The Test Of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is an examination that is administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and used to evaluate a nonnative English speaker’s proficiency in the English language. An acceptable score on the TOEFL test depends on the specific requirements of the particular institution or agency involved. The test comes in two formats, the paper based test and the computer-based test.
The TOEFL test scores are required for students who wish to work at the graduate level in various countries. The test taker is required to make a prior registration at the test center to avoid inconvenience. The scores are valid for two years. The computer based TOEFL test has two sections namely the Listening section and the Structure section that are based on Computer Adaptive Test (CAT) format.

In the CAT format of the exam the computer chooses problems based on a candidate’s responses to previous questions. This makes the CAT “adaptive” or “interactive”. CAT selects questions according to each candidate’s ability .The questions are broadly classified as easy, moderately difficult and very difficult. Because the CAT is it uses fewer items and takes less time to administer than the paper-based version.

Simply putting, the computer has access to a large number of test items classified according to question types (antonyms, reading comprehension etc.)And arranged in order of difficulty. The start of the test the computer presents the examinee with “seed” questions, items of average difficulty level .If these are answered successfully then the program selects for the next question an item of greater difficulty .On the contrary, if the “seed” questions are not answered successfully, then the program lowers the difficulty level by selecting a question from the lower difficulty range. Needless to say that because of such an adaptation it is very important to start the test with greatest accuracy.