Is the new TOEFL hard or easy? Or it remains the same!

If you keep yourself updated then, you must have known by now that the TOEFL has changed. Yes! after a long time, ETS (The governing body of TOEFL exam) has finally changed the TOEFL structure. new TOEFL hard or easy

And what is the change? Well, it became shorter, so now the duration of the exam is 3 hours instead of the old 3 hours 30 minutes.

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1. Reading section has fewer questions, now you will have 10 questions per section.
2. Listening has got fewer lectures although the question number remains the same.
3. And for the speaking section, 2 of the sections were removed.

What’s new for the TOEFL iBT 2019?

Is the new TOEFL hard or easy?

Now the question comes, is the new TOEFL easy or hard? And I am sure you are not the only one to have this question, I am sure there will be a lot of students who will have the same kind of concerns.

So today we will try to answer to your concern.

In broad I will say, the difficulty remains the same.

If you take a look on the ETS FAQ’s section you will find most of the corners are addressed over there.

“A comparison of the reliability estimates for the TOEFL iBT test in its previous longer version and in its shorter version revealed that there is no meaningful effect on test reliability as a result of shortening the test. “

So what it means is that – the student will score almost the same with the new test as before. The new TOEFL will test the same skills for the exam like before, so needless to say, the difficulty remains the same. Although you should change some of the old strategies as the exam is shorter so new timing strategies should be used. new TOEFL hard or easy

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Also, take a careful look in this statement from ETS

“There is no need for universities to change their TOEFL iBT score requirements.”

So you can understand the scoring system remains the same. And if the scoring went up or down then the universities would have to adjust the scores as well, but in this case, it remains the same, so the new TOEFL exam remains with the same difficulty level as before. Nothing changes in that part.

Can you use the existing TOEFL materials?

Yes, you can! As of now, you can use the existing training materials. As the new TOEFL is going to score you the same as before with the same criteria on skills, so the old materials can also be used. Only thing is that the time per section has changed. So you might have to change your strategy for the new TOEFL.

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Although the difficulty is subjective

As we have discussed earlier, the difficulty of the exam remains the same but this is a subjective matter. So for some students, the new exam can be easier and to some, it can be hard. Everything depends on the students’ skill level and their specific strengths.

Question five in the speaking has been removed, so all of those students who did well at question five might get lower scores. Hence, the two questions that were removed from the speaking section were (in my experience) the hardest (question 1) and the easiest (question 5), so perhaps they balance each other out.

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Although in the reading section the students get a few more seconds extra than before. I think the time you get extra is not going to significantly help you with the reading section.

Similarly, in the speaking section the time is the same as before, so that is not going to be any change on the hardness of the section.

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But, one thing you can consider that students who get tired and fatigue at the end of the long TOEFL test will get benefited so in that term it can be a little easier. But I don’t think 30 minutes of change will make a big difference.

Final Verdict

I think the difficulty of the test remains the same. ETS is going to judge your skills almost on the all same criteria as before so the hardness remains the same. Although, each student is different and everyone has different strengths and weakness. So actual hardness will depend on your current skills but overall the difficulty remains the same, only the time is shorter than before and all the question types remain the same.