The Best Practice Tests

1. Kaplan Toefl Online
2. Kaplan Toefl Torrent Download

In every standardized test, it’s the same story: the official practice material is the best material. Nobody else makes practice exactly like the company who makes the real test. In this case, that’s ETS.

TOEFL iBT ® Free Practice Test. Practice as often as you like! The free practice test features a full test with all 4 sections and real past test questions. View correct answers in the Reading and Listening sections. Kaplan Test Prep, the world leader in test preparation since 1938, has authored this book incorporating key test-taking tips and strategies. The practice questions have been reviewed by CBLA to ensure they are true to the test.Get familiar with the exam to help you face the OET with confidence. Toefl ibt Prep Plus 2018-2019: 4 Practice. The 31-Day Challenge TOEFL ITP course is an intensive, non-stop learning tool designed for students who need to improve their TOEFL ITP score. Each day, students receive a lesson and a link to a video tutorial where the subject is explained with examples and theory. They also receive TOEFL exercises to practice and excel the subject.

First Place: The Official Guide to the TOEFL Test

There are three good things about the Official Guide:

1. It has the most truthful description of what you see on the TOEFL iBT

2. The practice sets at the ends of the chapters

3. The three practice tests on CD (and in the back of the book)
But none of it is perfect, oddly. The description of the test comes with almost no strategy or advice. For example, there is nothing about skipping a text in the reading section or looking at the first question before you start reading. Also, there aren’t very many practice sets for some question types, such as speaking. And one of the practice tests in the back is old and imperfect, from just after ETS had started making iBT, before they made small adjustments to the format. Even the CD is imperfect—the software is not exactly the same as software you’ll use on test day, although it is similar.

But there is still no better way to get realistic practice tests for a low price, and especially to get them on the computer, like a real TOEFL iBT.

Second Place: Official TOEFL iBT Tests, Volume 2

If you finish the tests in the Official Guide, the next best source for cheap, authentic practice tests is this book. I was tempted to give this book first place, actually. Released in 2016, Official TOEFL iBT Tests Vol. 2 has the most up-to-date TOEFL tests of any official TOEFL book. Its practice TOEFLs are newly released as of this year. In contrast, the first mock exams from the Official Guide were originally released in 2009 and 2012.

So this book definitely would be number one for best practice tests… if the full tests were the only thing I considered. However, I’m also counting the practice sets at the end of the chapters in the Official Guide. The OG practice sets, which come with additional explanations and advice, are a fantastic extra source of supported practice testing. Official TOEFL iBT Tests Vol. 1 simply doesn’t have this kind of material. There are no extra practice questions, and no supplemental chapters that give extra information about the tests. There are just tests and answer keys, plain and simple.

Still, these are the best full tests you can get. And like the tests in the TOEFL OG, the tests in this new ETS book also come with pretty good simulation software. (Although the CD software is once again imperfect.)

Third Place: Official TOEFL iBT Tests, Volume 1, 2nd Edition

Coming in at a close third place: Official TOEFL iBT Tests, Vol. 1, 2nd Edition. The title is a little confusing, I know. But remember, this is not the second volume of Official TOEFL iBT tests. It’s the first volume of 5 practice TOEFL tests, originally released in 2012. This newer second version of Vol. 1 was released in 2015.

The book still has the exact same practice tests as before. But there is one important difference: this second edition now comes with TOEFL practice software. It’s pretty much the same software as the CDs from the Official Guide and from TOEFL iBT Tests Vol. 2. So it’s not perfect. But it’s a big improvement over the first edition of the book, which has an audio-only CD.

The only difference between Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 is that Volume 1’s tests are older. Other than that, the two books have the exact same format, just different tests. So this third place book is quite good.

The Best Skill-Building

Note: When I say “skill-building,” I am referring to exercises that focus on skills like note-taking, paraphrasing, searching for specific information in a large text, or planning an essay. There are many skills involved in the TOEFL that are not really discussed in the official material, but are extremely important if you need a large score improvement.

First Place: Cambridge Preparation for the TOEFL Test

This is an old favorite of mine. Cambridge has two major advantages:

1. There are seven full-length tests on the included CD, and they’re even more similar to the real TOEFL software than is the software on the Official Guide CD.

2. In the book itself, there are hundreds of pages of skill-building materials.
No other book focuses on TOEFL-specific skills like Cambridge does. Take, for example, the process of writing a full essay paragraph. First, you need a main point. Cambridge has an exercise for that. Then, you need an explanation of that point, preferably with specific details. Cambridge has an exercise for that, too. Then, you need a transition into another detail. There’s an exercise for that, of course. If the Complete Guide is “step-by-step,” Cambridge is “step-by-step-by-step.” The skills you need for the TOEFL are broken down incredibly thoroughly.

There are two clear flaws, though:

1. Some practice material is too difficult, and not well written.

2. In order to use half of the skill-building, you need to buy the set of 8 CDs. The book alone does not give you listening exercises, other than what’s on the seven practice tests.

Second Place: The Complete Guide to the TOEFL Test (iBT edition)

For a student who is studying for over a month and needs some more substantial practice, the Complete Guide is the fastest way to get more high-quality practice material and good skill-building material. It’s not cheap, and it can be a little hard to find, but this book has almost everything a good self-study book should have: loads of material, easy-to-read explanations of strategy, step-by-step training exercises, and audio included (online, for free.) The biggest problem is that there are no answers in the book—you have to buy a separate answer book for that.

There’s also one smaller problem, of course: this book is from 2006. However, the book has aged well, partly because it’s very well-written, and partly because the TOEFL iBT has made only small changes in the last 10 years or so. So again, The Complete Guide to the TOEFL Test comes highly recommended.

The Best Vocabulary and Grammar

Vocabulary and Grammar for the TOEFL Test

This book is only good for vocabulary and grammar, but that’s all it is supposed to be good for! And for that, it is the best resource, because it not only has appropriate words and grammar, but also has practice exercises that mimic every part of the real TOEFL.

Best Classroom Book (for Teachers)

Oxford Preparation Course for the TOEFL iBT Exam

I’ve taught classes with a number of the books on this list; I even used the Official Guide as the primary textbook in one (my first class—a mistake I did not repeat, seeing as that book has zilch in terms of classroom exercises). And no other book I’ve used was particularly good for classes except Oxford.

Granted, there are flaws aplenty, here. For instance, the topics of the texts and lectures are too often removed from the academic focus of authentic TOEFL material. They’re often topical or controversial, and those are two adjectives that just don’t describe the actual iBT. But that weakness in material is just the flipside of a very important coin: the material in this book can spark conversation, one of the English teacher’s best friends. Is skyrim remastered worth it. If you want to get your students talking and studying the TOEFL at the same time, this is your best bet. And hey, you can always supplement with official material (Official TOEFL IBT Tests!) to get that real-thing feeling.

Magoosh’s Free eBooks

I’d be crazy not to mention the free eBooks that we created for the sole purpose of helping you ace the TOEFL. Written by the Magoosh TOEFL experts that you know from this blog (myself included), these eBooks contain all the basic information and helpful resources that you’ll need to begin your prep.

On their own, or as a supplement to the recommended books above, these TOEFL eBooks will help you make the most of your prep. Read them online, or print them out to study on the go. Click the images below to see the Magoosh Guide to the TOEFL iBT and Magoosh TOEFL Vocabulary Comics eBooks.

And if you like our free eBooks, don’t forget to check out our comprehensive TOEFL materials. 🙂

(NOTE: The TOEFL books that Magoosh reviews and recommends reflect the older, pre-August 2019 version of the test. As of this writing, there are no TOEFL prep books that reflect the newest version of the test. Fortunately, older-format books are still very useful in prepping for the current TOEFL. For details on this, see Magoosh’s tutorial on using older prep for the 2019 TOEFL.)

The first 20 minutes I spent with Kaplan’s book were great. Yes, I found a few mistakes, but mostly I was excited to have a book that describes realistic, good test strategy. And I knew it wasn’t just the book—you get access to online material, too. But three days later, I was really, really disappointed. To say it simply, this book isn’t for students.

Test Strategy and Advice

Let’s start with the good part of the book.

If you follow all of the advice in this book, you will answer the questions on the TOEFL effectively. I agreed strongly with almost every sentence I read. The author gives realistic descriptions and advice. For example, vocabulary questions in the reading section are mostly just a test of whether you know the word. Context can help sometimes, but that’s not the main point. Many books don’t recognize that, but Kaplan’s book does.

Another point that many other books miss is how detailed notes should be. You simply cannot take very detailed notes. If you do, you won’t be able to listen at the same time. Kaplan recognizes that and tells you the truth: take notes, but focus on listening, not writing. I was very happy to see that. And there’s a lot more good strategy—it’s very rare that this book gives bad strategy. There is some misinformation, though. The author recommends knowing scientific facts like the periodic table, but that’s a waste of time. You won’t need that on your TOEFL.

Besides that, some of the wrong answer types (The book calls them “distractors”) are more like GRE, SAT, or GMAT questions. That is, they are wrong because of logic tricks, not language tricks. That’s misleading, but being careful about the logic of answer choices will never hurt you; it’s just not very important. And because the most of the strategy is realistic and helpful, I can forgive some inaccuracies.

There is only one serious problem with the test strategy in this book. The language isn’t friendly. It’s a bit too advanced for some students to read comfortably and understand everything. That might be good reading practice, a challenge, but the book should communicate to everybody, not just be practice. And it’s not only that: there is a lot of text and description in that advanced English. It will be boring and difficult for many students to read.

In other words, it’s not good for learning to use the strategies, only learning about the strategies. This makes the book better for new teachers rather than students. And even for teachers, it’s not great. The organization of the book is very strange and hard to follow. For instance, here are two strategies from the writing chapter:

• Strategy #5: Know the correct grammar for the verb prefer
• Strategy #6: Decide if the question asks for an opinion or a preference

(I should mention that neither of these are actually strategies. That’s just what Kaplan calls them). The first is a very specific grammar point about one word. The second, on the other hand, is about the type of essay you’ll write. Why are these next to each other? How do I know what’s more important?

Even for a teacher, it might be difficult to see the important parts since there’s so little organization.

Skill Practice

The best TOEFL books will include practice very similar to the real test, and then something more: they’ll also include exercises for practicing specific skills, like connecting two ideas into one sentence or taking shorter notes. Cambridge is a good example of a book that does this. And even if there are not many skill-building exercises separate from sample TOEFL questions, it’s possible to make questions that look like the TOEFL but also help with those skills, like The Complete Guide does.

But Kaplan has none of that. There is only description of strategy in text and some sample TOEFL questions. There is no skill-building practice in the middle.

TOEFL Practice Material

If there is no skill-building practice, the book must have a lot of TOEFL-like practice, right? Well, no, actually. I said in my post about the Princeton Review’s book that it’s strange to put “1 practice test” on the cover like it’s a good thing—most books have more than than one practice test—but at least Princeton Review was honest.

The cover of Kaplan’s book says there are 4 practice tests. In fact, there are no full practice tests in the book—you have to go online. If you don’t have internet access, you get 0 practice tests.

And once you create an account on the Kaplan website to get your four practice tests, there’s actually only one. At the moment, practice tests 2, 3, and 4 are all “coming soon.” That’s not just a lie; it’s mean. You pay for four practice tests, and they give you one.

But it gets worse.

The one practice test they give you is full of mistakes. On the first question, the first page of the test I counted two errors. After twenty minutes, I had seen at least ten. The software is terrible, too. It freezes, the audio skips, recordings are numbered as “questions,” the clock isn’t the same as the real test, you can’t record your speech, the listening recordings are in the wrong order, and there are no instruction pages similar to those on the real TOEFL.

But that’s just the online part. What about the book? It’s better there, but there are still problems. Practice reading passages are often more similar to opinion news articles than they are to real TOEFL texts—you won’t see many strong opinions in your TOEFL reading. The questions are poorly made, too. They almost never give a paragraph number like the real TOEFL does. That means you spend a long time searching for the information in the text and waste time. This is especially noticeable on “EXCEPT” questions, which ask you to identify something that’s not in the passage. In Kaplan’s examples, you need to search through the whole 700-word text four times to answer the question. In a real TOEFL question, you almost always search through a single paragraph or sentence.

Wrong answers too often include information that’s not in a listening or reading. They’re logical traps, as I mentioned above, not language traps. If you actually read all the words or hear all of the recording, you can cross them off even if you don’t understand them well. Again, that’s different from the real test.

And finally, the recordings are poorly made. The actors are clearly reading from scripts and are very bad at acting. They stress the wrong words, pause at times when there should be no pauses, speak too quickly, and don’t hesitate enough.

There are some good questions in this book (and maybe somewhere in the online material, too), but they’re surrounded by problems and mistakes.

Explanations

Even a little bit of practice material can be helpful if it’s well made and gives good, clear explanations. In the reading and listening sections, those explanations are done well. Sometimes the questions aren’t well made, yes, but those that are well made also have full explanations, and that’s great.

But what about speaking and writing? Well, there are no sample speaking responses and only four sample essays in the book. Those essays aren’t graded and don’t show different levels—only what an ideal essay looks like.

A very good TOEFL book would have more samples for both speaking and writing, so you would know what to imitate and how to grade your own responses. This isn’t the worst part of the book, but it doesn’t help much.

Report Card:

Kaplan Toefl Online

Authenticity of practice material: C

Amount of practice material: D

Quality of explanations: C

Skill building material: F

Test strategy and advice: A-

The Final Word

I would never recommend this book to a student. If you’re a new TOEFL teacher, there are some good points that you should know so you can teach them to your students (and actually guide those students, not just tell them). But for now, that’s it. When Kaplan fixes their online material, it might be better, but right now this book is not a good idea to buy.

Kaplan Toefl Torrent Download