GoodMocks teamThe short answer
On the 2026 TOEFL, each Speaking answer gets a score from 0 to 5 on ETS’s scoring guide for its task. That’s seven Listen and Repeat sentences and four interview answers. Listen and Repeat rewards an exact, clear repeat of the sentence. Take an Interview rewards an answer that is on topic and developed, at a natural pace, easy to understand, with a range of accurate English. ETS turns the points into a Speaking band from 1 to 6, and doesn’t publish the table it uses.
- Answers scored
- 11
- Points for each answer
- 0–5
- Scoring guides, one per task
- 2
- Speaking band
- 1–6
On this page9 sections
- 01The two Speaking scoring guides at a glance
- 02Listen and Repeat, level by level
- 03Take an Interview, level by level
- 04From points to your Speaking band
- 05What moves an answer up a level
- 06Try it: read answers the way the guide does
- 07Speaking mistakes, wrong next to right
- 08Hear where your answers sit
- 09Common questions
The two Speaking scoring guides at a glanceLink to The two Speaking scoring guides at a glance
“Rubric” and “scoring guide” mean the same thing here: ETS calls its rubrics scoring guides. The 2026 Speaking section has two tasks, and each has its own guide with six levels, from 0 to 5. They look for different things, so it helps to keep them apart.
| Task | Answers | What the top level describes | What it doesn’t ask for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listen and Repeat | Seven sentences | An exact repeat of the sentence, fully clear | Your own words, ideas or opinions |
| Take an Interview | Four questions | An on-topic, well-developed answer; a natural pace; easy to understand; a range of accurate grammar and words | A right answer, a set length or a particular accent |
Listen and Repeat, level by levelLink to Listen and Repeat, level by level
You hear seven sentences, one at a time, in a campus or academic setting, and say each one back. The guide asks two questions of every repeat: is it the same sentence, and can a listener understand it? In the table, the middle column is ETS’s description in our words, and the right column is an example we wrote for the sentence “The print shop can bind your thesis in two days if you order before Friday.”
| Level | What ETS’s guide describes | What a repeat like that sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | An exact repetition of the sentence, fully intelligible. | “The print shop can bind your thesis in two days if you order before Friday.” |
| 4 | The meaning is all there, but it isn’t exact: a small change in words or grammar that doesn’t really change the meaning. | “The print shop can bind your thesis in two day if you order before Friday.” |
| 3 | Essentially a full sentence with most of the content words, but the original meaning is lost. Some words may be hard to make out. | “The print shop can bind your thesis on Friday if you order in two days.” |
| 2 | A large part is missing, often the start of the sentence, a stop, then the last few words. The meaning is in pieces and hard to follow. | “The print shop can bind… um… before Friday.” |
| 1 | A few words at most, or mostly impossible to understand, though it’s clearly an attempt. | “Print shop… Friday.” |
| 0 | No response, nothing understandable, no English, or something unrelated, like only “I don’t know”. | Silence |
Level 4 is the one to study, because ETS lists exactly which small changes it covers. A typical level 4 repeat has one or more of these:
- one or two small function words missing or changed, like “the”, “to” or “in”
- in a longer sentence, one content word missing, or a content word swapped for a related one (“exam” for “test”)
- a missing or wrong ending for tense, aspect or number (“order” for “ordered”, “day” for “days”)
- two words swapped round
- one or two content words that are unclear because of pronunciation, or a self-correction, as long as you finish the sentence
Take an Interview, level by levelLink to Take an Interview, level by level
A recorded interviewer asks you four questions, and you have 45 seconds to answer each. There’s no right answer. The guide looks at four things in every answer: what you say (is it on topic and developed?), how it flows (pace and pauses), how clear it is (pronunciation, rhythm and intonation), and the range and accuracy of your grammar and vocabulary.
| Level | What you say | How it flows and sounds | Your grammar and words |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Fully answers the question; on topic and well developed | A good conversational pace with natural pauses; easy to understand; rhythm and intonation help carry the meaning | A range of accurate grammar and vocabulary that says exactly what you mean |
| 4 | Answers the question; on topic and developed, though the sentences may not be linked well | A good pace most of the time, with some pauses that slightly affect the flow; the odd word takes a little effort to understand | Good enough to get general meanings across most of the time |
| 3 | Answers the question, but with limited development or clarity | Frequent or long pauses make it choppy, with frequent fillers; word pronunciation or stress sometimes gets in the way | A limited range, and mistakes that noticeably blur what you mean |
| 2 | Only loosely connected to the question, with little relevant development, or mostly the question’s own words | Often hard to work out what you mean | A very limited range |
| 1 | Only vaguely connected to the question’s words | Mostly impossible to understand | Mainly single words or short phrases |
| 0 | No response, nothing understandable, no English, or something unrelated, like only “I don’t know” | — | — |
From points to your Speaking bandLink to From points to your Speaking band
ETS’s 2026 blueprint lists 11 Speaking answers, each worth up to 5 points, for 55 raw points in all: 35 from Listen and Repeat and 20 from the interview. ETS then turns the total into a Speaking band from 1 to 6, in half steps. Its Teacher FAQ says this is done by “weighted equipercentile linking”, a method that allows for small differences in difficulty between versions of the test, so the same band means the same level of English whichever version you took.
Your overall score is the average of your four section bands, rounded to the nearest half band. Score reports also show ETS’s comparison with the old 0–30 scale for two years; our Score Calculator converts a band both ways, and our score report guide shows where Speaking sits on the report.
What moves an answer up a levelLink to What moves an answer up a level
This is our advice, not ETS’s, but each step aims at a difference the scoring guide itself names between two levels.
| To move from… | Try this | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Listen and Repeat, level 3 to 4 | Listen for the message first: who does what, and when. Hold on to the content words. | Level 3 keeps most words but loses the meaning; level 4 keeps the meaning. |
| Listen and Repeat, level 4 to 5 | Then catch the small things: “the”, “a”, plural “-s”, past “-ed”, and word order. | Those are exactly the changes ETS lists at level 4. |
| Interview, level 3 to 4 | Start with a direct answer to the question in your first sentence, so you’re never searching for a way in. | Long pauses and a choppy pace are level 3 features; a ready first sentence cuts the longest pause. |
| Interview, level 4 to 5 | Link your ideas with “because”, “so”, “that’s why” and “for example”, and give one specific detail. | ETS’s level 4 “may lack effective sentence-level connectors”, and level 5 is well developed. |
| Interview, any level | Swap general words for exact ones: “it saved me two hours a week” instead of “it was very helpful”. | Level 5 asks for precise meanings; level 4 for general ones. |
For interview structures that work, see our TOEFL templates, and for questions to practise on, our TOEFL speaking questions.
Try it: read answers the way the guide doesLink to Try it: read answers the way the guide does
Try it
Which description in ETS’s guide fits?
Five short cases, written to match the examples in ETS’s guides. It’s practice in reading the guide, not a score.
The sentence to repeat: “The print shop can bind your thesis in two days if you order before Friday.” For each attempt, pick the description from ETS’s Listen and Repeat guide that fits it best. Then two interview questions.
Question 1 of 5
A student says: “The print shop can bind your thesis in two day if you order before Friday.” Which description in ETS’s guide fits best?
B. The meaning is kept, with a small change in words or grammar (the next level down). “Two day” for “two days” is a missing number marker, which ETS lists as an example of its level 4: the meaning survives, but it isn’t an exact repeat.
Question 2 of 5
A student says: “The print shop can bind your thesis on Friday if you order in two days.” Which description fits best?
C. Most of the words are there, but the meaning has changed. Nearly every word is there and it’s a full sentence, but the timing is swapped, so the message is now wrong. ETS describes that at level 3: essentially full, but it doesn’t capture the original meaning.
Question 3 of 5
A student says: “The print shop can bind… um… before Friday.” Which description fits best?
C. A large part is missing: the start, then a stop, then the last few words. ETS’s level 2 describes exactly this: the speaker repeats the first part, stops or fills, and adds the last few words. The meaning is in pieces, so it isn’t a sentence that stands on its own.
Question 4 of 5
The interviewer asks: “If you could add one class to every high school, what would it be?” Which answer has more of what ETS’s top interview level describes?
C. “I’d add a class on managing money. When I got my first job at seventeen, I had no idea how tax worked, and I made some expensive mistakes. A short course on budgeting would save students a lot of stress later.”. It answers in the first sentence, then develops it with a real example, at a natural length. ETS’s guide puts answers built mainly from the question’s own words (the first) and isolated words or phrases (the second) near the bottom, and “I don’t know” alone at 0.
Question 5 of 5
An answer is on topic, clear and well paced, with good examples. It goes: “I like cooking. I learned from my grandmother. I cook every weekend. It relaxes me.” Which thing does ETS’s guide mention that this answer could improve?
B. Connectors between sentences, like “because”, “so” or “that’s why”. ETS’s level 4 says an on-topic, elaborated answer “may lack effective sentence-level connectors”. Linking the ideas (“I learned from my grandmother, so now I cook every weekend because it relaxes me”) is what that line points to. The guide asks for intelligibility, not an accent.
0/5 questions
Speaking mistakes, wrong next to rightLink to Speaking mistakes, wrong next to right
| Instead of this… | Do this | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Saying the sentence back in your own words | Say exactly what you heard, word for word | Listen and Repeat’s top level is an exact repetition; a smooth paraphrase is a lower level. |
| Stopping after a slip | Correct it quickly and finish the sentence | A correction that finishes is level 4; a sentence in pieces is level 2. |
| Answering the interview by repeating the question | Answer in your first sentence, in your own words | Answers built mainly from the question’s language are described at level 2. |
| A memorized speech that doesn’t quite fit the question | A short plan: answer, reason, example | Every interview level starts with how well the answer addresses the question. |
| Speaking as fast as you can to sound fluent | A natural, conversational pace with pauses where they make sense | Level 5 describes a good conversational pace with natural pauses, and rhythm that helps the meaning. |
| Trying to change your accent | Speak clearly: full word endings, stress on the important words | The guides ask for speech that’s easy to understand, not a particular accent. |
Hear where your answers sitLink to Hear where your answers sit
Reading the guide helps, but you only know where your answers sit when you speak under the clock. Speaking Practice Test 1 has both tasks, timed like the test. For each task on its own, see the Listen and Repeat guide and the Take an Interview guide. Writing has scoring guides too: our TOEFL writing rubric explains them level by level.
Common questions
What is the TOEFL Speaking rubric?
It’s ETS’s scoring guide for each Speaking task. In the 2026 test there are two: one for Listen and Repeat, which looks at whether you repeated the sentence exactly and clearly, and one for Take an Interview, which looks at how well you answer, your pace, how clear you are and the range of your English. Both run from 0 to 5.
How many points is TOEFL Speaking out of?
ETS’s blueprint gives 55 raw points: 11 answers worth up to 5 each. ETS reports a band from 1 to 6, not the points. Its Test Overview lists the raw range as 0 to 50, a difference ETS doesn’t explain.
If I get a 4 on every answer, is my Speaking band 4?
Not necessarily. The levels in the scoring guides and the bands on your report are different scales, and ETS doesn’t publish the table that links them. It turns the total points into a band in a way that allows for each test version’s difficulty.
Does my accent affect my TOEFL Speaking score?
The guides don’t ask for any accent. They ask whether you’re easy to understand: clear words, and rhythm and intonation that help your meaning. An accent that doesn’t get in the way of that isn’t a problem.
Do “um” and “uh” lower my score?
A few don’t. ETS’s own high-level sample interview answer has several. Fillers appear in the guide at level 3, where they are frequent and the pace is choppy, so the aim is an answer that keeps moving, not one with zero fillers.
Who scores TOEFL Speaking on the real test?
ETS’s Teacher FAQ says Speaking and Writing answers on the real test are scored by ETS’s own AI scoring engine against these scoring guides. ETS adds that the engines are trained on human ratings, which also check their accuracy.
Is the 2026 Speaking rubric the same as the old one?
No. The test before January 21, 2026 had Independent and Integrated tasks, scored 0 to 4 on delivery, language use and topic development. ETS still hosts those rubrics, so check that the one you’re reading has Listen and Repeat and Take an Interview.
Sources
Every exam fact on this page comes from ETS, checked on November 6, 2026. GoodMocks is independent from ETS.
- ETS: Updated TOEFL iBT Test Overview (the Speaking scoring guides, pp. 26–28; scoring, p. 21)
- ETS: TOEFL iBT Test Blueprint and Specifications (2026)
- ETS: Teacher FAQ for the TOEFL iBT enhancements (how points become bands, and how ETS scores)
- ETS: the TOEFL iBT Speaking section
- ETS: the pre-2026 Speaking rubrics (for comparison)
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