TOEFL writing templates for the 2026 format
Structures for all three 2026 writing tasks, each one shown working on a complete response rather than left as a skeleton. Five model emails across five purposes, two full discussion posts with the reasoning behind them, and worked Build a Sentence items with the trap arrangement beside the right one.
Free, no account and no email address. toefl-2026-writing-templates.pdf
What is in it
- A Write an Email scenario menu — request, report, advice, invite, disagree — with a complete model reply for each and a note on what the reply does that earns the marks.
- Two full Write for an Academic Discussion responses, each written against its board and labelled with a Reach120 estimate rather than a score.
- Worked Build a Sentence items: the word set, the accepted arrangement, the grammar decision behind it, and a wrong arrangement people actually produce.
- The move-by-move structure under each model, so the template is a plan you can apply to a different prompt rather than a sentence to copy.
What it does not cover
- Fill-in-the-blank scripts. A memorised frame dropped onto a prompt it was not written for is the most visible thing a marker sees, and a response that does not address the specific prompt loses more than a tidy structure gains.
- Speaking, Reading or Listening. This pack is the Writing section only.
- An official score or an ETS rubric. The bands beside the model responses are Reach120 estimates, and the criteria described are our reading of what the open-response rubrics reward.
Five email scenarios, with model replies
Almost every Write an Email prompt is one of five jobs: make a request, report a problem, ask for advice, invite someone, or disagree politely. Each scenario gives the situation, the three points the prompt asks you to cover, and a reply that covers them — with the moves named underneath, because the structure is the transferable part.
Make a request · Formal · to A course professor
Your project needs the microscopy lab outside its posted hours, and only staff can grant access.
What the reply must cover
- Say which lab you need and what the project is
- Ask for access outside the posted hours and give your availability
- Ask what approval or training the department requires first
Model reply
Dear Dr. Okonkwo,
I am working on the sediment imaging project for BIO 240 and I would like to ask about using the microscopy lab in Whitmore Hall. The samples need about two hours of continuous imaging, which does not fit inside the posted afternoon slots. Would it be possible to book the lab on a weekday evening, or on Saturday morning? I am free after 6 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays and all day Saturday. Could you also tell me whether the department requires a safety briefing or written approval before I book the room?
Thank you for your time.
Best regards, Nadia
104 words, against a Reach120 pacing target of 80–120. ETS publishes no word-count requirement for this task.
The request is specific enough to act on — one lab, one duration, two concrete windows — and the third point is asked as its own question instead of buried in the paragraph. Nothing is over-explained, which is what leaves room for all three points inside the practice target.
Report a problem · Semi-formal · to The campus facilities office
The locker you were assigned at the gym does not lock, and your assigned replacement has not arrived.
What the reply must cover
- Describe the problem and when you first reported it
- Explain the effect it is having on you
- Ask for a specific fix and a date
Model reply
Hello,
I am writing about locker 212 in the west changing room, which does not lock — the latch turns but never catches. I reported this at the front desk on 14 March and was told a replacement would be assigned within a week, but I have not heard anything since. In the meantime I am carrying a laptop around the gym floor, which is not really workable. Could you either repair the latch or move me to another locker this week? If a repair takes longer, please let me know a date so I can plan around it.
Thanks very much, Sam Adeyemi
104 words, against a Reach120 pacing target of 80–120. ETS publishes no word-count requirement for this task.
A complaint scores on precision, not on temperature. The locker is named, the first report is dated, the consequence is one clause long, and the ask offers the reader two workable outcomes rather than demanding one.
Ask for advice · Formal · to Your academic advisor
Two electives fit your schedule, and you cannot tell which one serves your degree plan better.
What the reply must cover
- Name the two courses and what you are deciding between
- Say what matters to you in the decision
- Ask for a recommendation and how to enrol once you decide
Model reply
Dear Ms. Halvorsen,
I am choosing between STAT 210, Applied Regression, and GEOG 265, Spatial Data Methods, for the autumn term. Both fit my timetable, so I would rather decide on the basis of what helps most. My plan is to apply for the environmental analytics master’s next year, and I am weaker at statistics than at mapping. Given that, which of the two would you recommend I take first? If I switch, could you also tell me whether I enrol through the portal myself or whether your office has to approve the change?
Thank you for your help.
Kind regards, Tomas Ilves
103 words, against a Reach120 pacing target of 80–120. ETS publishes no word-count requirement for this task.
Advice questions collapse when the writer never says what they want. This one gives the reader the criterion — a specific next degree and a named weakness — so the recommendation asked for is actually answerable.
Invite someone · Informal · to A classmate you do not know well
You are starting a weekly study group before the statistics final and you want them to join.
What the reply must cover
- Invite them and say what the group is
- Give the practical details: when, where, how often
- Make it easy to say yes or no
Model reply
Hi Priya,
A few of us from STAT 210 are starting a study group before the final, and I thought of you straight away — your question about residual plots last week was the first time that topic made sense to me. We are meeting Wednesdays at 5 in the library group room on level two, for about an hour and a half, starting next week. Each session we work through one past paper and compare answers. No pressure at all if your week is already full — just let me know either way so I can book the right room size.
Cheers, Leo
104 words, against a Reach120 pacing target of 80–120. ETS publishes no word-count requirement for this task.
An invitation needs a reason the person was asked, the logistics in one block, and a genuine exit. The closing line does two jobs at once: it removes the pressure and it asks for the reply the writer needs.
Disagree politely · Semi-formal · to A group project teammate
Your team wants to split the presentation into four separate parts, and you think it will not hold together.
What the reply must cover
- Acknowledge the proposal fairly
- Say what concerns you and why
- Offer a specific alternative and invite a decision
Model reply
Hi Marta,
Thanks for putting the plan together — splitting the work four ways does make the preparation manageable, and I can see why you suggested it. My worry is the handovers. When we tried this in the last module the four parts each made sense and the talk as a whole did not, and we lost marks for exactly that. Could we instead keep the four topics but have two people present, so each of them carries two sections? Everyone still writes their own material. If the group prefers the original split, I am happy to go with it — shall we decide at Thursday’s meeting?
Best, Hugo
109 words, against a Reach120 pacing target of 80–120. ETS publishes no word-count requirement for this task.
Disagreement scores on register as much as on content. The proposal is credited first, the objection is evidenced rather than asserted, the alternative is concrete, and the writer explicitly accepts the group’s right to overrule them.
Two discussion boards, answered in full
Each board below is complete — the professor’s question and both classmates’ posts — beside a response that engages those specific posts, which is the behaviour the task rewards and the thing a template on its own cannot supply.
Urban policy — where a city should spend a transport budget
Professor: Cities with a fixed transport budget must choose. Some spend it on expanding public transit; others spend it on maintaining and widening roads. In your view, which delivers more value to residents, and why? Support your position.
Ines: Transit, clearly. Every person moved onto a bus or train is one fewer car in the queue, so drivers benefit too. Spending on roads just invites more traffic until the new lane is as slow as the old one.
Kwame: I would fund roads first. Transit only works where density is high. In the outer districts where I grew up, the nearest station is forty minutes away on foot, and no budget is going to change that quickly.
Sample response
I side with Ines, though I think Kwame identifies the real constraint rather than an objection to transit. Induced demand is well documented: adding lanes reliably refills them, so road spending buys a few years of relief and then the same congestion at a higher maintenance cost. But density is exactly why the money should go to transit in the outer districts first, not last. A frequent bus route on an existing road is cheap, needs no tunnelling, and can be running within a year, which is the answer to Kwame’s forty-minute walk. My own district added two crosstown bus lines instead of a bypass, and the ridership numbers made the case within eighteen months. Fund the roads to keep them safe; fund transit to change how many people need them.
131 words, against a Reach120 pacing target of 100–150. Reach120 estimate: 5 of 5 — Reach120 estimate under our 0-5 Academic Discussion rubric, not an ETS score: a clear position, engagement with both peers by name and by argument, one developed example, and controlled academic register.
- It takes a side in the first clause. A response that surveys both views and commits to neither loses the rubric point for a clear position, however fluent it reads.
- It uses the peers rather than mentioning them. Kwame’s objection is reframed as a design constraint and then answered directly — the difference between engaging a discussion and decorating a template with a name.
- The support is one example carried to a result. Two bus lines, a measurable outcome, a timeframe. One developed example beats three gestured ones every time.
Education policy — whether AI writing tools belong in coursework
Professor: Universities disagree about whether students should be allowed to use AI writing assistants for graded work. Should such tools be permitted, restricted, or banned in undergraduate coursework? Explain your reasoning.
Bea: Permit them. Professionals use these tools daily, so pretending they do not exist trains students for a workplace that no longer exists. What we should grade is the thinking, not the typing.
Sung-ho: Ban them for written assignments. If a tool produces the sentences, we cannot know whether the student understood the argument, and writing is how understanding gets built in the first place.
Sample response
Restriction, rather than either extreme, seems right to me, and Sung-ho’s reason is the one that decides it. Writing is not the packaging of a finished thought; the drafting is where the thought gets tested, so a tool that produces the draft removes the part of the task that does the teaching. That argument, though, applies to first drafts specifically — not to every use. Bea is right that these tools are now ordinary professional equipment, and a graduate who has never checked a model’s output against a source is unprepared in a different way. My own course allows the tools for revision and for finding counterarguments, but requires the first draft to be handwritten in class. Grades held steady and the discussions improved. Restrict where the learning happens; permit where the skill transfers.
134 words, against a Reach120 pacing target of 100–150. Reach120 estimate: 5 of 5 — Reach120 estimate under our 0-5 Academic Discussion rubric, not an ETS score: an explicit third position, both peers answered on their own terms, a concrete example with an outcome, and precise vocabulary used without strain.
- A third position counts as a position. Choosing “restrict” is not fence-sitting when the response says exactly where the line goes and why it goes there.
- It concedes something real to the peer it disagrees with. Granting Bea her strongest point costs nothing and makes the disagreement credible.
- It closes with the rule, not with a summary. The final sentence states the principle the argument earned, which is a stronger ending than repeating the opening.
The ten minutes, spent — Reach120 pacing guidance
- First 60-90 seconds
- Read the professor’s question and both posts. Decide your position before you type anything — a response that changes its mind halfway costs more time than it saves.
- Next 60 seconds
- Pick the one peer you will engage and the one example you will use. Two peers is optional; a second example is usually a mistake.
- Minutes 3-8
- Write straight through: position, why, the peer, the example, the close. Do not stop to fix wording.
- Final 60-90 seconds
- Reread for verb endings, articles and one clear position sentence. This pass is where most band-level gains actually come from.
Worked Build a Sentence items
Build a Sentence has no template in the sense the other two tasks do — it has a decision order. Each item shows the tiles, the arrangement that answers the question, the reasoning, and the wrong arrangement test-takers actually produce.
Connector attachment
The department moved its Thursday seminar to Monday afternoons.
Why was the seminar moved?
- they rescheduled
- because
- the lab
- was
- unavailable
- on Thursdays
Answer
They rescheduled because the lab was unavailable on Thursdays.
The main clause states the action and “because” introduces the reason. The question asks for a cause, so the cause has to sit inside the because-clause, not outside it.
A wrong arrangement: Because they rescheduled, the lab was unavailable on Thursdays.
Grammatical, and wrong. It reverses cause and effect — it now says the rescheduling made the lab unavailable, which answers no question anyone asked.
Frequency adverb placement
Mei works part-time at the campus radio station.
When does she record her show?
- she
- records
- usually
- the show
- before
- her Friday lecture
Answer
She usually records the show before her Friday lecture.
A frequency adverb goes between the subject and the main verb. Everything after the verb stays in one block: object, then the time phrase.
A wrong arrangement: She records usually the show before her Friday lecture.
The adverb has been dropped between the verb and its object, which English does not allow. This is the single most common tile-order error on frequency adverbs.
Passive voice with an agent
The new bike lane along the river opened last spring.
Who paid for it?
- the lane
- was
- funded
- entirely
- by
- a city grant
Answer
The lane was funded entirely by a city grant.
A passive kit is easy to spot: a be-form, a past participle, and a stray “by”. Build be + participle first, then attach the by-phrase, then find the one slot the adverb fits.
A wrong arrangement: The lane was funded by entirely a city grant.
The adverb has been pushed inside the by-phrase, splitting the preposition from its noun. Prepositional units stay unbroken.
Comparative kept intact
Two apartments near the station were available in September.
Which one did you take, and why?
- we
- chose
- the smaller
- apartment
- because
- it
- was
- far cheaper
Answer
We chose the smaller apartment because it was far cheaper.
“Far cheaper” is one unit: a degree word bolted to a comparative. Treat multi-word tiles as blocks that move together rather than as loose words.
A wrong arrangement: We chose the smaller apartment because far it was cheaper.
The degree word has been separated from the comparative it modifies. The sentence still contains every tile, and it is still wrong.
Embedded question order
A visitor stopped you outside the science building this morning.
What did they want to know?
- they
- asked
- where
- the lecture hall
- was
Answer
They asked where the lecture hall was.
A question inside a sentence stops being a question in form. After “asked”, the clause returns to subject-then-verb order.
A wrong arrangement: They asked where was the lecture hall.
Direct-question inversion has been carried into a reported question. This one is worth drilling: it survives in speech, so it feels right and is not.
Place before time
The chemistry review sessions started again this term.
When and where do they meet?
- they
- meet
- in the annex
- every Tuesday
- at seven
Answer
They meet in the annex every Tuesday at seven.
When both appear, English puts place before time, and the time phrase keeps its own internal order: day, then clock time.
A wrong arrangement: They meet every Tuesday in the annex at seven.
The place phrase has been dropped inside the time information, splitting “every Tuesday at seven”. Readable, unnatural, and marked wrong.
These items were written by Reach120 to show how the task behaves. None is an ETS item, and none reproduces official test material.
Every question in these files is a Reach120 practice item taken from the bank our learners practise against. None of them is a real TOEFL test question, and nothing here is published, licensed, endorsed or reviewed by ETS.
What a template is good for, and where it starts costing you marks
A template is a decision you have already made before the clock starts: what goes in the first sentence, what the middle has to do, how it ends. That is worth real time on a task with seven or ten minutes on it. What it cannot do is supply the content, and the moment a frame is doing the talking it reads as a frame.
- 1Read the prompt twice and write down what it asks for before you reach for a structure. On the email task that is the requirement list; on the discussion task it is the professor’s actual question.
- 2Choose the structure that fits what the prompt asks, not the one you practised most. A request email and a disagreement email do not open the same way.
- 3Fill it with the prompt’s own specifics — the lab, the deadline, the classmate’s argument. Every sentence a marker can tell was written in advance is a sentence doing no work.
- 4Reread for the points you were asked to cover. Completeness is the cheapest mark on both open tasks and the one most often dropped.
The three tasks these templates are written for
What ETS states
The current Writing section lists 12 items: 10 Build a Sentence items, one Write an Email task, and one Academic Discussion task.
Per the specification’s item-type notes, the Write an Email, Write for an Academic Discussion, and all Speaking tasks are AI-scored constructed responses.
Build a Sentence is machine-scored, which is why it is the only one of the three with a real answer key. This says nothing about how Reach120 scores.
The 2026 specification lists the Writing section at 12 items and 20 maximum raw points.
The specification is subject to minor revisions until the official launch, and this pack carries the date it was read.
Sourced from the ETS 2026 test specifications, read 2026-07-27. Everything outside this box is Reach120’s own reading of it.
Common questions
- Are TOEFL writing templates allowed?
- Nothing stops you from planning a structure in advance, and a plan is most of what a template is. What loses marks is a memorised frame that does not answer the prompt in front of you — the open tasks are scored partly on whether you covered what was asked, so a response can be perfectly organised and still incomplete.
- Do I have to give an email address to download the templates?
- No. The PDF downloads directly from this page with no account and no address, and every model response in it is printed on this page as well.
- Are the model responses real high-scoring TOEFL answers?
- No. They are written by Reach120 to show the structures working end to end. Where a band is mentioned it is labelled a Reach120 estimate — our scoring’s reading of the response, not an ETS score, and not a score anybody received on a real test.
- Is there a template for Build a Sentence?
- Not in the sense the other two tasks have one. Build a Sentence has exactly one accepted arrangement per item, so what helps is the decision order — find the verb, decide what sits in front of it, check the exchange for tense — which is what the worked items on this page show, each with a wrong arrangement beside the right one.
- How is this different from the writing templates article?
- The article is the guide: what each task asks for, why the structures work, and how the scoring reads them. This page is the artifact — the models themselves, printable, with the file attached. They link to each other rather than repeating each other.
- Are these real TOEFL prompts?
- Every question in these files is a Reach120 practice item taken from the bank our learners practise against. None of them is a real TOEFL test question, and nothing here is published, licensed, endorsed or reviewed by ETS.