Mastering Strategies for TOEFL Reading Section

Understanding the Reading Section

 

• The Reading section consists of questions on 3-5 passages, each approximately 700 words in length containing 12-14 questions. One’ll have 60-80 minutes to answer.
• The passages are on academic topics; they are the kind of material that might be found in an undergraduate university textbook.
• Passages require an understanding of rhetorical functions such as cause-effect, compare-contrast, and argumentation.
• Students answer questions about main ideas, details, inferences, essential information, sentence insertion, vocabulary, rhetorical purpose and overall ideas. 
• Reading receives a scaled score from 0 to 30 to be added to the other 3 modules to get the total scored on a scale of 0 to 120 points.

 

General Strategies Given by ETS to Govern Reading Section

·      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.

·      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)

·       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.

·      Think carefully about how ideas are connected to 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.

Crafts to Crack Reading Section

 

• Set a Synopsis: An active reading of scanning and skimming the passage with induced attention is to be generated to set a synopsis of the passage in the brain which may help to take the decision quickly keeping oneself away from the chaos of unnecessary information and to save vital time. The more one practices the more this efficacy excelled.
• Fueled from First & Last:  Fuel is generated by rapid reading at an attentive fast pace. The reading module questions of the verbal reasoning is to be initiated by being fueled initially from the first and last paragraphs or lines contain principal perception in most passages. One can read, scan, and skim the body of the passage bordered by the first and last with respect to the urge of the questions to save time.
• Start with Questions:
  • In the time of reading one should trigger questions in every turn of the passage by asking own self to excel the way of answering with simultaneous reading process : what is the main idea/purpose of the passage, what are the problems mentioned, what are the solutions, why does the fact happen, why any specific vocab is utilized, what/why does the author opine a realization, what are the supporting/opposing/dubious/weakening facts, what can be inferred from the passage.
  • Firstly one should quickly flick through the stipulated first question and start reading. This will help one to be touched with the answer of that question asap and to save few vital time of the test.
• Detect the Directives: In reading module one can encounter words or phrases in the given passages functioning as directives by giving signals to go in forward or reverse direction respectively with the flowing message given by the passage.

• Forward transitions indicate that the passage is going to continue in the same stream of direction what has already been mentioned earlier; e.g.: And,  As well as,  In addition, Also, Moreover, Likewise, Similarly etc.
• Backward transitions with the words/phrases: But, However, In spite of, On the other hand, Nevertheless, Nonetheless, On the contrary, etc. give that the passage needs a change in direction and what follows will be in a contrast.
• TOEFL test sometimes evaluates the efficacy of understanding and logical lucidity on the basis of the way how the transitions of time is driven; e.g.: After, Currently, During, Earlier, Later, Meanwhile, Now, Until, Recently, Simultaneously, Subsequently etc.

• Concise the Question: The more simplified and direct the interpretation of a question, the better one will be able to navigate through the passage when looking for an answer. The given questions are to be simplified, reoriented or rephrased at one’s own ease and pace.
• Anticipate the Answer: One needs to anticipate the answers while reading the passage to match the answer with the given choices especially in dealing with a question wants one to find the purpose of the passage. The anticipated answer then applied to match with given answer options and select the appropriate answer to make sense and fit the passage.
• Eliminate the Extremities: The answer choices is then eliminated with respect to the anticipated answers. The choices which provide very extreme supporting base are to be eliminated to be more specified. In this process, one needs to be aware of the wrong answers where the choice may assume too much or anything absurd, provide anything beyond the scope and information of the given passage, or showing anything true in a real sense but absent in the passage. One should have a keen observation on the answer choices that are recycled from the passage, words/phrases that come directly from the passage, strong language or opinions with unnecessary comparisons and absurd contrast to eliminate the wrong.
• Eschew the External Knowledge: TOEFL reading module evaluates the capability of logical reasoning through reading and answering. This section is not concerned with the knowledge of anyone regarding the information beyond the scope of the passage. So, one should eschew or avoid any kind of external knowledge to be applied to answer the question so that the internal message given by the passage is used with reading efficacy.
• Avoid any Assumption: Any assumption is also prohibited for reading module so that one can utilize the whole passage without any fabricated or real information out of the reading realm. One can infer anything with perception which is even very useful and strategic because anything inferred is extracted from the message while anything assumed can’t maintain the link with the passage and so it may drive towards wrong answers.
• Valuate the Vocabulary: In order to walk in the reading module with ascending confidence and cognition one needs to have a good command over vocabularies which helps to utilize the understanding with lucidity and to eliminate the wrong answer simultaneously. It will help to extract the right answer choices from the crowd with pacified ease. One should navigate with vocabs to relate it with the passage so that he/she can specify the exact meaning in the juncture of the passage where the vocab is used.
  • Perceive the Question Pattern

One will come across three different types of questions as you read through the TOEFL Reading passages.

• Standard Multiple Choice
• This is the most common question type to see in TOEFL Reading module.
• These questions may ask about the passage as a whole, specific sentences or phrases in the passage, or the meaning of a particular word that was used.
• For each question, there are four answer choices, only one of which is correct. One’ll need to choose the correct one.  
• ETS will try to make some answer choices sound like the right answer when they’re actually not. So one has to read every answer choice to sense the best one fits the passage relevantly.
• One has to look for proper evidence in the passage. Every correct answer will be supported by evidence in the passage, even if it’s not immediately obvious. If it is uncertain of which answer is correct, one should go back and skim the passage for clues swiftly.
• Inserting a Sentence
• There will be one ‘Inserting a Sentence’ question for each passage. 
• One will be shown a paragraph from the passage as well as a sentence for these question that is to be added to it.
• There will be four different places where the new sentence can be inserted, and the spot is to be selected where the sentence fits to make sense.  
• One should briefly read through the entire paragraph with the new sentence inserted into the highlighted place for each of the four options. 
• One should be cautious enough not be tempted to skim the options or stop after the first option if it sounds good enough. These questions are designed to be somewhat confusing, and there will always be answers that seem correct but aren’t the correct answer.
• Each placement option is to be considered carefully to reduce the chance of answering incorrectly.
• The correct answer will keep the original meaning the same. So one has to consider if the meaning of the paragraph changes depending on where the sentence is placed.

 

• Search the Main Points or Summary  

• These questions ask to organize the main points of the passage in either a chart or a summary. 
• There will be one of these questions for each passage. 
• Unlike the other Reading questions, which are all worth one point, these questions are worth two to three points. It is possible to get partial credit.
• Questions that ask to select main ideas from the passage are to be answered differentiating the main and minor facts of the passage by employing inference. 
• One needs to focus on the main ideas and key points on the basis of the relevant and logical reasoning.

 

Premises of Practices

The most important step to enhance the skill of reading module is to read as much as we can which will give us a keen understanding along with help enlarging our vocabulary and excelling the perception capability. We can follow the countries where the state language is English to improve our vocabulary and meaning-extraction skill. So the reading material should have the standard reflected and resembled by the standard of American and British English. We can read newspapers, stories, novels, magazines and journals, e.g :

• Newspaper/Journal/Magazine

 

• USA Today
• The New York Times
• The Wall Street Journal
• The Washington Post
• New York Post
• Reader’s Digest
• Economics
• The Guardian
• The Times
• The Daily Telegraph
• Financial Times
• The Atlantic Monthly
• Popular Science

 

• Books

 

• Books of William Shakespeare
• Books of Dan Brown
• The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
• A Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela 
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• The Aubrey-Maturin Series by Patrick O’Brian
• Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley
• To kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Cosmos by Carl Sagan

 

TOEFL reading section is a vital segment of the recognized international test. The vitality of the section should be nurtured to sustain throughout the exam period so that one can glean the desired score smartly. One needs to practice with passion and patience to master the specific strategies for TOEFL reading section. The passionate practice and appropriate application of the strategies can lead anyone towards the path of scoring successfully.