The most trustworthy number in TOEIC study is the reference score from the official practice book. Predicted scores from commercial mock tests use each publisher's own ruler, and you cannot read how far they drift from the real test. The official book's questions are made by ETS, the test maker, through the same process as the real thing, and the listening voices are the official speakers. The numbers you get here are the only ones that mirror your actual test-day self. One book holds two full tests: 400 questions.
The Official Book Is Not for Practice. It Is the Test-Day Ruler
Inside are TEST 1 and TEST 2. Listening 100 questions, Reading 100 questions, lined up in the same format as the real test, with a conversion table of reference score ranges at the back. Plug in your number correct and your current ability shows up as a score band. This is the big thing: your strategy is built not on a few dozen more points to the goal but on how many more correct answers put you in the next band. The count and location of your mistakes become the assignment for the next three weeks, as-is.
The audio is test-spec, too. There is no CD; instead, the listening audio downloads free from the official site, and the official TOEIC materials app plays all of it free. As a bonus, read-aloud audio for part of the Reading section is included. Keep it on your phone and you never hunt for the audio source during review. The scripts for Parts 3 and 4 work as-is as material for checking sounds you could not catch.
When you read the scripts aloud in review, you will hit the task of repeating just the sentences you could not catch. For that close listening work, a segment-repeat app like Rehear can help — it is a listening-practice app made by the team behind this magazine. Using it is optional, but the more of your mistakes classify as could-not-catch-the-sound in Parts 3 and 4, the more it pays to set aside separate time for close listening. Measure with the official book; do the close listening with a tool. That division works best.
Two Tests in Three Weeks: One Day Full Run, Two Weeks of Review, One Day Re-Run
The rotation is fixed. On the first weekend, take TEST 1 end to end. Listening about 45 minutes, Reading 75 minutes, no stopping, exactly like test day. Record answers on a separate sheet; do not write in the book. When you finish, write out your correct counts by part. That is the measurement.
The following two weeks are all review. Classify every mistake into three buckets — did-not-know-the-word, could-not-catch-the-sound, ran-out-of-time — and log them. For Listening, read aloud the scripts of the questions you missed. For Reading, crush the grammar points dropped in Parts 5 and 6, and for Part 7, pinpoint the one sentence that grounds each correct answer. Thirty to 45 minutes a day is enough. The rule: give review at least five times the time you spent solving.
On the third weekend, re-run the same TEST 1. What you watch is not the growth in correct answers but whether you missed the same question twice. A question missed twice is a signal to patch that unit with a different book. And do not touch TEST 2 until two weeks before the real test. Keeping one unused test in reserve is your final measurement for the home stretch.
Keep records in a spreadsheet: date, test number, correct counts by part, the score band from the conversion table, and mistake counts by category. Just those five fields, one new row per re-run. Watching how the category counts move tells you in numbers where review worked and where it did not. Feels-like-it-improved is banned.
Usage Changes with Your Score Band
Under 500, a timed full run is still too early. Solve untimed, and separate the questions you abandoned to the clock from the ones you missed on ability. Mix the two and the prescription blurs. In the 600s, time allocation is the main battlefield: 10 minutes for Part 5, 8 for Part 6, the rest to Part 7 — then count the questions you marked at random when time ran out. If that number falls, your score rises.
In the 700–800 range, mistake classification is what pays. If the cause is missing knowledge, go back to vocabulary and grammar. If many were questions you knew but dropped, it is a procedure problem: redesign your pre-reading rhythm and checking time. Aiming for 900, use the official book not for weakness hunting but for test-day simulation: same time of day as the real test, two hours straight, no break. Any part where mistakes will not shrink gets fixed outside the official book. Measurement is the official book's job; treatment belongs to other materials.
One Copy of the Latest Volume Is Enough
There is no need to stack older volumes. Question trends — and recent quirks like the curveballs in Part 2 — are closest to the current test in the latest volume. One book around ¥3,630, run deeply, grows your numbers more than three books run once each. If you buy, buy the then-latest volume; right now that is Official TOEIC Listening & Reading Practice Book 13. More than the series' cumulative 3 million copies sold, what matters is your own correct count out of 400.
It suits people whose test date and target score are set and who want to manage how many more correct answers they need in numbers. Conversely, if your base vocabulary and grammar are not in place yet, keep this book for measurement only and run daily study on easier materials. The official book is not a drill; it is a ruler. And a ruler, every time you measure, honestly tells you where you stand.
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