Aim for English
Reading in TOEFL
TOEFL iBT at a glance
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- TOEFL iBT overview and general tips
- The language you'll need in TOEFL
- Independent tasks in TOEFL iBT
- Integrated tasks in TOEFL iBT
- The importance of taking notes
- Understanding inferences in TOEFL
- Understanding stated details
- Understanding main ideas
- Summarising
- Know your own English
- Skills you'll need in iBT
- Writing in TOEFL
- Speaking in TOEFL
- Listening in TOEFL
- Reading in TOEFL
TOEFL iBT tip of the month
TOEFL assesses your ability to communicate in an academic environment. There are similarities in reading, listening, speaking and writing questions. While your English has to be very good, the test won’t be impossible if you learn a few skills and do as much practice as possible.
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Reading in TOEFL
What’s important?
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Learn how to skim read for main ideas.
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Learn how to scan for details.
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Learn how to see the difference between very similar answer choices.
Reading in TOEFL
There’s a lot of reading to do in the TOEFL test. You’re not expected to understand every detail and know every word. Instead, you’re being tested on your problem-solving abilities and how fast you can work. You should spend approximately one minute on each question.
One way to get through the questions quickly is to see the organisation of the reading passages. Where are the topic sentences? How are the details connected? Is a particular statement fact or opinion? That’s what they want to see you thinking about. You’re also asked to communicate in a similar way, so studying writing interactively helps you deal with reading problems too.
Another way to move through the reading test is to quickly identify which answer choices are not possible even before you check the details of them. Usually two choices out of four are poor. Then you’re left with two very similar answers. It’s not about which one is right and which is wrong; it’s about which is a better choice.
There are always paraphrasing and summarising questions in reading. Learning the skills for these helps you in speaking and writing too.