Is there any difference between TOEFL and IELTS?

Yess • While TOEFL is conducted by ETS, a nonprofit organization in US, IELTS is jointly managed by the British Council, University of Cambridge, and IELTS Australia. • While IELTS scores are valid in US also, Universities in US and Canada prefer TOEFL over IELTS. • One of the biggest differences between IELTS and TOEFL is that while IELTS assesses proficiency in British English, TOEFL measures proficiency in US English. • Though both assess abilities in reading, writing, speaking, and listening, formats of the two tests are quite different. • TOEFL has more multiple choice questions while in IELTS candidates have to copy words after listening to a conversation. • For some, it is easier to prepare for TOEFL as the format remains constant, while format in IELTS keeps changing. • Marking is also different in both the tests. While, in TOEFL, small grammatical mistakes are generally ignored if the topic has been handled well by the candidate, in IELTS, a candidate cannot hope to be marked leniently. • One major difference between IELTS and TOEFL lies in the fact that IELTS also has a General version for those who are immigrating to English speaking countries and would be working in environments that are not academic in nature. TOEFL does not make any difference between candidates. • While TOEFL focuses on North America, IELTS has been designed to take into account various accents and situations. So unless you are trying to go to a specific North American region, it is better to take IELTS. • While scores are given in a band of 0-9 in IELTS, scores in TOEFL are between 310 and 677. There is also an online version of TOEFL where scores are provided with a highest possible score of 120. • While the duration of IELTS is 2hr 45min, TOEFL, internet based test is longer and has a duration of about 4 hours. TOEFL paper based test is about 2 hours and 30 minutes. read less

There is a clear difference between TOEFL and IELTS. TOEFL- It is a computer based test. In TOEFL they usually ask academic topics. IELTS - IELTS is a paper based test. In IELTS there are two modules 1) Academic 2) General IELTS Academic- It is the module which is designed to test the candidates language skills, who wants to go abroad for higher studies. IELTS General - It tests the language skills of those people who want to migrate to a English speaking country. The rating scale for TOEFL is 0-120, where as it is 0-9 for IELTS. IELTS score is acceptable almost all over the world. But the USA universities prefer TOEFL score instead of IELTS. read less

In the IELTS test you will talk to a real person and in the TOEFL test you will speak to a computer. For TOEFL you will type everything on a keyboard, but for IELTS you will be writing on paper. The TOEFL test is 60 minutes long and the IELTS listening test is 30 minutes TOEFL has only academic texts available, but with IELTS you can choose either the Academic paper or the non-academic one, if you would like to do the General Training paper. Students have remarked that the TOEFL paper is much longer than the IELTS paper and it requires greater levels of concentration and mental stamina. Many have also said that they did not like the fact that it was just multiple choice questions and they found it very difficult to do the same thing over and over again. read less