阅读

About 30 minutes, about 50 items. That is much faster than the old test, and the items are shorter — so the skill being tested is not endurance 耐力 any more. It is speed with accuracy.

• Three kinds of task appear: Complete the Words, Read in Daily Life and Read an Academic Passage. The first two are new in 2026.
• The section is adaptive, so the passages you see depend on how you are doing. Do not try to read the difficulty of the test as a sign of how you are performing.
• You cannot go back to a section once you have left it. Answer every item as you meet it.

⚠ There is no penalty 扣分 for a wrong answer. An item left blank scores exactly what a wrong answer scores: nothing. Never leave an item empty.

A short paragraph in which the second half of some words is missing; you type the missing letters to complete each word.

• This is a test of grammar and vocabulary 词汇, not of finding information. You are not hunting through a passage; you are asking "what word belongs here?"
• Use the sentence around the gap. The word class 词性 is usually decided before the meaning is: after the you need a noun, after very an adjective, after infinitive to a base verb (but look forward to reading: when to is a preposition, an -ing form follows).
• Spelling counts. A word with a letter missing is a wrong word.
• Read the completed sentence back to yourself. If it does not sound like English, it is not.

Emails, notices 通知, timetables, advertisements and other short practical texts.

• The question often asks what the reader should DO — or what has changed, or what is not allowed.
• Practical texts hide their key information in small places: a date, a room number, a word like except, unless, only, from Monday. Those small words often carry the answer, so never skim past them.
• Watch the register 语域. An email from a tutor is polite and indirect, so read the strength of each phrase: "It would be helpful if you could…" is usually a real request, while "you may wish to…" is usually a suggestion you are free to ignore. Decide from the whole message whether the action is required or optional.
• ⚠ A daily-life text is short, so students read it too fast and answer from memory of a similar text. Read the one in front of you.

Worked example: required or optional?

Dear students, the chemistry lab will close at 5 p.m. on Friday instead of 7 p.m. It would be helpful if you could collect your samples before then. You may wish to label your boxes with your name. Please note that any samples left in the lab fridge will be thrown away on Monday morning.

What must students do? (A) collect their samples before 5 p.m. on Friday (B) label their boxes (C) come to the lab on Monday morning (D) empty the fridge

• A is right. It would be helpful if you could sounds soft, but the last sentence gives it a consequence: samples left in the fridge are thrown away on Monday. A polite request with a consequence is a requirement.
• B is the trap. You may wish to is a suggestion, so labelling is optional.
• C repeats Monday morning from the text, but that is when samples are thrown away, not when students come. D is not something students are asked to do.
• The small words did the work: instead of 7 p.m. (a change), before then (a deadline).

A passage from the kind of book a first-year university course would set.

• Skim 略读 first, thirty seconds, for the shape: what is this about, how many parts has it, where does the argument turn? Then answer, and scan 扫读 back for each fact.
• The topic sentence 主题句 — usually the first sentence of a paragraph — tells you what that paragraph is for. When a question asks which paragraph contains something, you are matching against topic sentences, not reading everything again.
• A question about a word asks what it means in this passage, not what it means in general. Answer from the sentence, not from your dictionary memory.
• Guess an unknown word from its parts: a prefix 前缀 (un-, re-, over-) and a suffix 后缀 (-tion, -able, -ly) narrow the meaning and fix the word class before you have understood the root at all.
• An inference 推理 question asks what the passage lets you conclude, not what it says. The right answer is always supported by a line you could point at. If you cannot point at the line, it is the wrong answer.

Worked example: an inference you can point at

Some species of bamboo flower only once every few decades. When they do, almost every plant of the species flowers at the same time across a whole region, drops a huge quantity of seed, and then dies. In the months that follow, the number of seed-eating rats in the area often rises sharply.

What can be inferred about the rats? (A) They eat only bamboo seed. (B) The sudden supply of seed helps more of them survive and breed. (C) They cause the bamboo to flower. (D) They live mainly in bamboo forests.

• B is right, and you can point at the line: a huge quantity of seed is followed by the number of seed-eating rats … rises sharply. The passage never says "because", but it puts the food first and the rise second. That order is the support.
• A goes too far: seed-eating does not mean only bamboo seed. Words like only, always and never in an option are a reason to check the text twice.
• C turns cause and result round: the flowering comes first.
• D may be true in the real world, but no line in the passage says it. An inference must come from the passage, not from what you already know.

• Translating while reading. Turning each sentence into Chinese in your head takes much longer than reading it. At about 30 minutes for 50 items there is no room for it. This is not a habit you can drop on test day; it takes weeks of reading without a dictionary to lose.
• Subvocalising 默读出声 — saying each word silently. It caps your reading speed at your speaking speed, which is far slower than the silent reading the test rewards.
• Hunting for a word from the question. The test writes questions in different words on purpose. A synonym 同义词 in the passage is the normal case, not a trick.
• Perfectionism on one item. Every item is worth the same. Two minutes spent rescuing one hard item can cost you several easy ones later.

• Practise with a timer from the first day. Reading well and reading fast are two different skills, and only one of them is trained by reading slowly.
• Read one academic page and one practical text every day — a science article and an email, a history page and a noticeboard. The section now asks for both.
• Build vocabulary from the Academic Word List, but learn each word in a sentence. A word you have only met on a flashcard is a word you will not recognise inside a line of prose.
• After every practice set, write down why each wrong answer was wrong: did you misread the question, miss a word, run out of time, or not know the vocabulary? Four different problems need four different fixes, and only your own list tells you which one you have.
• Format facts in this section were checked on the ETS website on 13 September 2026: TOEFL iBT content and structure.

Vocabulary card meanings

endurance: The ability to keep working accurately through a long test. penalty: A loss of marks for breaking a task rule. notice: A short public message, often posted for students. skim: To read quickly for the general idea, not for every word. inference: A conclusion drawn from clues when the text does not say it directly. subvocalise: Silent speech-like activity during reading, which need not move the lips and need not slow every reader.