What Longman's Prep Course Actually Gets Right — And Where It Completely Falls Apart
The Longman Preparation Course for the TOEFL Test is one of the older names in test prep. First published in the mid-1990s, it went through several editions over roughly two decades. It was widely used during the transition period when schools were still administering the PBT and CBT versions of the exam. A lot of people still talk about it online, mostly out of habit. I'd argue you should look at it honestly before committing weeks to it. The core structure is straightforward. Each unit targets one skill area — reading, listening, structure, or writing — and gives you a lesson followed by practice questions. The reading passages are typically academic in tone, drawn from college-level textbooks. The listening section features lectures and campus conversations. The grammar portion, which the original edition called "Structure and Written Expression," presents sentence-level correction exercises. That format matches the old CBT exactly. If you're preparing for the current iBT, that structural matching is already a problem. The audio quality is adequate but unmistakably dated. The speech rate is somewhat slower than what appears on the actual exam. The pronunciation patterns are clear and controlled, which is fine for learners at lower levels. Native-speaker naturalness is lower than modern standards, and the accents are fairly limited in range. This matters more than it might seem. Real TOEFL listening passages include a wider variety of speech patterns, background noise, and natural interruptions than what Longman provides.
The reading passages are longer and more detailed than the average iBT passage. That's not necessarily bad. It builds endurance. But the question types don't always align with the current exam. The original edition includes information transfer questions, for example, which don't exist on the iBT. Some of the vocabulary questions ask about word meanings in ways that feel arbitrary. The later editions tried to address this, but the fundamental structure of the book still reflects the older test format. One practical thing worth noting: the student book and workbook combo gives you roughly 120 to 150 hours of structured material if you work through everything sequentially. That's a significant time investment. The answer explanations are detailed enough to be useful, though they sometimes stop short of explaining why the incorrect answers are wrong, which is where most students actually learn.
The Problem Nobody Talks About
I ran into a specific issue while using this material for a student who was aiming for a score above 95 on the iBT. The integrated speaking tasks on the real exam require you to read a passage, listen to a lecture, and then synthesize both into a spoken response. Longman's speaking exercises treat reading and listening as separate skills. They never combine them. The book has a speaking section, but it's mostly independent prompts that look like the old independent essay topics. You can practice fluency with these, but you won't develop the actual integrated skill that the exam measures. My workaround was simple. I used Longman's reading and listening sections for skill building, then paired them myself with official ETS materials that included integrated tasks. That took maybe 30 additional minutes per session, but it closed the gap. Another edge case. The listening passages in the later CD-ROM version have a metadata issue. The question audio doesn't always sync correctly with the passage audio. I found this on units 4 through 7. The mismatch is small — maybe two seconds — but it throws off timing if you're practicing under real test conditions. The fix was to mute the question audio and count the seconds manually from the passage start. Took about ten minutes to adjust my approach, and I noted it for future reference. It's a minor thing, but it reveals how outdated the media assets are.
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Counter-Intuitive Things About This Material
Most people assume the grammar section is the strongest part of this book. It's not. The grammar explanations are thin. They give you rules and then immediate practice, but they don't build conceptual understanding. You might get the structure questions right through pattern recognition without actually knowing why the answer is correct. That's fine for the old test, where structural rules dominated. On the iBT, grammar is tested implicitly through writing and speaking, not through explicit correction questions. The money is elsewhere. The real value is in the reading section. The passages are genuinely challenging, and the vocabulary in context is useful. I've seen students who stuck with just the reading component of this book improve their TOEFL reading scores by 8 to 12 points after six to eight weeks of consistent practice. The listening section improves similarly, but only if you supplement it. The writing section is the weakest. The templates it provides are rigid and formulaic. Using them on the actual exam can hurt your score if the rater detects mechanical writing. I had a student who scored 22 on writing using Longman templates, then jumped to 26 after switching to a more flexible approach that emphasized clear organization and development over template phrases.
What This Book Cannot Do For You
This material does not prepare you for the iBT format. Period. If you take this book seriously and skip official ETS practice, you will walk into the exam unprepared for the integrated tasks. The reading and listening improvements might carry over, but the speaking and writing sections will suffer. I've seen this happen. It's not common because most people using this book today are either on a very limited budget or following outdated advice from forums that haven't been updated since 2010. There's also a vocabulary problem. The word lists in this book lean heavily toward formal and archaic terms. Words like "quintessential" and "sagacious" appear frequently. These are real English words, but they're not the high-frequency academic vocabulary that actually shows up on the iBT. The test favors words like "hypothesis," "significant," "approximately," and "consequently." Longman gives you some of those, but the ratio is off. Spend extra time building your own flashcard deck from the reading passages instead of relying on the book's lists.
Practical Recommendations
If you're on a tight budget and this is the only resource you can access, use it selectively. Focus on the reading passages and the listening exercises. Do the grammar sections for pattern practice but don't expect deep learning. Skip the writing templates entirely. Supplement with free ETS materials, which include actual past iBT questions and scoring guidelines. If you have any budget at all, buy the Official Guide to the TOEFL iBT from ETS and pair it with whatever else you need. The Official Guide costs about $40 and gives you access to real test questions with scored responses. That's more useful than three months of Longman practice. The Longman course is roughly equivalent to four to six weeks of dedicated study. The Official Guide covers the same time period and matches the actual exam format perfectly. For self-study without a tutor, the Longman book can work as a foundation if you understand its limitations. Set a realistic timeline. Six weeks of daily practice, two hours a day, will give you a sense of whether this material helps. Track your scores on official practice tests every two weeks. If your reading and listening scores aren't improving, the book isn't the problem — your approach is. Switch to ETS materials and reassess.
The Preparation Course For The Toefl Test Longman is not a bad book. It's just a book from a different era. Treat it like a supplementary resource, not a complete solution. That's the difference between wasting months on it and getting real results.
