Is the new TOEFL easier than the old TOEFL? Not really. Some parts are easier. Others are harder.
This article will explore both sides of the equation. First I’ll discuss a few things about the new TOEFL that could be considered easier, and then I’ll discuss some things about the new TOEFL that are actually harder.
Easy Stuff
Meeting Score Requirements is Easier
The new TOEFL has a less precise score scale than the old TOEFL. The old TOEFL reported scores from 1-120 points. The new TOEFL reports scores from 1 to 6 points (increasing at intervals of 0.5). ETS has provided score conversion charts for TOEFL score users so they can adjust. Based on these charts, a school that previously required a score of 100 points might now require a score of 5.0.
Due to the lack of precision, a greater range of students will be able to meet the new score requirement. This is because it covers a broader range of ability. Indeed, the charts suggest that anyone who previously scored between 95 and 106 would be capable of meeting this target.
This will likely reduce the number of re-tests people do. That’s pretty cool.
Rounding Makes Things Easier for Some Low Level Students
Rounding can now help some lower level students meet an overall score requirement. Check this out:
- Section scores of 4.5 + 4.5 + 5.0 + 5.0 = an overall score of 5.0
- Section scores of 4.5 + 5.0 + 5.0 + 5.0 = an overall score of 5.0
- Section scores of 5.0 + 5.0 + 5.0 + 5.0 = an overall score of 5.0
- Section scores of 5.5 + 5.0 + 5.0 + 5.0 = an overall score of 5.0
So thanks to rounding, a lower level student gets a little extra credit. Meeting the score requirement becomes a bit easier for him. This wasn’t possible on the old test, where no rounding took place. The last dude gets his score rounded down, but he still gets accepted.
In fact, the score conversion charts suggest that a student who scored only 90 points on the old test could achieve that first score range.
Rounding isn’t a factor at schools which set section score requirements. Which they really should. I don’t want to go off on a tangent, but setting section score requirements is the only way to make these frigging tests function like they are supposed to.
There are Some Easy Questions
There are some easy questions on this test. The “daily life” questions in the reading and listening sections are pretty straightforward. They require less fluency and less cognitive ability than the academic reading and listening tasks that made up the entirety of the old TOEFL’s reading and listening sections. People will take this test and then say “damn, those are some pretty easy questions.” Indeed, they are easier than anything on the old TOEFL.
But remember that this is an adaptive test. And test takers who end up in the “hard” module will get far fewer of these easy questions. The hard reading module doesn’t include any daily life questions, while the hard listening module contains just a handful.
Meanwhile… we don’t even know how heavily these easy questions are weighted. They could have little impact on the overall score.
The New Speaking Section Will Be Easier for Some People
The new speaking section is a mixed bag. All of the academic-ish content has been stripped out and replaced with two new tasks – “listen and repeat” and “take an interview.” The former task is self-explanatory. The latter task is an interview about some everyday topic that most test takers will be familiar with. Imagine, for example, a series of questions about your reading habits.
I’ve encountered people who speak English really well but maybe aren’t the most “cognitively impressive” folks, if you know what I mean. Some of the kids I went to high school with (all native speakers) come to mind.
Such folks might find the old TOEFL challenging, as it required the ability to synthesize details from multiple sources along with the ability to grasp some basic academic concepts (for example, a speaking question might be about a philosophical concept like utilitarianism, or a sociological concept like “the tragedy of the commons”). The same dudes, though, would excel at the interview task and even the listen and repeat task.
But remember that the scoring has been tightened up. The old speaking rubrics allowed for students to get a perfect score even with a highly imperfect response. That seems to be no longer the case – the updated rubrics suggest that a perfect score now seems to require a nearly perfect response.
The New Writing Section Will Be Easier for Some People
The same is true of the writing section. The old integrated task, which required comparing and summarizing discreet details from multiple sources has been removed. In its place is a task which requires the test taker to write an email about an everyday concept. For example, they might write an email to a professor asking for an extension on a project’s due date because they couldn’t get some book from the library. The instructions are short and easy to understand. People who speak English well but struggle with academic materials will certainly find this easier.
But, again, the scoring rubrics have been tightened up and it looks like a perfect score requires nearly perfect grammar and language use, which was never the case before. For example, the new rubric says that a perfect response will contain “almost no lexical or grammatical errors,” while the old rubric said that a perfect response could contain “occasional language errors.”
Hard Stuff
Test Takers will Engage with Bigger Chunks of Text
The old test contained long articles, but individual reading questions were always about a single paragraph (except for the last one), and test takers were told which paragraph to check. This means that they engaged with only about 120 words to find the answer to each question. On the new test, they are not told which paragraph contains the answer. That means they must engage with the whole article (about 200 words) each time. So while the shorter articles at first glance seem to be easier, they aren’t necessarily so.
The Reading Topics are Still Hard
I know that ETS said that the test would no longer include questions about “niche topics” but I think it still does. I took the test, and the topics I got were pretty darn niche. Others have said the same thing.
The “Build a Sentence” Stuff is Tricky
People are finding this part of the test really hard. I don’t know what to say about this because I thought it would be easy for a lot of people. But it isn’t. Like… damn. This is actually pretty hard. And based on what we know from the technical manual, I think it is heavily weighted. Already, it seems from early score reports being shared online that writing is often the lowest score… mirroring, somewhat, the IELTS test.
Fin
So that’s my opinion. Let me know what you think. I’ll update this article as we all become more familiar with the test.