TOEFL test tutors, lessons & classes

The TOEFL iBT (Test of English as a Foreign Language, Internet-Based Test) is the dominant English-proficiency exam for admission to universities in the United States. It's administered worldwide by ETS, the Educational Testing Service based in Princeton, New Jersey, accepted by more than 1,500 US universities and graduate programs, and recognized in the UK, Canada, Australia, and most of the EU as well. Scores are valid for two years from your test date. If your goal is a US bachelor's, master's, MBA, PhD, or law program, or if you're a non-native English speaker who needs documented academic English for a research role or fellowship, the TOEFL is usually the test you sit. Students looking for the broader English program our tutors teach can start at our main English / ESL page.

If you bought a TOEFL prep book before July 2023, throw it out. The exam was shortened that month from roughly three-and-a-half hours to about two hours, and the Writing section was redesigned. The Independent Essay (a 30-minute personal-opinion essay that most prep books spent fifty pages on) was retired and replaced by the Writing for an Academic Discussion task: a 10-minute response to a professor's discussion-board prompt with two student replies, where you build on or push back against the existing thread in roughly 100 words. The Reading section lost its dummy unscored passage. The Listening section lost its post-task break. The unscored experimental questions are gone. Net result: shorter, more focused, with proportionally more weight on the integrated tasks that test multiple skills at once. Older prep materials still drill the Independent Essay and pad in extra reading passages that won't appear. Make sure whatever you study from is dated 2023 or later, or come into lessons and your tutor will steer you to current materials.

Four sections, each scored 0-30, for a composite of 0-120. Reading runs about 35 minutes with two passages of academic prose and a mix of comprehension, vocabulary-in-context, inference, and a summary-completion task at the end. Listening runs about 36 minutes with lectures (3-5 minutes each, on subjects ranging from art history to marine biology to behavioral economics) and conversations (typically office hours or campus-service interactions). Speaking is 16 minutes total across four tasks: Task 1 is an Independent task where you give a personal opinion on a familiar prompt with 15 seconds of prep and 45 seconds of response, then Tasks 2-4 are Integrated tasks where you read a short passage, listen to a related lecture or conversation, and then summarize or synthesize in 60 seconds with 20-30 seconds of prep. Writing is 29 minutes for two tasks: the Integrated task (read a 230-word passage, listen to a 2-minute lecture that contradicts or extends the reading, then write a 150-225 word summary of how they relate) and the Academic Discussion task described above. The whole exam, including check-in, comes in around two hours.

The integrated tasks are what make the TOEFL distinctive among English proficiency exams, and they're where most candidates underprepare. Where IELTS keeps the four skills cleanly separated, TOEFL deliberately fuses them: in Speaking Tasks 2-4 you read, then listen, then speak, all in under three minutes total. In Writing Task 1 you read, listen, then write. The integrated format mirrors what graduate seminars actually demand (synthesize a reading with what the professor just said, then respond), and ETS designed it that way on purpose. Candidates who drill the four skills in isolation often hit a ceiling around the high 80s because they've never practiced the rapid switching the integrated tasks require. Lessons treat the integrated tasks as the centerpiece, not the leftover.

MyBest Scores changes the math for retakers. ETS reports two scores on every official report: your most recent test-date composite, and your MyBest composite, which combines your highest section score across every TOEFL iBT attempt in the last two years. If you scored 25 Reading on attempt one and 28 Reading on attempt two, your MyBest Reading is 28, even if your other sections were stronger on attempt one. Most US universities now accept MyBest, which means a strategic candidate planning two sittings can target a specific weak section on the second attempt rather than retaking everything. Check the policy of each program you're applying to before counting on this: a small number of programs (most notably some highly selective law schools and certain Ivy graduate programs) still require single-test-date scores. For the rest, MyBest is a real lever and worth planning around.

How our tutors prep candidates. Most lessons start with a full diagnostic against an official ETS practice test (the TPO series, available through the ETS website and the TOEFL Practice Online platform). The diagnostic produces a per-section score and surfaces the weakest area, usually Speaking or Writing for candidates whose academic English has been mostly textbook-based, or Listening for candidates whose written English is stronger than their ear. From there, lessons rebalance toward the weak section while keeping the strong ones sharp. Speaking practice is recorded so the tutor can review pacing, fluency, vocabulary range, and the specific habit of running out of time at second 55 of a 60-second response (a near-universal early problem). Writing is drilled with timed responses graded against the official ETS rubric, with rewrite cycles. Listening practice uses the TPO archive plus real academic content (university lecture recordings, TED talks at native pace, Coursera lecture excerpts) to build endurance for the 36-minute listening section. Reading drills focus on the question types the test actually uses: inference, vocabulary-in-context, prose summary. Closer to the test date, lessons shift to full timed mocks under exam-clock conditions. A reasonable prep arc to move from a baseline around 90 to a target of 100+ is 3-4 months at one or two lessons per week with consistent self-study; moving from 100 to 110+ typically asks for 4-6 months because the marginal gains at the top of the scale come from accent reduction, fluency at speed, and the kind of register precision that takes longer to develop.

A few honest patterns we see in candidates who don't quite hit their target. The Speaking section is where time pressure is most brutal, and the biggest single block is the prep window. You get 15-30 seconds to organize a response before the recording starts; candidates who try to outline a full answer in that window run out of time. The winning move is a memorized template structure ("The reading states X. The lecture supports/contradicts this by Y, Z") that you slot content into rather than reinventing each time. The Writing for an Academic Discussion task tempts candidates to write too long or too formal; ETS wants a substantive contribution to a discussion, not an essay, and 100-130 words of well-organized response scores better than 180 words of padded essay. The Integrated Writing task asks for a 150-225 word summary, and candidates who write 280 words lose points for going off-target rather than gaining them for thoroughness. Reading vocabulary-in-context questions reward inference from surrounding text rather than dictionary recall, and many candidates with strong vocabularies still miss these because they pick the dictionary definition rather than the contextual one. And the Listening section penalizes any meaningful pause: you can't go back, the audio plays once, and notes are the only scaffold. Note-taking technique deserves explicit lesson time and is often skipped.

A brief note on TOEFL vs. IELTS, since candidates routinely ask. Both test academic English; both are accepted by most US, UK, Australian, and Canadian universities. The differences that actually matter for choosing: TOEFL is academic-only (there's no immigration-track version) and is administered entirely on computer, with the Speaking section recorded for later scoring rather than delivered to a live examiner. IELTS comes in Academic and General Training versions (the General version covers UK and Australian immigration tracks), uses a live human examiner for Speaking, and historically used paper-based Reading and Writing (now also available on computer). TOEFL leans American-English in register and vocabulary; IELTS leans British. UK universities accept both but IELTS is more common there. US universities accept both but TOEFL is more common in the US. If your target is a US graduate program, default to TOEFL unless a specific school states a preference. If you're applying to UK universities or need an immigration-track score for the UK or Australia, IELTS is usually the better fit. Our IELTS prep page covers the sibling exam in more detail. TOEIC is a separate ETS exam aimed at workplace and business English; if your goal is academic admission, TOEIC is not the right test.

The TOEFL iBT Home Edition is worth knowing about. Since 2020 ETS has offered a fully proctored at-home version of the same test, taken on your own computer with a webcam and a quiet room, using OnVUE remote proctoring. The test, the scoring, the score report, and the universities that accept it are identical to the test-center version. Most candidates who can pass the technical-requirements check (compatible computer, stable internet, quiet single-occupancy room, external monitor not allowed) prefer the Home Edition for scheduling flexibility: appointments are available 24/7 versus the fixed center calendar. Some candidates find the testing-center environment less stressful than self-proctoring; pick the format that matches how you actually perform under pressure. The TOEFL iBT Paper Edition is a separate fallback offered in regions with limited internet infrastructure; if you're testing in North America, you'll be on the iBT or the Home Edition.

Between lessons, build endurance with academic listening. The TPO official-practice archive is the gold standard for exam-format drill. For ambient academic English, the Coursera and edX free-course catalogs (specifically open-archive university lectures) are closest to TOEFL register. TED Talks at native speed are useful for Listening section practice once you're comfortable. For Reading, Scientific American, The Atlantic, and the science and arts sections of The New York Times mirror TOEFL passage difficulty and topic range. For Writing, the best practice is writing timed responses to past TPO Writing prompts and getting them graded against the rubric. Our 1,000 most common English words list is a vocabulary floor; serious TOEFL candidates need to expand from there into academic vocabulary, especially the kind that shows up in vocabulary-in-context questions. If you're unsure where your English currently sits on the CEFR scale, our CEFR levels explained post is a useful reference (TOEFL 95+ is roughly C1, 110+ is roughly C2).

The Strommen TOEFL roster includes native American-English teachers with extensive TOEFL prep experience, several with backgrounds at US universities and the IELP / intensive-English-program system, plus longtime ESL specialists with formal CELTA or TESOL credentials. Several of our TOEFL tutors have graded TPO mock papers for years and can tell within a paragraph which rubric category is dragging your score. Each tutor's bio specifies their background, the score range they typically work with (foundational 70-90, intermediate 90-105, advanced 105-120), and which student profile they fit best (graduate-school-bound, undergraduate first-year applicants, professionals seeking documented English for a research or fellowship role). Pricing reflects experience. Match yourself to a teacher whose accent matches the test (US-English-trained tutors give the most authentic Listening preparation), whose schedule overlaps with yours, and whose specialty matches your target score range. For related English specialties, our IELTS, conversational English, and Business English specialty pages cover adjacent needs.

Lessons calibrate to your actual exam date, target score, and weakest section. A candidate four months out aiming for 100+ for a top-25 US graduate program is on a different curriculum from a candidate two months out aiming for 80 for a regional admission, and both are different again from an advanced candidate going from 105 to 115+ for an Ivy STEM or MBA program. We don't run a generic TOEFL course. Each lesson is one-on-one, your tutor plans it around your week and your timeline, and the trial is free. Candidates who hit their target on the first sitting share two habits: they drill the official TPO papers under real exam-clock conditions from week one rather than waiting until the final month, and they get their Speaking and Writing graded by someone who knows the ETS rubric, not just by themselves. Browse the tutor list, find a bio that matches your situation, and book a free trial.