Hey, I found library copies of the new editions of the “Official iBT Tests” books (Vol. 1, 3rd edition, Vol. 2, 2nd edition) to see what was new.

The text seems to be 100% the same, except for a couple of references to online materials in the introduction. The old editions already had the reordered listening questions from the Official Guide (4th edition) and the varied Integrated writing prompts from the Official Guide (3rd Edition). Those are continued here, of course.

The “Tests” books do NOT contain the longer independent writing prompts (with the warning about memorized examples) found in the Official Guide (4th Edition).

The only difference I can see is that the tests are now delivered on DVD, rather than CD. I didn’t examine every page, though, so let me know if there is something I can double check for you.

For the record, these are 2019 publications. However, they will be somewhat obsolete when the TOEFL changes in August 1 of 2019. When that happens ETS will include an “insert” in future printings of their books that describe the new version of the test. This does not mean they will update them! The insert will just be a piece of paper that describes the changes. ETS does not know when the actual text of the books will be updated.

Update from 2020:  ETS has hinted that new editions of some of their books will be published this year, but nothing has been made official.

A few months ago ETS removed half of their TOEFL Quick Prep sets. Not only that, but they removed all of the audio files, making the Quick Prep sets pretty much useless. That angered me greatly, since I feel ETS is not very honest and forthcoming about the design of the TOEFL.

Anyways, my anger is a topic for another blog post. I’m here to share this Wayback Machine archive of the complete Quick Prep sets. Enjoy.

Alright, I took a TPO based on the new TOEFL that starts on August 1.

I’ll produce a detailed video and article about it, but some people want to know the timing right away, so here it is:

Reading: 54 minutes to read 3 passages and answer 30 questions.

Listening: 2 timed sets. Set one consists of a conversation (2:10), a lecture (3:45), and a lecture (4:15). Ten minutes are given to answer the 17 questions. Five questions about the convo, and 6 about each lecture.

Set two consists of a conversation (2:15) and a lecture (4:40). Seven minutes are given to answer the 11 questions. Five questions about the convo, and 6 about the lecture.

Speaking: The remaining 4 questions are in the same order as before, and appear unchanged. The speechrater gave me a “limited” score for most of them. Goddamnit.

Writing: Unchanged.