The TOEFL iBT® Test: Improving
Your Reading Skills
Advice for Reading
Performance Level: High
Score Range: 22–30
Performance Level: High
Score Range: 22–30
Congratulations! You read very well
in English. To maintain and enhance your solid skills, here are some points to
keep in mind for the future.
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.
o 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.
o Group the words according to topic
or meaning and study the words as a list of related words.
o 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.
o Study word families (e.g.,
enjoyment, enjoy; enjoyable, enjoyably)
§ Use available vocabulary resources.
o Use a good thesaurus to study
various shades of meanings of words.
o The Longman Language
Activator provides "collocations" (words used together).
o There are online concordancers that
search corpora and provide examples of words in context, such as the British
national corpus.
§ 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.
o 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.
o 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.
o Write one sentence or phrase
summarizing the paragraphs that discuss the same idea.
o 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.
o Look for the common patterns of
organization that you find in articles.
o 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.
o If the text is a comparison, be sure
that your summary reflects that and uses appropriate transition words and
phrases for comparison.
o 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.
Note: References to other sources
and internet sites are provided as a service and should not be understood as
endorsements of their content.
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