TOEFL Reading practice: every question type, task by task
TOEFL Reading gives you academic passages and a set of questions that follow the order of the text, closing with a prose summary worth more than the rest. The passages are university-textbook prose: no specialist knowledge is needed, but academic vocabulary and careful reading are. These five topics cover every question type you will meet.
What this paper asks of you
- Academic vocabulary in context, where the common meaning of a word is often the wrong one.
- Stated detail: finding it in the paragraph the question names, not from memory.
- Negative factual items, where three options are true and the fourth is the answer.
- Inference kept to the smallest step the passage supports.
- Rhetorical purpose: what a sentence does, not what it says.
- Cohesion, for the sentence insertion task: pronouns, demonstratives and connectors.
- Main ideas versus true but minor details, for the prose summary.
- Pacing, so the summary question is not answered in the last twenty seconds.
- Recognising paraphrase as the usual shape of a correct answer.
Task types, one page each
- Vocabulary in contextPractise TOEFL iBT Reading vocabulary-in-context questions: 40 original items on academic word meaning, synonym traps and using the sentence to fix the answer.40 questions
- Factual & negative factualPractise TOEFL iBT Reading factual and negative factual (NOT / EXCEPT) questions: 40 original items with short passages and clear, checkable answers.40 questions
- Inference & rhetorical purposePractise TOEFL iBT Reading inference and rhetorical purpose questions: 40 original items on what a passage implies and why an author includes a detail.40 questions
- Sentence insertionPractise the TOEFL iBT Reading sentence insertion task: 40 original items on pronoun reference, connectors and the clues that fix a sentence in one place.40 questions
- Prose summaryPractise the TOEFL iBT Reading prose summary question: 40 original items on separating main ideas from minor details and choosing the three options that belong.40 questions
Note
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