Courses for STEP, IELTS, TOEFL and everyday English
Module 1
8 min read
لم تحدد مستواك بعد؟ اختبار من خمس دقائق يفتح لك الشرح بالعربية في الدروس الأولى.
ابدأ اختبار تحديد المستوىMost candidates prepare for STEP by studying English in general. They revise grammar, read a little, listen to something in English, and hope the total effort raises the score. The effort is real. The distribution of it is usually wrong, because the exam does not value the four sections equally and almost nobody checks the weighting before they start.
Read those numbers as a budget. A student who splits study time evenly gives a quarter of it to a section worth a tenth of the marks, and the same quarter to a section worth four times as much. Matching your hours to the weighting costs nothing and is the single cheapest improvement available before you learn any new English at all.
Two students, the same twenty hours
Student A gives five hours to each section. Student B follows the weighting: eight hours to Reading, six to Structure, four to Listening, two to Compositional Analysis. Both worked twenty hours. Student B spent them on the parts of the paper that decide the score, and will see a larger gain from the identical effort.
STEP is answered entirely by choosing between printed options. You will not speak to an examiner, and you will not write an essay that a human marks. Compositional Analysis asks you to judge written English, not to produce it. This matters for preparation: hours spent writing practice essays or rehearsing spoken answers do not transfer to this paper, however useful they are for IELTS or TOEFL.
The score is reported on a scale of 0 to 100, and the number your university or employer requires is set by them, not by ETEC. Find out the exact number you need before you plan anything. Preparing for a 65 and preparing for an 85 are different projects.
One caution about every number in this course. Question counts and timings reported for STEP differ between sources and have changed over the years. The weighting above is stable and is what the course is built on. For the current paper's exact length, confirm with ETEC directly rather than trusting any preparation material, including this one.
Try it now
Write down two numbers before you continue: the STEP score you actually need, and the date you sit the exam. Then divide the weeks remaining into hours and split them 40/30/20/10 across the four sections. That plan is now more targeted than most candidates ever manage.
A few quick questions. You'll see an explanation after each one.
Question 1 of 4
Which section carries the largest share of the STEP score?