The speaking section of TOEFL comprises a total of 4 tasks that measures the speaking fluency of the TOEFL aspirants. These four TOEFL speaking tasks have two types – independent and integrated. The TOEFL independent task provides the candidate with a topic which they need to speak by projecting their thoughts and ideas. The TOEFL integrated task comprises tasks 2 to 4 and this includes listening, reading, and writing, and acts as a cross-functional task.

The TOEFL speaking section has undergone a crucial change that is equally connected to the candidate’s TOEFL score. The new change is – TOEFL SpeechRater which will analyze the candidate’s speaking response. Candidates need to practice daily from IELTS speaking practice papers to prepare well. For a better IELTS speaking preparation, focus on communicating with friends/family.

TOEFL SpeechRater: Description

It took place in the year 2019, during the TOEFL iBT seminar in Seoul ETS illustrated on their ‘Enhanced Speaking Scoring’ system which made its way even before that. Previously, the TOEFL speaking section was assessed by two human graders. The present time is seeing the assessment is done by one human grader and the speechrater which is an AI used for evaluation of performance. ETS has been using this since 2008, and it was majorly used for the TOEFL online practice and their scoring which the students purchased.

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There are many advantages of the TOEFL speechrater and ETS has also stated the fact that human raters are undoubtedly a good way to analyze the speaking responses through its content, meaning, and language in a comprehensive manner but the TOEFL speechrater assesses through linguistic features.

ETS has even distributed the task focuses; the human raters will assess the content, meaning, and language whereas the TOEFL speechrater will focus on the pronunciation, accent, and intonation parts.

The TOEFL speaking rubric has stated previously that the human rater is assigned the task of assessing the topic development, delivery, and language use. Now with the arrival of the TOEF speechrater, it can be stated that the TOEFL speechrater will be marked based on the delivery part, and hence, the scoring weightage can be 1/3 for it. The human rater will be marked based on language and development of the topic and therefore, the weightage can be 2/3.