TOEFL PREPARATION

READING TEST
 INTRODUCTION TO TOEFL READING

• In the TOEFL reading section, you’ll get three to four reading

passages, each with 12-14 questions.
• They’re extracts from university textbooks or academic articles on a
wide range of topics. These will be similar to the types of texts you’d
find in college.
• Although you don’t need to be familiar with the topics, the more you
read during your preparation, the more you will understand.
• You’ll have 20 minutes to read each passage, and answer its associated
questions. Depending on how many passages you get, the reading
section will last between 60-80 minutes.
 TOEFL READING QUESTION TYPES
There are 10 different question types you might encounter, each requiring a different
skill. These are:
1. Summarize Information in a passage
2. Guess vocabulary from context
3. Make Inferences about what the author means
4. Identify a reference
5. Identify a fact
6. Understand rhetorical Purpose – why the writer included particular information
7. Identify a negative fact (a fact that was NOT included in the passage)
8. Insert a word or sentence into the appropriate place in a paragraph
9. Simplify information by identifying the correct paraphrase
10. Complete a table by dragging and dropping sentences
 SUMMARIZING INFORMATION

• This type of question requires you to complete a summary of a reading

passage by choosing three out of six sentences provided.
• You’ll need to drag and drop the correct three sentences into boxes
provided on the screen and identify main ideas (which belong in a
summary) from details (which don’t).
• To build this skill, read an article a day and write a short summary by
paraphrasing important ideas from the article.
• Take notice of main ideas – these are general, and details – which are
specific. A summary should only include main ideas.
 GUESS VOCABULARY FROM CONTEXT

• For this question, a word in the passage will be highlighted. The question asks you which
word from a list of four best matches the meaning of the highlighted word. Here, context
will help you, and so will a wide vocabulary.
• To develop your vocabulary, you need to read. Reading is the best way to see how words
are used in context. You don’t have to read complicated books.
• The best way is to make reading fun by reading things that interest you: Food, gardening,
fashion, celebrity news, economics, science, politics, etc.
• As you read, you will discover new words in context. Try to get the meaning of an
unknown word by understanding the whole sentence.
• Then, look up the word on dictionary.com or on thesaurus.com to see if your guess was
correct. This skill will help you with the guess vocabulary from context question.
• Also, try to learn a word a day.
• Check the English Learner’s Dictionary word of the day for a new word each day with the
definition, pronunciation, word form and example sentences.
 MAKE INFERENCES
• Inference is about understanding what the author is trying to say,
without actually saying it.
• You’ll be asked something like “what does the author mean
by…”.
• With this kind of question, you won’t find the answer directly in
the text. It will be implied, so you’ll need to infer the meaning.
• To do that, you need to go beyond the text which means using
higher-level thinking skills.
• A good way to develop this is to do riddles. There are plenty of
inference riddles that you can find online that will help you
practice making inferences.
Making an inference is like making an educated guess: you
have drawn an idea or conclusion from evidence, reasoning
and experience.
• Making inferences relies on what it says in the text plus your
background knowledge and ability to connect information to draw
conclusions.
• Another way to build this skill is, as you read, ask yourself questions
about the meaning behind what is written and make guesses.
• Find connecting points and bring them together to draw a conclusion.
Make predictions about the information provided.
 IDENTIFY A REFERENCE

• This question type is all about understanding what a word or words in a

sentence refers to.
• For example, “I watched Star Wars yesterday. It was a great movie”. Here the
word “it” refers to “Star Wars”.
• Of course, this type of question will be a bit more challenging in the actual
TOEFL reading. So, you need to build up your knowledge of grammar and
sentence structure.
• As you read different articles, highlight any reference words like it, they, they,
which, whose, who, etc. Then ask yourself, what does that word refer to?
• To answer that question, you’ll need to identify the subject of the previous
sentence. This is an exercise you should keep in mind when doing your daily
reading practice.
 IDENTIFY A FACT

• In the TOEFL reading, you might be asked to find a fact from the
passage.
• Facts are the supporting information that tell more about the main
idea. Facts often tell about the who, what, where, when, why, and how
of the main idea.
• The fact question is based upon information which is actually stated in
the passage. You must find the part of the passage which deals with
what is being asked.
• The best way to build this skill is to practice reading and answering
comprehension questions.
 RHETORICAL PURPOSE

This kind of question asks you why the author mentioned something. Authors say things for
different purposes.
For example:
• To persuade the reader of something
• To describe something
• To make a suggestion
• To illustrate a point
• To prove a theory
• Like the inference question, the answer will not be stated in the passage. You will need to
infer.
• A good way to build this skill in preparation for this type of question, is to read critically.
That means, as you read, ask yourself:
• Why did the author mention that?
• What was the purpose of including that information?
 SIMPLIFY INFORMATION

• This question type asks you to pick the best paraphrase of a sentence
from a passage. You’ll be given four options to choose from.

• Paraphrasing is all about expressing the same idea in a simpler way.

To build this skill, read an article and pick a paragraph to paraphrase.

• Write a couple of sentences using your own words to capture the same
idea that the paragraph expresses. Then read your paraphrase and
compare it to the original paragraph.