TOEFL Reading Skills

TOEFL READING SKILLS

·         Preparation Strategies

Read, Read, Read. Read in English regularly. Focus on academic texts from university textbooks or other materials. Do not stick to one or two topics that you are interested in. Read from variety of subjects - science, social science, business, arts, geography, history, economics, and others. Academic texts, apart from textbooks, could be found in variety of articles and academic publications on the Internet or university libraries.

Find the purpose of the passage. Knowing the purpose of the reading you may easily find what the writer is trying to accomplish. The purpose of the passage in most of the readings is embedded in the introductory paragraph which is one of the most important paragraphs in the text. Most of the passages in TOEFL iBT will try to do the following:

·      To Explain - to present the information on a specific topic in explanatory manner. These texts contain mostly factual information.

·      To Resolve - it aims at finding solution for some sort of dilemmas or questions that need answers. Usually there would be a debate.

·      To convince - to persuade the reader of the validity of certain viewpoint or idea. There would be opinions and support with evidence in those type of passages.

A.    Increase vocabulary

When reading wide variety of texts on different subjects you should make a word list. Organize your list in topics for better results. Example topics could be business, geography, science and others. Make flashcards to help you learn those word lists. Use the words learned in your writings and speaking.

B.     Take notes

During all sections of TOEFL iBT note taking is allowed. It is a crucial component for success. It is difficult to remember all facts and details from a reading text in order to answer the questions. You also don't have enough time to search for those again in the text. So, the solution is called note taking. When skimming and reading the texts you should write down all important facts and details in order to find them fast and easily when you need them. See also our effective note taking strategies.

C.     Learn how to skim the text

Skimming means reading the text quickly to obtain very first general impression on what the text is about, what its main idea is. Skimming corresponds with Reading to find information objective in TOEFL iBT. You should develop your ability to skim quickly but at the same time to identify all major points in the passage. Take notes. See also our skimming strategies.

D.    Read after skimming

Only skimming is not enough. Read the passage again. This time read it more carefully, but don't forget that you have limited time. Take notes. Identify the passage type - classification, cause/effect, compare/contrast, problem/solution, etc.

E.     Try to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words in the passages

the context can help to do that. After that, check those words in the dictionary. Guessing the words from the context brings great advantages - you save time and it doesn't disturb your comprehension of the texts.

F.      Highlight some of the pronouns (he, him, they, them, etc.) in the texts.

Identify to which nouns in the particular text the highlighted pronouns refer.

G.    Practice making general inferences and conclusions based on what is implied in the text.

H.    Learn to organize the data presented in the passage in charts and tables.

Create charts with categories and place the important data from the passage in the appropriate category. In TOEFL iBT you are not asked to create charts. Rather, charts are provided and you are asked to categorize the information in pre-defined categories.

·         Improving Reading Skills

1. Read as much and as often as possible. Make sure to include academic texts on a variety of topics written in different genres as part of your reading.
• Read major newspapers, such as The New York Times or Science Times.
• Use the websites of National Public Radio (NPR) or the BBC to get transcripts of shows and study the content and new vocabulary you encounter.
2. Continually expand your vocabulary knowledge.
• Develop a system for recording unfamiliar words.
• Write each word on a card and mix up the cards each time you study them. Write the context (the sentence the word was used in) to help you learn correct word usage.
• Group the words according to topic or meaning and study the words as a list of related words.
• Review the new words on a regular basis so that you remember them.
• Increase your vocabulary by analyzing word parts. Study roots, prefixes, and suffixes.
• Study word families (e.g., enjoyment, enjoy; enjoyable, enjoyably)
• Use available vocabulary resources.
• Use a good thesaurus to study various shades of meanings of words.
• The Longman Language Activator provides "collocations" (words used together).
• There are online concordancers that search corpora and provide examples of words in context, such as the British national corpus.
• Practice using context to guess the meaning of unknown words.
• Continually practice using new words you encounter in your speech and writing. This will help you remember both the meaning and the correct usage of the words.
3. Think carefully about how ideas are connected within a text. The connections between sentences and the links between paragraphs are critical to complete comprehension.
• To understand the structure of a reading passage, outline the text.
• Begin by determining the main idea or concept presented in each paragraph. Remember to distinguish between the main points and the details that exemplify them.
• Group paragraphs that address the same concept. Think about how the key idea in one paragraph relates to the main point of the next paragraph. If there are several paragraphs that focus on the same idea or concept, synthesize the key points into one main idea.
• Write one sentence or phrase summarizing the paragraphs that discuss the same idea.
• Add important details that support each major idea or concept.
• Learn to recognize different organizational styles in order to understand the way an article is structured.
• Look for the common patterns of organization that you find in articles.
• Pay attention to connecting words in order to understand the pattern of organization.
• Write a summary of a text, making sure that it incorporates the organizational pattern of the original.
• If the text is a comparison, be sure that your summary reflects that and uses appropriate transition words and phrases for comparison.
• If the text argues two points of view, be sure both points of view are reflected in your summary and that appropriate transitional words are used.