Reading: Short Passages and Practical Texts
What this section tests
TOEFL Essentials Reading mixes short academic paragraphs with everyday texts such as emails, notices, and schedules. Questions target main idea, explicit detail, vocabulary in context, inference, and the writer's purpose.
Concepts to master
- Skimming for structure: find the topic sentence and the function of each paragraph (example, contrast, result).
- Scanning for detail: locate a keyword, then read the whole sentence around it.
- Vocabulary in context: substitute your own word for the target and check that the sentence still makes sense.
- Inference: a conclusion that must be true given the text, not merely plausible.
- Practical-text logic: dates, conditions, and exceptions in notices decide the answer.
Common traps
- Choosing a word's most familiar meaning instead of its meaning in this sentence.
- Selecting an inference that is reasonable in real life but unsupported by the passage.
- Missing a negation or exception (except, unless, only) that reverses the meaning.
- Answering from memory of a similar topic rather than from the text given.
Rule of thumb
For every answer, point to the line that supports it. If you cannot locate supporting text, the option is probably a distractor. For vocabulary items, cover the four options, predict a synonym yourself, then match.
Worked example
Passage: 'The museum's free-admission policy applies to students, though not during special exhibitions.' Question: When is admission not free for students? The words though not create the exception, so the answer is during special exhibitions - not on weekends generally, which the text never mentions.