Your first full practice test: how to take it, and how to read the result

Xin chào! Five weeks of strategy, one week of journaling. Now it's time to find out what it all adds up to: a full, timed practice test, taken exactly the way the real exam is.

Set it up like the real thing

• One sitting, two hours. 45 minutes of listening, 75 minutes of reading, no pause between them. Phone in another room.
• Real material. ETS official tests or the Hackers series; the practice tests inside my courses are these. Made-up questions teach made-up traps.
• A paper answer sheet. Bubbling takes time, and you need to learn how much. Print one, or draw 200 circles.
• Listening from a speaker, not headphones. Test rooms use speakers; practise with the same slightly echoey sound.

Score it honestly

Count the correct answers per section, then look up the scaled score in the book's conversion table. Two rules:

1. A guess that landed is still a guess. Mark every question you weren't sure of, even if it was right. Those go in the mistake journal too.
2. Don't round up. 68 correct is 68, not "almost 70". The number is not a judgement; it's a map.

Read the map

Now break the raw score down by part. Most students find one of these shapes:

• Listening strong, reading weak → time is the enemy. Re-read Part 5 and Part 7; your next four weeks are timed reading drills.
• Parts 1 and 2 fine, Parts 3 and 4 collapse → you're chasing the audio. Back to the read-ahead rhythm, and daily listening.
• Everything average → vocabulary. The same ten business topics appear on every test; next week's post is about exactly that.

How often

One full test every two weeks is plenty. In between, drill the part you're weakest at, timed, and keep the journal. Testing every day only measures tiredness.

Next week: the vocabulary the TOEIC actually uses. Hẹn gặp lại! 🌸