Initial state and progress measuring
When I decided to learn Englsh hard to prepare for the TOEFL and GRE General examinations, I faced a problem - how would I check my initial level and monitor my state during studies. More important thing - writing and speaking part should be checked by someone else in order to provide independent opinion on my success.
For reading and listening parts there are only one training opportunity - to listen and to read as much as I can. And I need to widen the range of reading and listening material themes to get used to actual TOEFL and GRE reading topics. There're several free test samples for measuring the current level and much more paid tutorials containing test samples from well known companies like Kaplan. Obviously they are already available on torrent-trackers.
Also there are official sample tests offered by ETS (they are previously offered actual tests, I guess). For relatively low price ($22-25) you can pass the test or it's part with conditions mostly close to actual ones. For reading and listening tests the scores you'll get are a very good estimations of you real scores on actual test. On the other hand speaking and writing scores can be far different from actual scores given by human raters, because sample speaking and listening responces are graded by computer programs. As long as computer can check and grade such aspects as grammar, word usage and structure of essays and word usage, pronunciation and fluency of speaking responce, they lack in checking content. Therefore this practice test can't predict your actual score well enough (and there is note about this fact on ETS site). Another good, though not completely free, way of getting graded review on sample TOEFL test (namely speaking and writing parts) - NoteFull web-site. You can order review for practice test for $18 (for each part). Advantages of this offer is that you get not only human rated score for your essays or speaking responces (which could be fairly close to real test), but also some advises on improving your level.
There are several completely free ways of checking skills level, but they are not trustworthy. This includes web-forums and talkboards, several sites where you can post your essays and other users a supposed to check and correct them (and you are also supposed to check other's writing in you native language), speaking networks like speaking24.com and so on. All you can get on this sites - is review on grammar and other language usage issues, but I couldn't find any free source where you can get satisfiable grade for your TOEFL skills.
So, I passed ETS practice test for all 4 skills and NoteFull speaking practice test (after watching their training videolectures).
From ETS grading system I got
28 on reading
28 on listening
22 on writing (graded by computer)
15 on speaking (graded by computer)
I got 24 on speaking from NoteFull grader, but this experiment was not fair enough, because I tried several times to record my responce (I stoped recording and started it again every time I stammered), also I spent much more than 15 or 20 seconds for preparing my responces.
Another interesting resourse is testyourvocab.com. My estimated vocabulary size is
5,020
Though I think it's underestimated value.
This result can be sufficient for most graduate schools as overall grade. But some graduate departments require special lowest points for each part of the test and these requirements are not in my favor - usually they require more on speaking part (not less than 26) and less on reading and listening (not less than 17-18). Moreover, I should get 27+ on speaking to be considered for TA position.