Editorial standards

1. Who runs TOEFLMock

TOEFLMock is an independent practice-test platform for the TOEFL iBT 2026 redesign, founded in 2025 by Harshath G.M. and rebuilt in April 2026 alongside the platform redesign for the new format. We are a small team operating without institutional backing or licensing from any test publisher. We don’t claim formal TOEFL examiner credentials — we publish our methodology, scoring rubrics, and content sourcing openly so you can audit the practice on its merits, not on appeal to authority.

For organisational details, contact email, and structure, see the About page.

2. Where content comes from

Every test item on TOEFLMock is original content authored for this platform. We do not host, redistribute, or paraphrase copyrighted ETS test items. Where we discuss the live exam — section length, item counts, task types, scoring conventions — we cite the publicly available ETS Test Blueprint, the published 2026 redesign overview, and ETS’s Speaking and Writing rubric documents.

Sources we use to keep content current:

• ETS’s public TOEFL iBT Test Blueprint and 2026 redesign announcements
• ETS-published sample responses with anchor scores (used for rubric calibration only, never reproduced verbatim)
• Publicly accessible academic-English style sources for passage and lecture topic ideas: peer-reviewed journals, university lecture transcripts, public-domain encyclopedias
• The published CEFR Companion Volume for level descriptors

All passages, conversations, lectures, and writing prompts are drafted from scratch. Audio is generated using high-quality speech systems with a mix of accents that mirrors the live exam (North American, British, Australian, with occasional New Zealand voices on the Listening section).

3. ETS 2026 spec compliance

The TOEFL iBT 2026 redesign changed the test in five ways that matter for practice authoring: total length (now ~90 minutes), Reading and Listening becoming two-module adaptive sections, Speaking moving to a Listen-and-Repeat plus video Interview structure, Writing replacing the Integrated task with Build-a-Sentence and Email tasks, and a new 1.0–6.0 band scoring scale aligned to CEFR. Every aspect of TOEFLMock’s 80 practice tests follows that specification:

• Reading: 50 items in 30 minutes across two modules. Module 1 is fixed for all test takers; Module 2 routes to a harder or easier variant based on Module 1 accuracy. The easier-path band is capped at 4.0, matching the published behaviour of the live exam.
• Listening: 47 items in ~29 minutes across two modules with the same routing logic. Audio plays once during the live test (we honour this in our test runner) and is replayable in our review interface only.
• Writing: 23 minutes covering Build-a-Sentence (about 6 minutes for 10 items), Write-an-Email (7 minutes, 130–140 words), and Academic Discussion (10 minutes).
• Speaking: ~8 minutes covering 7 Listen-and-Repeat items (7 seconds each) and 4 video Interview questions (44 seconds each).

When ETS publishes updates or clarifications to the format, we revise affected tests and note the change in the changelog (section 6).

4. Two-pass editorial review

Every item passes through two reviews before publication:

1. Authoring review. The author drafts the item, the answer key, the distractors (for multiple choice), and a one-line rationale. They self-check for ambiguity, double-correct distractors, and mismatched difficulty.
2. QA review. A second pass checks: does the item match the published task type, does timing fit the section budget, are distractors plausible without being defensible-correct, is the rationale rubric-aligned for Writing and Speaking, and is the audio clean for Listening.

Items that fail QA are revised or held until they pass. We don’t publish to hit a content quota.

5. Scoring & calibration

Reading and Listening are scored deterministically from the answer key. The 1–6 band is computed using the published 2026 weightings: per-item accuracy, mapped to band thresholds, with the easier-path cap at 4.0 enforced when the routing path is ‘easy’. Section bands are reported separately and combined into an overall band rounded to the nearest 0.5.

Writing and Speaking responses are scored against the official ETS TOEFL iBT 2026 rubric for each task type. The rubric has four published criteria: organization & development, language use, delivery (Speaking) or conventions (Writing), and topic development. Each criterion contributes to a 0–5 task score, the task scores are aggregated to a section band on the 1–6 scale, and the band is reported with rationale anchored to specific rubric criteria plus three concrete improvements you can apply on the next attempt.

Calibration: our scoring is calibrated against ETS’s published sample responses for each task type. Where ETS publishes a sample response with an anchor score (for instance, an Academic Discussion response anchored at band 5), our scoring system reproduces that anchor when the same response is fed in. We aim to be within ±0.5 band of an actual ETS-issued score for any given response. We don’t claim perfect parity, and we don’t claim that a score from us substitutes for an official score.

6. Updates & changelog

Major content updates, scoring-rule changes, and spec-driven revisions are published in the blog with a clear ‘Last updated’ date on each post. Test-level revisions are reflected in the test page’s dateModified structured-data field. When ETS publishes a clarification we hadn’t accounted for, we ship the change within two weeks, retest affected items, and post a brief blog note describing what changed.

If a test gets a substantial revision — say a routing-threshold tweak that changes how Module 2 difficulty is selected — we update dateModified and link the change from the test landing page.

7. Corrections & key disputes

If a question has a wrong answer key, an ambiguous distractor, a typo, or a passage with an inaccuracy, we want to know. Disputes go to admin@toeflmocktests.com with the test ID and question number. Every reported issue is reviewed within 72 hours.

When a confirmed error is found:

• The item is corrected and the test re-published.
• Affected attempts are flagged. Reading and Listening scores are recomputed against the corrected key. Writing and Speaking band scores stand unless the prompt itself was the source of the error.
• A note is added to the test’s changelog with the date of the correction and a one-line description of what changed.

Disagreement with a Writing or Speaking band score follows a separate path: email the same address with the test ID, the response you submitted, and the band you believe it should have received. Score reviews are decided against the published ETS rubric, not against the student’s expectation. We will explain the band rationale rubric-criterion by rubric-criterion. We don’t edit student work to fit a higher band.

8. Independence & trademarks

TOEFLMock is not endorsed by, licensed by, or affiliated with ETS (Educational Testing Service). TOEFL® and TOEFL iBT® are registered trademarks of ETS, used here only for descriptive reference to the test we prepare students for. CEFR is the trademark of the Council of Europe. Any score reported on TOEFLMock is a practice estimate for self-study and does not substitute for an official ETS score.

We don’t accept payment, sponsorship, or content-direction from any test publisher, university, or admissions consultancy. The content we publish reflects our own assessment of what students need to prepare; it is not influenced by external commercial interest.

9. Advertising & editorial separation

The platform is sustained by non-intrusive advertising (Google AdSense) and an optional subscription. Advertising and editorial are kept separate:

• Advertisers do not receive editorial coverage. We don’t publish sponsored articles, advertorials, or pay-for-placement content.
• Affiliate links (where used) are disclosed inline. Most external links from blog content are non-affiliate informational references.
• Ads are delivered via the AdSense auction. We don’t pre-select advertisers and we don’t accept direct ad placements from companies we cover.
• Our blog never reviews or compares specific universities or programmes for the purpose of driving paid traffic. University score-requirement pages, where they exist, source minimums and averages from publicly available admissions data and are clearly labelled as compiled summaries rather than endorsements.

10. Student data & privacy

We collect the minimum data needed to score and return a result. For free practice attempts: an email address (used only to send the result link), the responses you submit, and basic anonymised analytics (page, country, device class). For paid attempts: the same plus the payment-processor reference, no card data is stored on our servers.

Detailed data handling, retention, third-party processors, and your rights are covered in the Privacy policy. To request data deletion or correction, email admin@toeflmocktests.com.

11. Editorial contact

For corrections, key disputes, score reviews, partnership enquiries, or any editorial question, the canonical channel is email to admin@toeflmocktests.com. The contact page has the same destination plus a form for non-email submissions. Response times are typically within 48 hours; longer during exam peak weeks (August, November, January).

This editorial standards page itself is reviewed quarterly and on every material change to scoring or content sourcing. The most recent revision date is shown at the top of this page and in the structured-data dateModified field.