TOEFL Writing Task 1 – Build a Sentence

Introduction: a new TOEFL 2026 writing task

In this video, we're going to talk about a brand-new task in the TOEFL format. As you know, the TOEFL test changed on January 21st, 2026. In the writing section of the new TOEFL, the first task is completely new. In the old format of the TOEFL, we only had writing tasks where we had to summarize a discussion, write an essay, or participate in an academic conversation. But now we have a task called Build a Sentence. Let's dive into the details.

Build a Sentence task format and timing

The format of this task is the following. You have to put five to seven words in the correct order to form a sentence that answers or completes the given prompt. In the test, you'll see from 6 to 12 items of this task, and you can spend about 45 seconds per item. In total, you have roughly 6 to 8 minutes for all of the items of this type of task.

How Build a Sentence is scored

So how is Build a Sentence scored? There is probably no partial credit. ETS has not revealed the scoring mechanism for partial credit for this task yet. But we can say that you get the full score for the correct order, or if your sentence has the same meaning and correct grammar as the original sentence.

You can still make minor mistakes in one or two items, or submit one incorrect answer, and get the full score. This is because, as we mentioned, you'll get from 6 to 12 items in the whole test, so you can still make some small mistakes.

Strategy 1: Understand the situation and choose the right response type

Let's talk about strategies. First of all, you have to dive into the situation. What does this mean? At the beginning of the task, you're going to see a prompt. Whether it's a statement, a question, or some proposal, you have to understand what they're asking for or how you have to complete this statement. Maybe you have to ask a question about the correct time of your meeting, or maybe something has changed in your friend's schedule, so you have to ask the appropriate question.

So before the options, you'll see a short statement or a question. Make sure you understand the situation correctly. Usually, you're being asked a question, or you have to build the correct question yourself. Select the correct type of response for the given prompt. For example, if it is a question, you have to build a statement that answers the question. If you see a statement, you have to build either a statement or a question that asks for some details.

For example, in the task you're going to see questions like "What was the highlight of your trip?" or statements like "I'm planning to go to the beach tomorrow," and then you have to ask, "What time are you going to the beach?" And you have to put all the given words in the correct order.

It's very important that you read all the options at once to see the complete picture. Why is this important? Because sometimes you can create a completely different sentence. Sometimes you may not notice a word, and then you have already spent time thinking about the correct order, and you lose your time. The time for this task is very limited, so you have to be very careful about it.

Strategy 2: Learn common English sentence patterns

Let's go to strategy number 2. In this task, you deal with sentences that follow very common patterns in the English language. The first pattern is WH-word plus auxiliary verb plus subject plus base verb. First of all, what is a WH-word? WH-words are a group of question words like what, who, when, which, and so on. You can see the example: "What time does it start?" Notice how the auxiliary, in this case does, stands before the subject and before the base verb: "What time does it start?"

The common mistake that people make with this sentence structure is not using inversion. For example, you can say "What time it starts," which sounds roughly similar, but it's totally incorrect compared to the correct option, which is "What time does it start?" So you have to pay attention to the actual structure, and while practicing, you have to learn these common structures in advance.

The second common structure is when the question word is used as the subject. For example: "Which store has the best deals?" In this case, a noun usually follows the question word, and the common mistake would be saying "Which store does have the best deals?", which, again, sounds roughly the same. That's why in many cases it can be tricky to find the correct option, but you have to stick with the correct sentence structure, and that is how you form the proper answer.

Next, sometimes you'll see yes/no questions. How can you identify this pattern? Quite often, yes/no questions start with do, does, is, are, will, or can. For example: "Do you have a shopping list?" I think this structure is rather easier than the first ones, because it's harder to put the words in the wrong order. For example, you cannot place do anywhere else, and do is almost always followed by the subject. You cannot say "Do have you a shopping list?", which sounds very weird.

The next one: sometimes you will see indirect questions after know, ask, or tell me, together with whether or if. The common pattern is a clause that introduces the question, then if or whether, then the subject and the verb. For example: "Do you know if she will be moving?" or "Can you tell me whether the cabins will be available?" The common mistake here would be using "whether will the cabins be available," which is incorrect, because in this structure the subject has to come before the verb after if or whether. So the correct way to say it would be: "Can you tell me whether the cabins will be available?"

Sample questions with answers

So let's go to the samples and see how we can apply these strategies in actual practice. In the first sample, we can see the prompt: "I will be taking a cooking class this weekend." The words are: learn, what, will, you, recipes. I'll give you 30 seconds to form the sentence yourself, and then we're going to proceed to the answer.

OK, the answer, as you might guess, is "What recipes will you learn?" It is the correct answer to this prompt. As you can see, in this case we use the first sentence structure. First comes the question word, then the auxiliary verb, then the subject, and then the base verb.

Let's go to the next one. The prompt is "I heard Anna got a promotion," and the words are: a different department, if, moving to, know, do you. Sometimes in these questions you'll also see some words that are already placed in the correct order. In this case, we see "she will be," and we have to put words before as well as after this phrase. As you can see, the prompt states, "I heard Anna got a promotion." We want to ask whether she is moving to a different department or staying in the same one.

So the question will be "Do you know if she will be moving to a different department?" In this case, we use structure number 4, where we have an embedded if or whether clause together with the question: "Do you know if she will be moving to a different department?"

Let's check the last example: "We are planning a trip to the mountains next weekend." You can see that some words are already placed in your question, and you can see that the options contain whether. So you can identify the correct structure: we can use structure number 4 in this case as well. Remember, we put you after can, and whether should come in the latter part, so we put whether after tell me. Using our strategies, we can already place the initial words, the main parts of the sentence: "Can you tell me whether the cabins will be available?"

Right, this is the correct answer. In this case, you use strategy number 4, just as in the previous example. OK, now we are done with this task. Let's proceed to the next one.