Academic Reading Skills

The Reading section measures your ability to understand university-level academic texts and passages. In many academic settings around the world, students are expected to read and understand information from textbooks and other academic materials written in English. The following are three purposes for academic reading:

Reading to find information

• effectively scanning text for key facts and important information
• increasing reading fluency and rate

Basic comprehension

• understanding the general topic or main idea, major points, important facts and details, vocabulary in context, and pronoun references
• making inferences about what is implied in a passage

Reading to learn

• recognizing the organization and purpose of a passage
• understanding relationships between ideas
• organizing information into a category chart or a summary in order to recall major points and important details
• inferring how ideas throughout the passage connect

Reading Passages

The TOEFL iBT test uses reading passages from university-level textbooks that introduce a discipline or topic. The excerpts are changed as little as possible so the test can measure how well test takers can read academic material.

The passages cover a variety of subjects. You should not be concerned if you are unfamiliar with a topic. The passage contains all the information needed to answer the questions.

All passages are classified into three basic categories:

• exposition
• argumentation
• historical

Often, passages present information about the topic from more than one perspective or point of view. This is something you should note as you read. Usually, you are asked at least one question that allows you to demonstrate that you understood the general organization of the passage. Common organization types that you should be able to recognize are:

• classification
• compare / contrast
• cause / effect
• problem / solution

You must read through or scroll to the end of each passage before receiving questions on that passage. Once the questions appear, the passage appears on the right side of the computer screen. The questions are on the left.

You do not need any special background knowledge to answer the questions in the Reading section correctly, but the definition of difficult words or phrases in the passage may be provided. If you click on a hyperlinked word, a definition appears in the lower left part of the screen.

The 60 to 80 minutes allotted for this section include time for reading the passages and answering the questions.

Reading Question Formats

There are three question formats in the Reading section:

• questions with four choices and a single correct answer in traditional multiple-choice format
• questions with four choices and a single answer that ask test takers to «insert a sentence» where it fits best in a passage
• «reading to learn» questions with more than four choices and more than one possible correct answer

If you need information about TOEFL iBT preparation, please check the following link

 

Works Cited:

• Educational Testing Service. (2012). The Official Guide to the TOEFL Test – Fourth Edition. McGraw-Hill.