TOEFL 2026 · Writing · Practice
How do I practise TOEFL writing for the 2026 test?
Practise the three tasks separately, because they are scored in two different ways. Build a Sentence (10 items, about 6 minutes) is marked correct or incorrect, so it responds to short daily drilling and you can practise it free and ungated right here. Write an Email (1 task, about 7 minutes) and Write for an Academic Discussion (1 task, about 10 minutes) are each scored on a 0-5 rubric and read as first drafts — they reward covering the whole prompt, developing a position and matching the register, none of which an answer key can check. Practise those two under the real clock, then score your own draft against the four rubric dimensions before you read anyone else's feedback.
The writing section is 12 questions across three task types in about 23 minutes, presented in a fixed, linear order — it is not adaptive. Two of the three tasks are scored on a 0-5 rubric by raters who treat your response as a first draft, so minor errors that do not interfere with meaning are expected rather than punished. Practice that does not respect this split wastes time: polishing grammar will not move a response that never developed its position.
What it demands: Sentence-level grammar and word order: where a subordinate clause sits, where a relative clause attaches, what an infinitive complement takes.
How to practise it: Short daily drills. It is the one writing task with a single right answer, so it can be practised and marked without a grader.
What it demands: Communicative writing for a named audience and purpose — a request, a complaint, a proposal, an explanation — with a register that matches.
How to practise it: Write against the clock from a scenario, then check tone and coverage before grammar. Needs a reader: no key can mark it.
What it demands: A clear position, developed with specific reasons or examples, that engages with what the professor and the two students already said — in your own words.
How to practise it: Practise the reading half too: two minutes to understand the thread is part of the ten. Needs a reader.
Task counts, timings and scoring methods as set out in the TOEFL 2026 writing section guide. Timing is approximate.
Start here, because this is the one writing task you can practise and mark without anybody else in the loop. Each item gives you the pieces of a sentence and exactly one order produces grammatical English, so a browser page can score it honestly — and ours does, with no account, no email and no trial.
Seven items, scored in your browser as you answer. Nothing you type is sent to a server or stored, and there is no sign-up wall in front of it.
Open the free drillTen items run for roughly six minutes on the real test, about 35 seconds each, so practise at that pace rather than puzzling one out. Five to ten items a day does more than an hour once a week: what improves is how fast you recognise where a subordinate clause has to sit or what an infinitive complement takes, and that is a recognition habit.
You get a scenario and about seven minutes to write one email for a specific audience and purpose — recommending, requesting, complaining, proposing a fix, explaining a situation. Roughly a minute of that goes on reading the scenario properly, which is time well spent: the single most common failure is an email that answers most of the prompt.
What practice has to build is register control, not word count. The task is scored on four dimensions — content, syntactic and lexical variety, social conventions, and accuracy — and two of those are about how you say it rather than what you say. In LingoLeap's own 2026 Email scorer this is made explicit: the overall score is capped at the lower of vocabulary/syntactic range and social conventions, plus half a band, so a grammatically clean email written in basic words or the wrong register cannot reach the top of the scale. That cap is our implementation, not a published ETS formula, but it encodes something the rubric does say — range and register are scored dimensions in their own right.
A practice loop that works: set a 7-minute timer, write from a scenario you have not seen, then before looking at any feedback score yourself on the four dimensions below. Only after that, get an outside read.
Content
Did I address every part of the scenario, and is each point elaborated rather than just stated? Reread the prompt after drafting — the most common way to lose marks is answering two thirds of it.
Syntactic and lexical variety
Do my sentences vary in shape, or are they all subject-verb-object? Is the vocabulary doing any work, or is it 'good', 'interesting', 'very helpful'?
Social conventions
Does the greeting, the level of directness and the sign-off match who I am writing to? An email to a professor that opens 'Hi' and closes 'Thanks' is a register mismatch, not a style choice.
Accuracy
Are the remaining errors the kind that a reader steps over, or the kind that make a sentence ambiguous? Only the second kind is expensive — this is a first draft and is scored as one.
For scenarios to write from and the structures that fit them, use the email and discussion prompt bank and the email writing template.
You read a professor's question and two student responses, then add your own contribution — about ten minutes in total, of which roughly two go on reading the thread. An effective response runs to at least 100 words; most strong ones sit in the 120-180 range, which is about the space a position plus real support needs.
The trap in practising this task is treating it as a miniature essay. It is a contribution to a conversation: one of the four scored dimensions is specifically your response to the discussion, so a well-argued paragraph that never acknowledges what the two students said is leaving a whole dimension on the table. Practise the reading half deliberately — give yourself two minutes to decide who you are agreeing with and where you would qualify them, before you write a word.
Content and elaboration
Is there a reason or example behind my position, or have I stated an opinion and stopped? Elaboration is the dimension that separates a competent response from a strong one.
Response to the discussion
Have I engaged with what the other two students actually said — agreeing, qualifying, or pushing back — or have I written an isolated mini-essay that ignores the thread?
Syntactic and lexical variety
Have I borrowed the prompt's phrasing? Original language is explicitly rewarded; copying from the stimulus is explicitly not.
Language accuracy
Did I leave 30-60 seconds to scan for a missing word, a trailing sentence, a wrong verb form? That final pass is worth more than another half-sentence of content.
Prompts to practise on are in the TOEFL writing topics bank, and the academic discussion template shows a structure flexible enough to adapt rather than recite.
Four habits, in the order they pay off. None of them needs more than about twenty-five minutes at a sitting — the writing section itself is only twenty-three.
1. Drill Build a Sentence daily, in minutes not hours
Five to ten items a day is enough to internalise the syntax patterns; speed and accuracy both come from repetition. On the test you have roughly 35 seconds an item, so practise at that pace and move on when one does not click.
2. Write both long tasks under a timer from day one
Seven minutes for the email, ten for the discussion — including the reading. Untimed practice builds habits that do not transfer: about a minute of the email slot goes on the scenario, about two minutes of the discussion slot on the professor's question and the two student posts.
3. Score your own draft against the rubric before you look at feedback
Take the four dimensions for that task and give yourself a number on each. Doing this first is what turns feedback into learning — you find out not just what was wrong but where your own judgement is miscalibrated.
4. Then get an outside read, and chase the recurring fault
Self-review has a ceiling: you cannot see the register problem or the missing elaboration you did not know to look for. Whether it comes from a tutor or from AI scoring, act on the fault that shows up in three drafts, not the one-off slip.
Both 0-5 tasks are graded holistically, but the description of a strong response is specific enough to self-check against. A top-band email fully addresses the task with a clear communicative purpose, is organised and uses appropriate email conventions, supports itself with specific detail, matches its tone to the audience, and keeps consistent control of grammar and vocabulary. A top-band discussion contribution is relevant and well developed, elaborates with specific examples or reasoning, engages meaningfully with the discussion, uses original language rather than the prompt's, shows syntactic variety, and clears the 100-word minimum.
Two things follow for practice. First, score the dimensions separately — a single gut-feel number tells you nothing about what to change next time. Second, resist rewriting into perfection: these are first drafts by design, and errors that do not interfere with meaning are not what is holding a mid-band response back.
The band-by-band descriptors for both tasks are set out in the TOEFL writing rubrics guide, and how to score a 6 in TOEFL writing turns them into habits.
Not addressing all parts of the prompt
Reread the prompt after drafting and tick off each thing it asked for.
Leaning on a memorised template that fits nothing exactly
Learn flexible structures and adapt them. A template that ignores the specific scenario reads as generic to a rater.
Writing under 100 words for Academic Discussion
Aim for 120-150 as a floor. Under 100 words normally means the position was never developed.
Recycling the prompt's or the students' phrasing
Paraphrase. Original expression is a scored dimension, and borrowed language is what the lowest bands are described by.
Over-spending on Build a Sentence
If an item has not clicked in about 40 seconds, commit to your best order and move on. The time you save there is worth more inside the two writing tasks.
Writing in the wrong register
The email needs social conventions that fit its recipient; the discussion should sound analytical rather than chatty.
Practice needs material. These are the assets to pull from, in the order you are likely to want them — all free to read, none of them behind a sign-up.
Common email scenarios and academic discussion prompts to write from under the clock.
Worked email and academic discussion responses, to read after you have written your own — not before.
Structures shown on real prompts, so you adapt a shape rather than reciting a template.
Seven items scored in your browser, with no account and nothing sent to a server.
Write an Email and Academic Discussion are scored on how a response is developed and organised, which no answer key can check. Practise them with criterion-by-criterion AI feedback.
Open the writing practiceTOEFL 2026 writing section
All three tasks, the timing split, and how each one is scored.
TOEFL writing rubrics
Band-by-band descriptors for the email and academic discussion tasks.
TOEFL writing examples
Worked email and discussion responses for the 2026 format.
TOEFL speaking practice
The same thing for the speaking section: what to drill and how.