TOEFL Test Preparation

About the Reading Section

The first section of the TOEFL iBT^®  test is the Reading section.

This section uses reading passages from university-level textbooks that introduce a topic. The passages may have been changed slightly to make them appropriate for testing purposes, but they are real academic materials.

Topics of the reading passages can vary, but you do not need to have any prior knowledge of the topics. Everything you need to know to answer the questions is in the passages, because the questions are testing your English skills, not your knowledge of the topic.

There are 3 or 4 reading passages of about 700 words each. For each passage, there are 12 to 14 multiple-choice questions. You will be able to to see the reading passage as you answer each question.

Most questions have four choices and a single correct answer. Some questions ask you to select two or more correct answers from a larger group of choices.

You will have 60 to 80 minutes to complete the Reading section. During that time, you can return to previous questions to review or change your answers.

You will learn more details about the Reading section this week through a series of videos about the different Reading question types.

Tips

There are several key skills that you’ll need to be successful in the Reading section. You should be able to: 

1.  Synthesize information presented in the text 

This means that you can read chunks of text and identify main ideas being expressed. You should be able to draw connections between individual sentences and paraphrase the information that is presented.

2.  Identify the author’s rhetorical purpose

When you read a piece of information, you should be able to understand why the author has included it. Is it an example of a phenomenon, a supporting detail for an argument, or perhaps the introduction of a new idea? Understanding the structure of each paragraph and the whole passage is critical to understanding its contents. 

3.  Scan the text to find specific pieces of information

In order to put together the big picture about what’s going on in a passage, you will also need to comprehend the little pieces that fit together to make that big picture. It is important to be able to quickly locate a sentence or portion of a paragraph that discusses a particular point. Once you’ve found that sentence, you can re-read it in order to understand exactly what is being expressed.

4.  Understand academic vocabulary used in the passage

A newspaper or magazine article might use more everyday language—the sort of thing you hear in conversations and read in emails. But an academic text, regardless of the subject, contains certain vocabulary that is standard in academic discourse. There might be words related to presenting theories: "propose", "hypothesis", "scenario". Or there could be words that connect two sentences: "however", "in addition", "thus". A good reader should be familiar with this type of vocabulary.