OPIc and TOEIC Speaking

Both tests measure spoken English for work, and both are recorded on a computer and rated later by people. They do it in opposite ways. OPIc adapts to you: your background survey and your self-assessment choose the form and the topics. TOEIC Speaking gives everyone the same 11 tasks on the same clock. The figures below come from the opic.or.kr 시험소개 and 수험자 가이드 pages, the ACTFL OPIc page, YBM’s toeicswt.co.kr pages, the IIBC pages for Japan and the ETS examinee handbook, all read on 21 October 2026.

Two things follow. OPIc rewards talking about your own life at length and keeping the right time frame; TOEIC Speaking rewards starting fast and filling each task’s clock with relevant English. And the retest rule changes your calendar: an OPIc level you do not like costs at least 25 days, while TOEIC Speaking in Korea runs every weekend through December 2026, per YBM. Multicampus says about 1,700 companies and institutions use OPIc, and both registrars have a usage section (활용현황) on organisations that use their test. The level a job needs is still set by each employer and can change between hiring rounds, so read your own job posting. The OPIc vs TOEIC Speaking page turns all of this into a decision.

ACTFL’s scale has Intermediate Mid as a single level. In Korea, Multicampus reports it in three steps. Its 시험소개 page says “OPIc은 IM 등급을 세분화하여 제공합니다 (IM3 > IM2 > IM1)”: OPIc subdivides the IM grade, and IM3 is the highest of the three. A Korean OPIc report therefore has nine possible English levels from Novice Low to Advanced Low, where an ACTFL rating elsewhere shows seven up to the same point. The practical effect: if a posting asks for IM2, an IM1 does not meet it, although both would read simply as IM on an ACTFL report outside Korea. YBM does the same for TOEIC Speaking in Korea: its levels page says Intermediate Mid is reported as Mid1, Mid2 and Mid3. The two scales belong to different tests, so a TOEIC Speaking Mid3 is not an OPIc IM3.

For planning, the step from IM2 to IH is not about rarer words. In our reading of the ACTFL levels, it is about keeping an answer connected for a minute or more and holding the past tense through a story, which is why our roadmaps spend their days on past-experience, routine and comparison questions. The OPIc levels page has TalkDrill-written sample answers at IM2, IH and AL, and the Korean IM2 to IH 30-day roadmap is built around exactly that step.

TOEIC Speaking is the same 11 tasks in the same order for everyone, about 20 minutes in all. YBM’s 시험소개 page and the ETS examinee handbook give the preparation and answer times below, and the handbook gives what each task is scored on and the scale. IIBC’s format page lists the same answer times but shows no preparation time for questions 5 to 7, where ETS describes a 3-second pause before the beep.

Per the ETS handbook, questions 1 to 10 are rated from 0 to 3 and question 11 from 0 to 5, and “the sum of all ratings is converted to a scaled score of 0 to 200”. The handbook’s own advice is blunt: “It is to your advantage to say as much as you can in the time allowed.” Three practical points follow. The two read-aloud answers also set your Pronunciation level and your Intonation and stress level, each High, Medium or Low, which the handbook and IIBC’s score guide describe separately from the 0 to 200 score. Questions 5 to 10 give you three seconds, so the skill is starting at once with a full sentence that answers the question. And questions 8 to 10 are a phone call about a schedule or agenda: the handbook’s top answer is “a full, relevant, socially appropriate reply” with accurate information, and question 10 asks you to pull several items together. The TOEIC Speaking practice bank runs all 11 tasks on these timers.

The score runs from 0 to 200 in steps of 10, per the ETS handbook. YBM’s 레벨과 점수 page in Korea attaches ACTFL-style level names to score bands, with a footnote that the sublevels come from ETS score-mapping research. The page has two tabs: the Speaking table below, and a separate TOEIC Writing table in which Advanced High starts at 180. Quote the Speaking tab; the Writing table is not an older version of it.

The ETS handbook groups the same 0 to 200 scale differently, into eight descriptor ranges (190 to 200, 160 to 180, 130 to 150, 110 to 120, 80 to 100, 60 to 70, 40 to 50 and 0 to 30), and describes the 160 to 180 range as able to “create connected, sustained discourse appropriate to the typical workplace”. The two groupings do not line up: 160 is AL on YBM’s table and sits in the same ETS range as 180. So when a job posting says “TOEIC Speaking IH” or “AL”, ask whether it means YBM’s band, and plan for the number, not the label. ETS also says plainly that these “are not the kind of tests that one passes or fails”. The TOEIC level names look like OPIc’s, but the two scales are separate; a 150 is not an OPIc IH. The scores and levels page shows what a ten-point jump needs, task by task.

Each country has its own registrar, fee and calendar. Every row below is from the registrar’s own page, read on 21 October 2026; where a page does not show a figure, we leave it blank rather than guess. The upcoming-dates block on this page carries the same dates and is re-checked weekly.

In Japan each test has its own change and cancellation fees, per IIBC: 1,815 yen and 3,150 yen for the Speaking Test, 2,750 yen and 5,000 yen for Speaking and Writing, and no date change or cancellation in the extended period. In Korea OPIc books almost daily, so the 25-day retest rule, not the calendar, is what limits you. The fees, dates and results page keeps the full table, every registrar page is annotated on the official links page, and the plans are in Korean (오픽 IM2에서 IH까지 30일 로드맵), Japanese (TOEIC Speaking 対策) and English (30-day roadmap).

Four weeks at 15 to 40 minutes a day, one recorded task a day, with an OPIc track and a TOEIC Speaking track inside the same days. Book the test first so that day 29 or 30 is test day. The reasoning behind each week, a worked day and the 2-week and 8-week versions are on the 30-day roadmap page. The same weeks are written in Korean for OPIc (오픽 30일 로드맵), and Japanese candidates have a 2-week TOEIC Speaking plan (TOEIC Speaking 対策).

Sixty questions written by TalkDrill in the way Ava asks them, spread across 15 survey topics and six question shapes: describe, routine, past experience, comparison, role-play and unexpected topic. Each comes with the follow-up most likely to sit in the same set, a model answer of 125 to 160 words written by TalkDrill at the level we judge Intermediate High, and a note on what moves an IM2 answer to IH. These are practice questions in the OPIc style, not real test items. Per the opic.or.kr 시험소개 page, the real test has 12 to 15 questions in 40 minutes, chosen from your background survey and pitched by your self-assessment. Answer each question aloud before you read the model.