TOEFL Reading section
TOEFL Reading section measure your ability to understand the basic idea of the English texts on the academic disciplines .
In TOEFL Reading section you have to read three or four texts, each of them consists of 7 paragraphs and approximately 700 words.
TOEFL Reading texts are primarily academic: excerpts from lectures, university textbooks and articles. If you want to perform the tasks successfully you have to demonstrate skills in highlighting causal relationships in the texts, understanding of rhetorical functions, and the ability to compare and contrast the ideas. You have to be able to answer the questions about the main ideas, details, possible deductions, as well as lexical and rhetorical questions.
New types of the questions in TOEFL Reading require filling summary tables or writing the text. Deep knowledge of the subject or additional knowledge to answer the questions is not required. It’s given 20 minutes to work with each text. Therefore, the total time allotted for the section varies from 60 to 80 minutes. There are no breaks during the section.
TOEFL Reading preparation
Working with the texts is quite complicated due to their large size (up to 700 words), so it is important to follow the basic rules of doing the tasks of this section.
Remember that you need to go back to the text to answer the question. Often the questions refer you to a specific paragraph or sentence of the text. Even if there is no direct mention of a section of the text (according to ..., in paragraph ...), the question often refers to the piece of the information which is mentioned in a particular paragraph of the text.
Note that the test developers want to confuse you, so answers often include the statements which are true and are mentioned in the text. However, they often do not respond to this question and have no relation to it.
This short video lesson explains the format and makes overview on the reading part in TOEFL iBT exam. It provides students with indispensible tips and strategies that test takers will need in order to get high result on that section.
An important skill that you have to train is guessing the meaning from the context, because the tasks in TOEFL Reading sections often contain the questions like "what word is closer in meaning to this one ...", "how to interpret the meaning of the word ... in paragraph 3". You'll have to pick up synonyms for words the values of which you might not have known before. Of course, it’s quite difficult to guess the meaning of the words, if you meet them for the first time, but after some practice you’ll be able to do it successfully.