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TOEFL Speaking · Task 4

TOEFL Speaking Task 4 — Academic Lecture Summary

Task 4 is listening only: a lecture excerpt of about two minutes on an academic topic, usually organised around two points or two examples. You get 20 seconds to prepare and 60 seconds to summarise what the professor said. There is nothing to read, so your notes are everything.
  • A two-minute lecture, then 20 seconds to prepare and 60 to speak.
  • Integrated
  • Free delivery check

Record your prepared summary.

Ready·TOEFL TASK 4

Summarise a lecture you have notes for: name the concept, then the professor's two examples. Sixty seconds.

00:0060s

Press record, answer out loud, then press again.

One free take on this device · no account · no card

The format

What the task gives you

Stimulus
A two-minute academic lecture. No reading passage.
Preparation
20 seconds
Speaking
60 seconds
Marked on
Delivery, language use and topic development

What this page can and cannot practise

sayit supplies no lecture. Use your own summary notes and record the 60-second delivery here — the analysis reports pace, long pauses, fillers and every sound against its target, which is the half of this task that practice actually improves. An estimate from fluency and pronunciation only — not an official band, and not a mark for vocabulary or grammar.
Strategy

How to answer Task 4

  1. 1

    Note the two branches

    Most Task 4 lectures split into two categories, causes, stages or examples. Catching that split in your notes gives you the shape of the whole minute.

  2. 2

    Signal the structure out loud

    'The professor gives two examples of this. The first is…' Raters follow a summary that announces its own structure.

  3. 3

    Do not evaluate

    No 'I found this interesting'. Summarise; the clock is exactly long enough for the content and no longer.

Questions

Straight answers

Is Task 4 harder than Task 3?

For most people yes, because there is no reading to anchor the terminology — you meet the key term once, spoken, and have to reuse it accurately.

What does recording it here tell me?

Whether your delivery holds for a full minute: pace, where the pauses land, filler count, and how clearly each sound came out. It cannot tell you whether you caught the professor's second example.

Practise this question

Practise the clock, not the content

Delivery is the third of the score you can actually drill. Record under the real timings and read back pace, pauses, fillers and every sound.

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