Difference between TOEFL iBT and PBT
Difference between TOEFL iBT and PBT

Difference between TOEFL iBT and PBT

Considering Educational Testing service, which is renowned company that mainly administers the test for those students who really in a desire to check their abilities in using English Language. The curiosity does strikes the mind that which test is this? Yes its TOEFL mainly fulfilled the acronym of Test of English as a Foreign Language. Now, there are actually three versions of TOEFL IBT, CBT and PBT. Here, the post will show the difference between TOEFL iBT and PBT because it’s the most given test.

What is TOEFL IBT

IBT mainly stands for “Internet Based Test”.

What is PBT

PBT stands for Paper based test.

Now both are seemingly same but both are actually not the same. Here there is a need to find out the difference.

TOEFL IBT vs PBT

How they both are different from each other? Concerning with the difference of these two, they differ in the test content. According to the website administration, iBT is the upgraded version of CBT. As the name suggest you CBT that is associated with Computer thing came first and the other one is more related to Internet that comes later that is in 2005.

A matter of VALIDATION: Scores are the important part of any exam and yes they should be in safe ands. When CBT was rejected in 2006 and IBT was replaced it. After that PB replaced it with more advanced drills and features in it. The reason was only the notion of Non validation of CBT. For this reason many countries have adopted it for the same reason in which:

  • United States
  • Canada
  • Germany
  • France
  • Italy

Difference in the structural scenario: When an individual goes for iBT test he or she has to finish his test in 4 hours. Both have four phases of language that an individual has to cover for sure. This is scary sensation for all the candidates because mostly it exceeds from 4 to 4.5 hours. Mainly the four skills are listening, speaking, writing and reading. Here is a table shows the structure and purpose of both tests, which will at the end show the aggregative score so that the students can easily know the scoring range.

Section IBT PBT
Reading
  • Includes three to five passages, mainly consists of 700 words and 12 question related to each passage
  • Time required is 60-100 minutes
  • Questions can be from 36 to 70
  • Scoring varies from 0 to 30
  • It includes the same
  • It includes the same
  • Mainly assess the ability to understand non-technical Reading material
  • Time required is 30 min
  • Question is always related to one topic
  • Scoring varies from 31 to 67
Listening Includes 4- 6 lectures with 2 to 5 minutes time duration. Includes 6 questions.

  • Longer conversations area allowed
  • New questions are mentioned
  • Assess the attitude of the speaker
  • No longer talks mainly consist of 3 to 4 minutes talk
  • 2-3 extended conversations (3-5 questions)
  • 30 to 40 dialogues (1 question each)
  • Time assign to the candidate is 30 to 40 minutes
  • Questions are total 50
  • Scoring range varies from 31-68
Speaking
  • Includes 2 tasks to express the feedback on a topic, includes 4 tasks about reading and listening
  • Time required is 20 minutes
  • Questions includes 6 tasks
  • Scoring varies from 0 to 30 points
This test has no speaking section
Writing 1 task is related to listening and reading1 is more related to the opinion
  • Includes one essay with 250-300 words
  • Time allotted  is 30 minutes
  • Question includes only 1 topic
  • Score varies from 0- 6
Total scoring criteria Aggregative scoring range of iBT varies from 0 to 120 Aggregative score of PBT varies from 310 to 677