TOEFL iBT Reading study guide
TOEFL iBT Reading · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The TOEFL iBT Reading section is one of four sections of the TOEFL iBT test, an English proficiency exam used for university admission and other academic purposes. Reading measures how well you understand written English in both daily campus life and academic contexts, using focused texts rather than long textbook passages. Three task types are used: Complete the Words, in which you supply partially missing words in a short text; Read in Daily Life, which uses notices, messages and short informational texts; and Read an Academic Passage, which resembles reading you might meet in a university course. The section is computer-delivered and adaptive, and the published baseline is 50 items in approximately 30 minutes, though ETS notes that test time and items may vary as the test adapts. Topics on this exam: Complete the Words, Read in Daily Life, and Read an Academic Passage. The TOEFL iBT Reading study guide has 3 sections and about 1,201 words.
01Complete the Words: Restoring Missing Letters from Context
Each item is a short passage with several words broken off after the first two or three letters. You supply the rest of the word.
369 words, about 2 min02Read in Daily Life: Short Practical Texts
These are short, everyday documents: an email between colleagues, a building notice, a course schedule, an advertisement, a menu, a web page, or a text-message thread. Passages run a few sentences to about a paragraph, and each carries two to four questions.
415 words, about 2 min03Read an Academic Passage: Questions and Distractors
Academic passages run a few paragraphs and follow predictable architecture: a topic introduced, a claim or definition, supporting evidence or examples, and often a contrast or limitation. Read for that structure first; note what each paragraph does rather than memorising facts as you go.
417 words, about 2 min