TOEFL syllabus: no topic list, and what to study instead

First, throw away the old material

If a book, course or YouTube channel teaches any of the following, it is preparing you for the pre-2026 test:

• A 0 to 120 total as the score you will receive.
• Four speaking tasks with 15 or 30 seconds of preparation and 45 or 60 seconds of response.
• An integrated writing task where you read, listen and summarise the relationship in 20 minutes.
• A reading section of three or four long passages with about ten questions each.
• A three-hour test.

The exception: Write for an Academic Discussion survived the change, so material on that one task is still useful.

Reading: what to study now

• Speed. Fifty items in about thirty minutes changes the whole approach — there is no time for a careful second pass.
• Vocabulary and word form, which Complete the Words tests directly rather than through inference.
• Everyday functional text — notices, instructions, correspondence — for Read in Daily Life.
• Academic passage technique — reading for structure and argument rather than detail.

Listening: what to study now

• Fast single-response items, which reward alertness rather than note-taking.
• Campus and everyday conversation, including the functional announcement format.
• Academic talks, where notes still help — topic, three or four points, conclusion.
• Accents. ETS uses a range of native-speaker accents; exposure is the only preparation that works.

Writing: what to study now

• Sentence-level accuracy, because Build a Sentence tests it directly. Grammar drilling is genuinely useful here in a way it was not before.
• Email register — the difference between writing to a professor and writing to a classmate, with an opening, a purpose and a close.
• The academic discussion — engage with a named classmate, take a position, support it with one concrete example, extend it. Around 100 to 150 words is the right size.

Speaking: what to study now

• Listen and Repeat. Listen for meaning rather than storing sounds — understanding the sentence lets you rebuild it. Start immediately and never restart.
• Interview responses, which are conversational rather than templated. Prepare content about yourself, not scripts.
• Continuity over correction. Eight minutes of speaking is scored on how you actually sound, and self-correcting mid-sentence costs more than the error did.

A three-week shape

1. Week 1 — meet the new tasks. Work through ETS's own material for all eleven task types. Do not score yourself; just remove the surprises.
2. Week 2 — speed and accuracy. Timed reading and listening, plus daily sentence-level grammar for Build a Sentence.
3. Week 3 — full length, twice. Two complete sittings at the time of day you are booked for, and time spent on why each wrong answer was wrong.