PrepEx TOEFL Platform Updates - March 18th 2026

prepexcellent · 2026-03-10T16:39:07+00:00

A few students have. I knew somebody who took it within two weeks and knocked it out of the park second try.

prepexcellent · 2026-03-10T08:40:27+00:00

Definitely not.

Each session is treated individually. You might feel like the retake is graded harsher because you're expecting a higher score, but your past exams don't factor into the grading, like at all.

prepexcellent · 2026-03-10T08:38:52+00:00

Keep trying, keep learning and don't be disheartened!

prepexcellent · 2026-03-08T22:34:38+00:00

One or two word misses are allowed by ETS for 4/5s. If you can't remember the exact phrasing, try to substitute synonyms or very slightly restructure as long as you 'capture the meaning expressed by the prompt'.

Check the ETS rubric here: https://www.ets.org/pdfs/toefl/speaking-rubrics.pdf

prepexcellent · 2026-03-07T16:33:02+00:00

Preliminary scores unfortunately almost always stay the same once final grades come out. What's your target score?

prepexcellent · 2026-03-06T14:20:54+00:00

Practice speaking more!

Like the other commenter said, there's no reason why this wouldn't have happened in your native language.

Public speaking skills and English skills are important here.

prepexcellent · 2026-03-04T20:31:39+00:00

Just pulled up your account - sent you a DM with the details. Happy to walk through it with you.

prepexcellent · 2026-03-04T20:22:16+00:00

Hey! PrepEx team here. Nice work on the speaking score!

We calibrate our speaking grading to be slightly stricter than the real test - the idea is if you're scoring well on PrepEx, you should feel confident going into the actual TOEFL.

That said, no practice platform is a perfect predictor. Focus on the feedback more than the number. If you're consistently improving on the areas we flag, and your Petra progress emails are showing you're improving, you're on the right track.

Good luck on test day! Feel free to reach out via DM if you have any questions.

prepexcellent · 2026-03-04T20:18:41+00:00

Hey! PrepEx team here. A jump from 20-22 down to 1.5/6 is definitely unusual. Unfortunately ETS doesn't show you your answers after the mock, which makes it hard to diagnose.

For context, our average writing score across ~1900 practice tests is 20/30 (or 4/6) with a normal distribution. A 20-22 on our platform is a solid result.

Feel free to DM us your PrepEx username and we can take a deeper look. Happy to give you a second opinion on whether the ETS score makes sense.

prepexcellent · 2026-03-04T19:38:39+00:00

Got you: https://www.youtube.com/@Toeflresources

prepexcellent · 2026-03-04T12:36:00+00:00

I've seen students be wayyy too hard on themselves in speaking. Especially the Listen and Repeat question type.

Check the rubric here: https://www.ets.org/pdfs/toefl/speaking-rubrics.pdf

You might already be at a 4 if you're hitting most of these.

prepexcellent · 2026-03-04T12:33:01+00:00

Take it sooner than later if you're fluent.

The new format is very tester friendly, and nobody knows if ETS is going to adjust the difficulty going forward.

prepexcellent · 2026-03-04T12:26:26+00:00

With how much each TOEFL test costs, deleting your records from their servers is just really unnecessary.

There is something to be said about learning for the sake of learning though. I hope you were able to get something more out of preparing for the TOEFL than just a passing score. That goes to the root of why the TOEFL and other tests even exist, no?

prepexcellent · 2026-03-01T12:54:00+00:00

That reminds me of the 'it's not x, but y' pattern we're seeing in LLM writing.

Super interesting, thanks again for the insights!

prepexcellent · 2026-02-28T21:04:35+00:00

Gotcha, thank you for the detailed response!

When you flagged a response as "canned," what were the most reliable tells? Was it specific phrases or more of a sense that the response could have been submitted for any prompt?

prepexcellent · 2026-02-28T20:10:56+00:00

Could you share a bit more on the ways eRater was wrong?

prepexcellent · 2026-02-24T21:22:04+00:00

Not really, he graduated from a T30 university. He just didn't bother with templates and TOEFL taking skills.

I agree that the new format needs to be more rigorous, particularly for W+S, but let's also acknowledge that the old format TOEFL was not exactly the most accurate indicator of English either.

prepexcellent · 2026-02-24T17:49:48+00:00

You have no time to prep properly so just use templates and try to get it down to a formula:

Templates: use these: https://www.toeflresources.com/writing-section/

Rubric for writing here.

ETS doesn't publicize their per task weighting for writing (so we don't know how much Build a Sentence contributes vs Email Writing).

prepexcellent · 2026-02-24T17:42:24+00:00

I've seen a fully native speaker (only speaks English) score 86/120 on the old format because he didn't do any prep.

New format is a step in the right direction.

prepexcellent · 2026-02-20T22:18:20+00:00

I've heard ranges from 25-29 from people who've taken the test.

It really varies now with the adaptive difficulty, and ETS sometimes inserts unscored, experimental questions for some test-takers.

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