TOEFL Take an Interview: How the Four Questions Work and How They're Scored

Take an Interview is the part of the TOEFL iBT® Speaking section where you finally get to say what you think. It is also where most test takers feel the time pressure. There are four questions and 45 seconds for each, with no time to plan.

This guide explains how the task is built, how ETS scores it, and what a strong answer looks like. If you haven’t read about the other task yet, start with TOEFL Listen and Repeat: How It’s Scored and How to Practise.

How the task works

From ETS’s Updated TOEFL iBT Test Overview:

• You take part in a simulated conversation with a prerecorded interviewer.
  
• The interview has a context, for example applying for a scholarship or taking part in a research study.
  
• You answer four questions about the interview topic, describing your experiences and opinions.
  
• You have 45 seconds to answer each question.
  
• The first questions focus on facts and personal experience. The later questions ask you to express and support opinions on broader issues.
  

ETS’s test specifications add that the prompts are designed to draw out a range of speech functions: descriptions, explanations, opinions, suggestions, predictions and narrations. They also say topics are chosen to be accessible to a general audience, and may come from areas such as life sciences, history and business.

An example of how the questions build

ETS’s sample interview is part of a research study about urban life. The four questions follow a clear pattern:

1. A personal memory. Think back to the last time you visited a city in your country that you didn’t live in. Why did you go, and what did you like about it?
   
2. Your own reaction. Some people find cities exciting and others find them draining. How do cities affect you, and why?
   
3. An opinion on a claim. Do you agree that people who live in cities lead more interesting lives? Why or why not?
   
4. An opinion on a policy. Should city governments create more parks to promote happiness? Why or why not?
   

The topic stays the same, but each question asks for something more abstract. Question 1 needs past tenses and concrete details. Question 4 needs you to take a position on a public issue and give reasons.

How it is scored

Each answer is scored from 0 to 5 using the Take an Interview section of the Speaking Scoring Guide. The guide looks at four things: whether you answer the question with real elaboration, your speaking pace, your intelligibility (including rhythm and intonation), and your range and accuracy of grammar and vocabulary.

Score	ETS label	Key features
5	Fully successful	On topic and well elaborated, a good conversational pace with natural pauses, easily intelligible, a range of accurate grammar and vocabulary
4	Generally successful	On topic and elaborated but may lack effective connectors, good pace with some pausing, occasional words need minor effort to understand, grammar and vocabulary adequate for general meanings
3	Partially successful	Generally on topic but limited elaboration, choppy pace with frequent fillers, word-level pronunciation sometimes affects intelligibility, limited range noticeably restricts precision
2	Mostly unsuccessful	Minimally connected to the question, little relevant elaboration or mainly language from the question, meaning often hard to discern
1	Unsuccessful	Only vaguely connected to the question, mostly unintelligible, mainly isolated words or phrases
0	—	No response, no English, entirely unrelated, or only phrases like “I don’t know”

What the scoring guide tells you to do

Elaborate. The difference between a 4 and a 3 often starts with “elaborated” versus “limited elaboration”. A one-sentence answer followed by silence can’t show the range the guide asks for. Use most of your 45 seconds.

Don’t recycle the question. The level 2 description specifically mentions responses that consist “mainly of language from the question”. Restating the question is a natural way to buy time, but if it takes up half your answer, it costs you. Answer in your own words straight away.

Connect your ideas. The level 4 description notes that a response “may lack effective sentence-level connectors”. Simple links such as because, so, for example, on the other hand and that’s why are what move an answer from a list of points to a piece of reasoning.

A natural pace, not a fast one. Level 5 asks for “appropriate and natural use of pauses”. Level 3 describes “frequent or lengthy pauses” and “frequent” fillers. Short pauses between ideas are fine. Long silences in the middle of sentences are what hurt.

What “high level” actually sounds like

ETS’s high-level sample response to the city interview is worth reading closely. It isn’t polished. It contains plenty of “um” and “uh”, a few restarts, and simple vocabulary. What makes it strong is that every answer:

• responds to the question directly in the first sentence,
  
• adds reasons and concrete details (named places, food, activities), and
  
• keeps going for the full answer without losing the thread.
  

That should reassure you. The interview doesn’t reward a perfect speech. It rewards a clear, relevant, developed answer at a natural pace.

A simple shape for any question

With no preparation time, you need a shape you can use automatically. One that works for most questions:

1. Answer: one sentence that directly answers the question.
   
2. Reason or detail: why, or what happened.
   
3. Example: something specific from your life or something you have seen.
   
4. Wrap-up (optional): one short sentence linking back to the question, if time allows.
   

We go deeper into answer structure, including how to adapt it for experience questions and opinion questions, in a later post.

Common traps

• Waiting to start. Silence at the start eats your 45 seconds. Start with your answer, even a simple one.
  
• Answering a different question. If the question asks why, a description alone is only half an answer.
  
• Changing your opinion halfway. It’s fine to see both sides, but say which side you are on.
  
• Memorised speeches. ETS’s testing policies say you must use your own words. A pre-learned paragraph that doesn’t fit the question also scores poorly under the guide.
  

Practise this

Lingo Copilot Speaking has interview sets with a recorded interviewer, four questions in the same experience-to-opinion pattern, and a 45-second response clock. Each answer gets an AI estimate on the 0–5 scale, plus feedback on fluency, intelligibility, language use and organisation.

Practise Take an Interview, or create a free account. Your first full TOEFL speaking mock is free.

Scores in Lingo Copilot Speaking are AI estimates for practice, not official TOEFL scores. TOEFL and TOEFL iBT® are registered trademarks of ETS. Lingo Copilot Speaking is not affiliated with or endorsed by ETS.