TOEFL Writing Overview

TOEFL Writing Overview

With the TOEFL writing, it’s important to understand how you’re evaluated so that you know exactly what you have to do to succeed.

As you should already know form our TOEFL overview section, the writing consists of 2 questions. Each question is evaluated by a grader and a computerized e-rater (that’s right; the TOEFL is going to use a computer to assess half of your writing score). Each will assign your essay a score of 1 to 5 depending on how well it was written.

We’ll discuss in great detail how to earn a top rating below, but for now, here’s a basic breakdown:

Score of 1: the essay is written in English but has little to nothing to do with the content.

Score of 2: the essay is written in a manner that addresses the topic and deals with the question, but has poor vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, connection, and development (writing mechanics). It confuses the reader.

Score of 3: the essay is on topic and communicates the major points needed well enough to be understood but has poor writing mechanics and limited development of content.

Score of 4: the essay is clear and communicates the intended idea effectively but is missing either content or writing mechanics necessary to show complete fluency.

Score of 5: the essay communicates with all necessary content and a bit more for complete clarity. It will also contain excellent writing mechanics.

 TOEFL Writing Math

 

The writing section, as we should also know, score will be anything from 0 to 30. The ratings will be averaged and converted to a score of 30. 

For example, let’s say that you did well on question 1 and didn’t do so well on question 2, so your scores are as follows:

Question 1: 4, 4

Question 2: 2, 3

We know that the maximum rating possible is 5 and since you have 4 total ratings, the maximum raw score would be? That’s right: 20. Let’s find our percentage:

4 + 4 + 2 + 3 = 13 (our total raw score)

13/20 = 65%

Now, let’s convert our percentage to our overall score:

65% X 30 = 19.5, which would be rounded to 20.

Though it’s unlikely that one question will be great and another poor (since you will write both of them and will write them with the same skill), you see how one question can either do much to hurt or help you.