re RIGHT!!! I missed it in my previous comment.
i am going to take my TOEFL on 6th of August. I am practicing from official test materials. But I am unable to get my speaking and writing evaluated.Please guide me how can i get my Speaking and writing evaluated, so that i can know my weaknesses.
There are several ways to get your TOEFL Speaking and Writing evaluated. The most reliable way is to hire a knowledgeable TOEFL tutor. You may be able to find a tutor through a local school or language academy. There are also many TOEFL tutors online. can find tutoring online (See Part 1 and Part 2 of the Magoosh TOEFL Blog’s guide to finding online TOEFL tutoring.)
That costs money, of course. You can also potentially get free feedback on Writing and Speaking by going to online TOEFL forums. There, you can share audio files of your TOEFL Speaking or sample TOEFL Writing and get feedback form other forum users. Often this means getting feedback form fellow students, but there are usually some professional teachers on the forums too.
hey sanjay, i also did mine on 6th which country did you take yours from?
Hi,my toefl test was on august too but I have a doubt, I talked more than the time that I had in the speaking section and I corrected two words for my bad pronuntiation… I am really concerned about this… ahh and my final big error was that one of the paragraphs was incomplete (because at the final just when the time was close to finish I try to write more)
Please this errors are really serious? I need a score of 83
This does sound stressful– sorry that your performance on the TOEFL didn’t go exactly as you’d hoped. I’m happy to tell you that self-correcting when you mispronounce words is not a serious error. In fact, sometimes self-correction can even be a good thing that helps your score. Native speakers also make mistakes and self-correct.
Running out of time and giving incomplete response in TOEFL Speaking and Writing can be a more serious problem. However, even here, you may or may not lose a lot of points. If your ideas are clear and close-to-complete before you run out of time, getting cut off in speech or not completing your final paragraph will only hurt your scores a little. However, if you left out some important ideas so that your response seems incomplete and hard to understand, that can hurt your score a lot more.
I hope this helps. Of course, you won’t really know how you did until you get your score report. This is stressful, I know.
Hi,
I have recently took the TOEFL test. I feel so worried about the integrated writing section. The lecture was not that easy for me to understand and I couldn’t get one of the three reasons clearly. I think I couldn’t write some parts of one of the reasons correctly. How much will the raters decrease the score for that? :-/
Thanks
Sorry to hear you struggled with the TOEFL Integrated Writing prompt— this is a difficult task for TOEFL test-takers.If you really did give incorrect information about what was in the lecture, this will noticeably hurt your score. How many points you lose depends on how inaccurate your paraphrases were. To figure out what your score might be, I recommend carefully reading the official rubric for TOEFL Integrated Writing.
In need to score a minimum band score 36 which consist of 3 in both reading & listening and 12 in both speaking & writing. Will you be able to convert this as this is for my Australia work visa application.
I may be able to help, but could you clarify what you mean by “band score?” Which test will you be getting these scores of 36 band), 3 (reading and listening) and 12 (speaking and writing)? If you can tell me a little more about the exam, I may be able to make the conversion. (Also, if your’e using the TOEFL to migrate to Australia, you may want to check out our post on the TOEFL and Australian Immigration.)
Hi,
I am going to take toefl on Aug 27th and I took 3 ETS official tests and scored 25-28 in reading listening but am scared about speaking section because I don’t know how much score I can expect with my responses. I just want to keep my score at least 20+. Any idea how can I evaluate my responses and predict will I be able to get 20+ with these kinds of responses and what should I do to make sure that I get 20+ on the actual test.
Thanks
It is pretty hard to estimate your own TOEFL Speaking scores. But there are resources to help you. If you haven’t done so already, carefully study the official Speaking rubrics for the TOEFL.
It may also help to hire a tutor, at least for a few sessions. For Speaking in particular, I especially recommend the online tutors at TOEFL Speaking Teacher. Online TOEFL forums could potentially give you feedback as well– sometimes you can upload a sound file of a Speaking response and get free advice form fellow forum members. Here are three other posts on this blog that I recommend reading as you look for good ways to get TOEFL Speaking feedback:
The Best TOEFL Forums
Places to Find TOEFL Tutoring Online, Part 1
Places to Find TOEFL Tutoring Online, Part 2
If I have two toefl scores within two years,do I have option to send the best score out of two? Secondly,do I need to cancel my low score (out of the two) so that I can send my higher score?Or is there any other alternative to send best score out of the two..Please Reply
If you have two TOEFL scores and both TOEFL scores are less than two years old, you can simply send schools the higher score. You don’t need to cancel the lower score in order to send the higher score, even if the lower score is more recent. If your highest score is the older one though, make sure the score will be LESS than two years old by your application deadline. TOEFL scores expire after two years.
I recently gave my TOEFL iBT and the speaking section on the test didn’t go that well. I was unable to complete my answers within the time limit and in one of questions I paused for a few seconds. How much is this going to affect my score?
Continuous speech and complete information are two important features, as listed on ETS’s official TOEFL Speaking rubrics. So this will affect your score in some way. If you had just one pause, the impact on your score should be minimal. If your answer was close to complete when you ran out of time, that also has just a small impact on your score. However, if you left out any key ideas because you ran out of time, then you may lose quite a few points.
To get an idea of how your score will be affected, carefully read through the rubrics I linked above.
Hi,
First of all, I would like to thank you guys for these valuable tools and comments.
I needed a score of 100 at TOEFL IBT and unfortunately I got 98 on my first attempt (test taken on August 6th) due to a 22 at writing section. I immediately scheduled another test on August 26th and practiced hard using the official material’s scoring guidelines as well as the above estimation tools and tables. This was really helpful to self-evaluate my responses in a quite accurate way for both speaking and writing sections and see my improvements in these fields.
On my second attempt, I got a score of 102, thanks to a 29 at reading and a 26 at writing (despite an incomplete final paragraph in task 1).
Good luck to all of you and many thanks again to Magoosh.
See you.
I need 75 minimum from toefl but there is restriction for me that is speaking must be 20 or higher . My question is that what should i do to get 20 on the speaking section ?
What you need to do for a good speaking score depends at least partly on your own skills. Make sure you carefully assess your TOEFL Speaking strengths and weaknesses as you plan your studies.
Beyond that– time management and organization is KEY. For TOEFL Independent Speaking, master thinking fast and having enough to say. And for Integrated Speaking, avoid having too much to say. Integrated tasks give you a lot of information to summarize, and it can be hard to say everything you need to say within the 60 second time limit. think carefully about the most important details, and find efficient ways to summarize those details.
i just took ibt toefl test , and due to nervousness i couldnot complete 7 reading question out of 56 and overall in other section have done very good . Will i get 80 above in tofel. I am confident that my other section are pretty well . can I Get 80 above. please help
Sorry to hear you missed 7 questions in Reading! I can understand why that would make you anxious. Getting an 80 might be a possibility, but there are a few factors to consider.
First, if you had 56 questions, that means you got an extra long TOEFL section of the TOEFL for reading. One of the passages is experimental and doesn’t count toward your score. There’s no way to tell which passage is the experimental one. But if all 7 missed questions were for the experimental passage that doesn’t count, then you have no problem.
On the other hand, if all 7 missed questions do count against you, then you have about a 16 in TOEFL Reading. In that worst case scenario, in order to get an 80, you’ll need at least a total of around 64 points between your three other sections– this would be an average of about 21.5 between the three. If you did pretty well on the other sections– mid-twenties at least– you should be OK to get an 80 overall.
Good luck. If you get a chance, post here again and let us know how it went!
I took the test today..in reading and listening section, i had to guess answers of many questions and i have no idea how many of them are right and how many are wrong…..but i have done speaking and integrated writing very well but in independent writing, i gave two reasons in which one doesnot answer the question though it somehow realates to the question…. so, is it possible to get 80/120 ??? Please help
Hi Rabin,
I’m sorry you’re facing this stress! We could speculate all we want, but honestly the best thing to do is wait for the official scores. I don’t think an 80 is impossible, but instead of inventing many possible outcomes, you should try to be patient (I know it’s hard!) and see the outcome when it is ready. Good luck! 🙂
Hello, I have a question about TOEFL iBT score.
If minimum acceptable scores for my College Admission are 52/20, how many points should I make out of 120?
I’m not quite sure what you mean by 52/20. Tell me a little bit more about your College Admission scale, and I’ll help you convert it to the relevant TOEFL score.
hello,
I have scored 71 in toefl in both of my attempts.
first time : 15 (R),13(L),23(S),20(w)
second time :19 (R),7(L),23(S),22(w)
first time , i was not well and for the second time , there was some technical error during the listening section, screen automatically went to the other section even though time was remaining. dont know exactly what happened? but i remember i was on the 10th question when this happened, it means other 7 questions in that set went blank.
What should i do?? i will report ets for this.
Also is there university who accepts low toefl or not at all ??? please suggest some.
thanks!
Hi Sonali,
What an awful situation! Hopefully, ETS can verify that you lost a portion of the Listening Section due to computer malfunction. This is an unusual thing though, so it’s probably best to contact TOEFL customer service and speak directly to someone who can look into this and try to fix it. I don’t know what if anything can be done though– you’d still have to retake the TOEFL Listening section at the very least, most likely. And sometimes when unusual things like this happen, ETS will make you retake the entire exam– for no extra registry or testing fee, or course.
If a retake doesn’t appeal to you and ETS can’t find any other way to fix this, there is a fairly common way to get into a school with a low TOEFL score. it’s called conditional acceptance. This would require you to take some extra ESL classes before you begin your regular degree classes.
I gave my TOEFL a few days back. I fumbled a lot in my speaking section, but I conveyed the message. I did all the other sections really well. Do I have any chance of getting a 20 plus score in speaking?
Hi Sai,
Sorry to hear you didn’t have an easy time with the speaking section. It is impossible to know how the score will come out because “fumbling” doesn’t tell us much about grammar, pronunciation, content, etc. I would tell you to just be patient and hope for the best! You probably did better than you think. Testing centers are awkward places, but your preparation should guide you. 🙂
I scored only 16 in listening section so i really need help to score better at least above 20. What should i do please suggest me.
Sorry to hear you got a disappointing TOEFL Listening score! The biggest advice I’d give you is that listening is a “broad” skill. But this I mean that there are many different aspects to Listening. So you’ll need to think carefully and figure out what aspects of listening are the hardest for you– what parts of the listening skill set are holding back your score.
You may have trouble with pacing, listening to words spoken at normal speed. Or you may have trouble understanding certain individual words, either because you’re not sure of the meaning or you can’t recognize the sound. Or you may have trouble with multiple choice strategy on the questions that follow an audio track. Keep practicing with TOEFL Listening, and do everything you can to really analyze why you miss certain answers.
I have only got 4/30 in my Reading section. Is it the actual mark or the error in the checking or any errors?? I am very much sure i did well but i am very very veryyy disappointed… What may it be? Plz replyy
Hi Sachin,
It looks like that might be the actual score given after marking. If you are in doubt, the best people to contact are ETS. We don’t have any more answers than you. Good luck! 🙂
I have a score of 80 in toefl. R-15, L-21 ,S-22 ,W-22. Am i supposed to reappear for exam as my reading score is really low?
That depends on the requirements of the schools you’re applying to. Some schools only look at the whole-test score. Others set specific minimum score requirements for each of the four TOEFL sections. Check with the schools you’re applying to and see what their policies are.
Hey
Anyone please need help
in the listening section in TOEFL i got 45 correct out of 51 how much will i score
Also in the last question in the TOEFL reading there was a chart with 7 empty boxes that needed to be answered it was worth 4 points i got 6 correct out of the 7 will the whole question be incorrect and get 0 or will i get some points ?
and in the integrated writing question i wrote my answer by following a template is it good to do that or not ? But i got all the major points from the article and the lecture
Lastly in the speaking question 6 i didn’t get all the info because of noise so i only answered it like this
In this lecture the professor is talking about thermoregulation which is a way of maintaining the body temperature between 36 and 38 in different circumstances by using 2 ways
First having using fat for example whales
Second evaporative cooling for example rodents
I only said that how much will i get ?
Quite a few questions! Hopefully some of my answers can ease your post-test anxiety.
First, a 45 out of 51 in TOEFL Listening is a raw score of roughly 26. (45 is 88% of 51, and 26 is 88% of 30.)
Regarding the TOEFL Reading question where you got 6/7 answers correct, that kind of question is worth 4 points, and a 6/7 will earn you 3 out of 4 points.
Next, writing your TOEFL Integrated essay from a template should be fine, as long as you used a good-quality template. Overly-long memorized phrases may make your writing seem unnatural and leas to a bad score, but a template based on a good outline and a few simple transitions can serve you well.
Now for the one piece of clearly bad news I have for you: a very short answer in TOEFL Speaking will always score low, even if the small amount of information you spoke about is good. I would guess that you got a 1 or 2 our of 4 on that response, based on my reading of the official TOEFL Speaking rubrics.
Hey. I need a score of 110 and so far I have only managed to get 85 on the practice test.
Any advise? I have the exam in 10 days.
My best advice to you would be to focus more on test strategy than language skills. Test strategies, such as how to improve pacing and how to eliminate wrong answers in multiple choice questions, can be learned very quickly. You can really improve your testing skills much faster than you can improve overall English ability.
I’ll be honest though, it’s very difficult to raise your score from an 85 to a 100 in just 10 days. Focusing on strategies will give you the biggest boost possible at this point. But reaching the full 110 isn’t guaranteed.
i estimated my reading points.l, that is 45 correct out of 60 points. how much i will score in reading?
45 out of 60 is 75%. 75% of 30 (your maximum points for the TOEFL Reading section) is a 22.5, which would round up to a 23. Assuming that you also get 75% of your answers right on test day, that’d be a 73 in TOEFL Reading.
72% in listening. 26 out of 36. What is the score in 30 scale?
To calculate that score on a 30 scale, just calculate 72% of 30 and round to the nearest number. That would be a 21.6, which rounds up to a 22.
Hi, Magoosh.com, thanks for all your answers. I’m an English teacher and one of my students is preparing the TOEFL online and has asked me if I could find out what the difference is between the score given on traditional TOEFL, going has high as 900 or more points apparently, and the online version, whose score is in the twenties or thirties only. Thanks, Justin
Hi Justin. Great question. The online version of the TOEFL has a score of up to 30 points per section, with a whole test score of up to 120 points. The “traditional” test with the higher point scale is the PBT… and the TOEFL PBT is actually still administered in many parts of the world.
The PBT and iBT versions of the TOEFL have some significant differences in terms of content. There are so many differences that ETS doesn’t even have an official score conversion table between the two versions of the test. To read up on the differences between the two exams, see Kate’s post that compares the TOEFL iBT and TOEFL PBT.
I got only 67 , but I need 80 in toefl ibt . low in reading and listening (14 and 13 respectively ) How can I improve my scores ?
Exactly how you can improve your TOEFL Reading and Listening depends on your specific strengths and weaknesses in these sections of the TOEFL. However, Magoosh does offer some general advice that works for a lot of students, and helps them get started on their road to better TOEFL Reading and TOEFL Listening scores. Check out these four posts; I think you’ll find them especially helpful:
How to Improve TOEFL Reading
4 Tips For Improving Your TOEFL Reading Score
How to Improve TOEFL Listening
4 Ways to Improve TOEFL Listening
I got 89(R:16,L:30,S:22,W:21) in TOEFL . Whether 16 in reading section hurts my admission. The University which I am planning to apply is asking a score of 79. Can I go ahead with the same score or need to reappear for toefl.
Hi Swathi,
Our expertise is in test prep, not admissions adivce, so I’m afraid that we can’t be of much help in this situation! Each university has it’s own requirements and cut-off scores, so the best course of action would be to contact the school and ask if this reading score would be a disadvantage. You can also see the following blog posts for some ideas on what you should do:
Should I retake the TOEFL: https://magoosh.com/toefl/2013/should-i-retake-the-toefl/
Things to consider before a TOEFL retake: https://magoosh.com/toefl/2013/things-to-consider-before-a-toefl-retake/
Hi there,
How is score of 22 in writing section if you are aiming to get into teacher certification program? Also how this score is overall: reading-27, listening-22, speaking-27, writing-22.
Prompt reply will be appreciated:)
Thanks
Hi Saniya,
It is hard to make a blanket statement, because individual programs will have different TOEFL expectations. Your skills are a bit unbalanced with two of them at 27 and two of them at 22. Typically this would be a strong base but depending on what your programs say, you might need to look into a retake to raise the listening and writing scores to be more in line with your strong skills. Either way, good luck and congratulations on a strong first showing!
Hello,
I took my toefl exam today and unfortunately I sneezed during my speaking session. Any idea about how this is going to affect my scores ? Are my scores going to get cancelled because of this ? Thanks in advance.
Hi Tessia,
The sneeze may have had a small effect on your score for that particular speaking task because it took time away from your answer and may have disoriented you a bit. However, there is no reason to cancel your scores for a sneeze and you won’t be docked points for it! I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about this…it is natural and happens to many people, and there is no reason to believe that your score will suffer too much 🙂
i am from mexico and in here they give us points like 560 points, so i don´t know how do they grade it?
Hi Elen,
What format did you take the test? For example, if you take the paper-based test, you have a different scale than what we talk about here. Our resources talk about the iBT which is administered online. A 560 would be approximately an 83 on the iBT. 🙂
Hi there,
Thank you so much for this post! I have one question though. This current post establishes a scale-based system that somehow contradicts with the one proposed for the Reading & Listening sections in other of your posts. Please see:
– How to Predict Your TOEFL Score: Reading: https://magoosh.com/toefl/2016/how-to-predict-toefl-reading-score/
– How to Predict Your TOEFL Score: Listening: https://magoosh.com/toefl/2016/how-to-predict-toefl-listening-score/
In this current post, you are proposing a scale-based system. So for instance a score of 77% correct answers (either in the Reading or Listening sections) would yield a score of 26-27.
However, the links in the other posts propose a set of linear equations with direct proportion. So the same score of 77% would give 0.77 * 30 = 23.1, rounded to the nearest decimal: 23.
Is this because one post is older and the newest has improved the way to predict the scores? Or are they just 2 different methods to predict the score?
I would really love if you could shed some light!
Thank you so much
Hi Sebastian,
The issue here is that neither of these are the true way to grade the TOEFL. They are both approximations because we do not have access to the actual ETS scoring algorithm, and so both are imperfect. They are two different methods of getting in the ballpark of the score you can expect, but not definite indications. I hope that makes sense. 🙂
Makes total sense! I just wanted to doublecheck.
Thank you!
I did some grammatical mistakes on my speaking section Like present-past tense error.
the reading section was also very tough.the listening wasn’t so good too. there was so many sounds and I couldn’t concentrate.
The writing section was very good.
I need a score of 69.
From what you’ve described, it sounds like you may have reached your score of 69. It’s possible to struggle in some sections of the TOEFL and still get a score in the high 60s. If you get a chance, come back to the comments and give us an update, once you get your official score.
Hello. I took my ibt test on May 27th, and I am not very happy with my work. I will introduce a short summary of how I did on the test hoping that you can give me an idea of approximately how many points I scored. The reading section was well enough, but the last passage was somewhat unclear to me, but I managed to answer the questions with my understanding. The listening section was not very satisfying because of bad quality of headphones. I did not manage to concentrate on the listening passages, but i tried to answer the questions as well as I can. The speaking section did not go very well too. The first two questions I answered with hesitation, and the last 5 seconds I even did not speak. In the third question I misunderstood the point of view of the speaker and presented my viewpoint. The 4th question I answered well enough. The 5th question of the speaking section went like the 3rd question – I misunderstood something. The 6th question I answered well I think. And finally, the writing section was the best section of the test, and I did well, with some defects, of course. I need a score of more than 80. I wish you could help me. Thank you!
Hi Hovsep,
While I wish I could give you an estimate and make you relax, there is no way for me to give you a reliable guess. You can miss a surprising number of questions and still get 80+, so don’t give up hope. Good luck! 🙂
I did the test on 24th July 2017. The listening part was very challenging, i need a score of 79 and 17 in listening. Is it possible magoosh?
Hi Ronald,
First, I will say that it’s hard for us to say whether a student is capable of reaching a certain score, but what I can say is that we can put you in the right path for success. If you want to get a better sense of what we have to offer, I would suggest signing up for our free 1-week TOEFL trial. This will allow you to see how the site works and try out a selection of lesson videos and practice questions. You should also know that if you buy a full membership, you’re protected by our 7-day money-back guarantee—contact us within a week of your purchase and we’ll give you a full refund for any reason. I hope this helps! Have a great day! 😀
Hi! How do they evaluate the last question in reading part, where you need to choose 3 correct answers from 6? I read that this question gives 2 points in total, but how exactly? What if I have 2 correct and 1 wrong, it will be 1 or 0, because it does not have all 3 correct answer?
Hi Igor! It is possible to get partial credit on those; either 0, 1 or 2 points will be awarded. To get 1 point, you need at least half of the answers if not more. I hope that helps!
how to convert the new tofl pbt scoring to the former scoring system out of 677
That’s a really good question. It’s a bit difficult to say, since ETS hasn’t offered a conversion table. The other thing that makes things tricky here is that the new PBT (as of July 2017) is scored by section only, without whole-test scores. ETS has also added three levels of score descriptors to the new PBT.
I will look into this and get back to you once I’m able to find some new information. In the mean time, here is an official ETS link to the score tables for both old and new PBT.
Hi,
I took my exam today…
I am really happy with my reading, listening and writing sections but I got really nervous and did real bad at speaking section……do you have any idea what will be my score…can you give a wild guess at least provided 3 sections went well and one went terrible…
That depends on exactly how your nervousness affected your performance. If you had a lot of long pauses, that can hurt your score. Stammering so much you’re hard to understand could have a big impact on your score too. But other signs of nervousness, such as speaking in a flat town of voice or Speaking a little faster than usual, may or may not impact your score very much.
With that said, assuming that three Speaking tasks went well, one went poorly, and the other two were average, let’s look at a possible breakdown of how you did. Let’s say you got a 4 in the three good tasks, a 1 in the bad task, and 3s in the two remaining tasks. That’s a total of 19/24 possible rubric points. That translates into roughly 79% of the 30 point scaled score for the section. that puts you somewhere between a 23 and 24 section.
Bear in mind that it can be hard to gauge exactly how you did on your own; this is what professional TOEFL Speaking scorers are for. the best thing you can do is wait and see. Try not to think of your Speaking score until you know for sure. I understand that can be hard to do, of course. If you still feel the need to guess at your possible Speaking score while you wait, the official TOEFL Speaking rubrics can help you make the most educated guess possible.
Hello David!!
I must say that my TOEFL test experience was completely disappointing, and I’m quite sure I will not retake it again in the future.
I’m a college student in my junior year here in the U.S., and passed successfully 23 courses so far.
I believe that my English is not perfect, but quite advanced I scored. I needed the TOEFL score because I’m in the process of transferring to another university and they need a minimum score of 100. I knew that the TOEFL test would’t be a piece of cake, so I practiced day and night, and scored quite high on the three authentic tests of the TOEFL guide book. Listening and speaking are my strongest skills, anyway long story short, I will summarize how my test day went.
My test should have started at 8 am, so I arrived at 7:25. All test takers started at different times, I believe I started around 8:20-8:25. After the registration process I was gathered to my assigned desk and started the test. At the same time other test takers were gathered in the room causing noise and distraction, unfortunately, I wasn’t even allowed to take anything inside the testing room, not even ear plugs.
But the most distressing part was when the first people started gathering back from the ten-minute mandatory break, and right away started their speaking section, while I and other test takers were still in the middle of the listening section. I tried so hard to push on my headphones in order to stay focused, but the noise was tremendous, and ended up loosing my concentration. During my ten-minute break I complaint to the administrator about the noise, she said “I’m very sorry for the inconvenience”, but not responsible for the noise inside the testing room. As soon as I and the rest of the test takers returned back to our computer desk, we continued with the speaking section. This was another struggle. While I was trying to take notes and prepare my response, I’ve heard at least ten people speaking out their response loudly at the same time. I slowly started acknowledging that the whole test center experience would have affected my TOEFL score. The only noiseless time at the test center was during my writing section. Probably because at least half of the test takers had left, and could finally fully concentrate on my writing exam.
My score was published a few days ago, and it was an 83. As already predicted, my listening section was the lowest one, 17, and all because of the tremendous noise. Have a great weekend everyone!!!
Hi a know someone who did the paper based toefs test,and got the results bek bit didt get the total score. She got a 14 scaled score for reading, 21 for listening and a 20 for writing.how much is that in total.how do they calculate paper based toefl.
Hi Lusie,
For the Revised Paper Based TOEFL Test, no total score is reported. The score for each of the three section is reported on a scale of 0-30. You can see more information here.
hi Magnoosh,
I wanna ask about something that has been really confusing me……
When I calculate my score in the listening section based on Estimating the Scaled TOEFL Score on Other TOEFL Practice Tests, I mean as in the table above, I can score
in the range of 76-25 (26-28 correct answers), which means my score would be 26-27 out of 30, but when I compare it, though it doesn’t seem right, with tables in the tables in The Official Guide to the TOEFL Test 5th edition, my score would be 19-23 (based on the correct answers), and this is so much frustrating there is a great difference between marks, is it right to do that??
Hi Mohammad,
I’m not sure if I’m following the numbers here. Can you tell me the raw score and total number of questions for the sections you wish to compare? You mentioned 26-28 correct answers, but in which section? I may be able to help you out if you provide some clearer numbers 🙂
Sorry, I ment 26-28 out of 34 (listening section) the point is: why the tables in the official giud seem to estimate a lower score when it’s compared with the table obove?
Hi Mohammad!
Thank you for clarifying. 🙂 The reason there may be a difference between the two charts is because the number of raw points in TOEFL Reading and TOEFL Listening varies from test-to-test. Because of that, every test converts to the 1-30 scale a little differently. No single table of percentage correct and score will be accurate for every version of the TOEFL. This is also true because there are some small differences in difficulty between different tests. 🙂 For the most accurate prediction of your score, you’ll need to go through several practice TOEFL Listening sections. You can read more about that here:
How to Predict Your TOEFL Score
How can I get checked my speaking and writing sections online. DO you have any sources to get checked online?
Hi Ernazar!
We’ve put together some articles that discuss some places outside of Magoosh that you may be able to get feedback on your speaking and writing:
Getting Feedback on TOEFL Writing
Getting Feedback on TOEFL Speaking
Hope this helps!
Hello,
Can anyone clarify me ?How is the scaled score calculated? I got “good”(4.0-5.0) level in both tasks of writing but my scaled score is 22.
Hi Sagar,
This blog post and this one might help you to understand the calculation a bit better! However, something does seem to be off here. If your average score were 4.0, then your scaled score should be around 24. If you think that there was a mistake in how your essay was scaled, I recommend contacting ETS directly.
Please is it possible to get a score of 25 in the speaking section. Since the grading is 24,26,27
The official scoring system for TOEFL Speaking has been set up so that it’s not possible to get a 25– that exact score just doesn’t occur because of the way score categories are cut off and added up. Weird, I know. 🙂
I’m very confident in my Reading, Writing and Listening skills but not with Speaking. I’m really worried because I need at least 20 points in this section, I took the test in 2017 and I got 23 points in that ocassion, but this time (I took the test last Friday) I feel I made more mistakes, in the second task I finished to speak 8 seconds earlier, so I had to improvise in those last seconds, also in task 5 I summarized well and I gave my opinion, however I dind’t finish to talk because the time. Would be possible for me get at least 20 points with this description?, in other tasks (1,3,4 and 6) I think I’ll get at least 3 points.
Hello Jose,
Based on your description, it does sound like you could get at least 20 points. Task 2 on your test in particular sounds like it had minimal problems– improvising with 8 seconds left is usually OK as long as the improvization itself is clear and doesn’t seem completely disconnected from the rest of the response.
Running out of time on Task 5 can hurt your score more. However, the newest version of the TOEFL no longer has the 5th task. This is good news for you and many other students who struggle to complete that particularly complex task in time.
Actually, the TOEFL Speaking section has changed significantly, and there have been at least some small changes to every section of the TOEFL except for TOEFL Writing. For more info on the changes, see the 2019 TOEFL Format changes article on this blog.
I am applying to universities in the US and it says that my TOEFL score must be between 310 and 677? Is there a different scoring system for TOEFL in the US?
Hi Jad,
I recommend that you contact the university directly, because TOEFL scores only go up to 120. This is either a mistake, or they are referring to a different exam.