Master the TOEFL Reading section with practice questions
Description
Reading
The TOEFL iBT Reading section evaluates your capability to comprehend and interpret academic texts. Familiarize yourself with the question types to boost your score.
20 Questions in total
Takes 35 minutes
- Identify information that is explicitly stated in the passage. Factual information questions ask the test takers to recognize information that was directly stated in a small part of the passage. They do not ask about general themes or ideas, rather they focus on information that appears only once in the passage. They may deal with major ideas, supporting details, or definitions and they generally focus on who, what, when, where, or why regarding actual events, individuals, etc.Study Tip
❖ The correct answer is usually paraphrased from the text. ❖ Watch out for specific numbers mentioned in the text, for they are often used as distractors. ❖ Extreme words such as "always" or "never" can also be distractors.
- Identify an idea that is implied but not stated in the passage. TOEFL Reading Inference questions ask the test taker to identify an idea that was suggested by the information presented in the passage but not directly stated. They are easy to identify because they usually have the word “infer” or “imply” or “suggest” in the question. The test taker needs to be able to understand all of the ideas and concepts in the passage and use them to logically see what other details the author was trying to imply. These questions are similar to inference questions because they ask for information that was not directly stated in the passage. All of the answer choices will include information that was presented in the passage, but the distractors will make statements that cannot be inferred from that information. They may be accurate statements about the topic, but the reader would only know that from their own prior knowledge, so they would be incorrect answers.Study Tip
❖ First, focus on the general idea of the relevant paragraph and figure out the author's perspective on it; this means you should NOT choose your answer based on your guess. Even if it is an "inference" question, the answer is in the text.
- Identify the best place to insert a sentence in the passage. Sentence Insertion questions challenge test-takers to identify the most logical and grammatically appropriate location for a given sentence within a paragraph. These questions assess a student’s ability to comprehend textual coherence and grammatical nuances. Each passage contains exactly one Sentence Insertion question. The paragraph is marked with four black squares [■], indicating potential insertion points. In a well-constructed paragraph, there should be only one logically sound location for the new sentence. The placement of the sentence is critically determined by both logical flow and grammatical connections between sentences.Study Tip
❖ Make sure to re-read the completed paragraph after you insert the given sentence in one of the candidates. This way, you can be confident of your answer.
- Identify information that is incorrect or not mentioned in the passage. Negative Factual information questions are very similar to Factual Information questions except that they are asking the test taker to do the opposite thing. Instead of choosing the one answer that is correct, they must select the answer that is incorrect. They are often more difficult to answer than Factual Information questions. Three of the four options will be correct, but one will contain information that is incorrectly stated or was not included in the passage. They are easy to recognize because the question will always contain the words “EXCEPT” or “NOT”. Such questions may be written the following ways: ❖ According to paragraph 1, which of the following is NOT true of/about X ? ❖ According to paragraph 1, all of the following are true about X EXCEPT … ❖ All of the following are mentioned in paragraph 1 about X EXCEPT …Study Tip
❖ Don't waste time reading the whole text to find the answer to this question. Read the question first and remove wrong answer choices based on the details in the text.
- Identify the relationship between words in the passage. Reference questions are visually similar to Vocabulary questions because they ask you to identify the meaning of a single word or phrase that is highlighted in the passage. However, that word will always be a pronoun or words like this, that, who, or which. Instead of defining the word, the task is to find the word in the passage that the highlighted word refers to. If it is a pronoun, then the correct answer will be the word that the pronoun is replacing. All four of the answer choices will be present in the text near the selected word. They are usually before it, but some may come after. These kinds of questions are less common than they used to be, and many passages do not include them.Study Tip
❖ This question is one of the easiest questions in the section, so never miss it. ❖ Replace the pronoun with each answer choice to see if it makes sense.
- Identify the reason 'why' the author presents a particular piece of information in the passage. Rhetorical Purpose questions ask the test taker to explain the motivation of the author of a passage. They ask why an idea, detail, or argument was included in the reading passage. Everything included in a passage has a reason to be there if the writing is effective. Rhetorical Purpose questions may ask about logical connections between certain sentences or paragraphs. They are often easy to spot because they will contain the word “why”, but that isn’t always the case.Study Tip
❖ After choosing your answer, recheck it by imagining what should be presented based on your choice. If it is presented in the text, you got it right.
- Identify the sentence that best summarizes the essential information from the sentence given in the passage. TOEFL Reading Sentence Simplification questions ask the test taker to identify a sentence that has the same essential meaning as a sentence selected from the reading passage. The correct answer choice will contain the same main ideas as the sentence in the passage, but less important or minor details may be omitted. It should also restate the main ideas in a simpler way than the sentence in the passage. The distractors will contain actual ideas and details from the sentence, but they will omit important ideas, distort an idea or concept, or they may even change the meaning of the entire sentence. These questions are very easy to spot because they will refer to an entire highlighted sentence in the passage.Study Tip
❖ An accurate, full understanding of the given sentence is required, including its meaning and the relationship between pieces of information in it. ❖ Read each answer choice very carefully, for wrong answer choices distort the meaning of the given sentence slightly while still looking very attractive.
- Choose 3 options that best summarize the main points of the passage. Summary questions ask the test taker to identify sentences that express major ideas and critical information included in the reading passage. Nearly every passage has 1 of these questions at the end. The test taker is provided with a summary statement of the reading passage and 6 answer options. All of the answer choices will contain information that was in the passage, and they will be paraphrased so they don’t have the exact same wording. The incorrect answer choices will have errors in details, make false statements about information, or state an accurate but unimportant detail.Study Tip
❖ If it is tricky to pick the correct answers, start with clearly wrong answer choices. By removing wrong answer choices, you can leave the correct ones.
- Identify the contextual meaning of a particular word or phrase given in the passage. TOEFL Reading Vocabulary questions ask test takers to identify the meanings of words or phrases as they were used within the reading passage. They are easy to spot because the word or phrase is highlighted in the passage to show the context it was used in, and the question is usually written in the same way: “The word/phrase in the passage is closest in meaning to … ” The word or phrase that is selected for a question typically is necessary to understand an important concept or topic in the passage. The words that are chosen are academic vocabulary that university students should know. Specialized vocabulary like scientific terms are not used for questions, and when they appear in a passage, they will often be defined within the passage or in a footnote.Study Tip
❖ Insert each choice in the sentence to see if it makes sense. ❖ Build a strong vocabulary. Include synonyms when you study TOEFL vocabulary.
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