Reading Study Guide for the TOEFL Test

General Reading Practice

Simply practicing the act of reading on a regular basis can help improve your skills. It’s important to use your time wisely, however, and read materials that will challenge you to achieve reading comprehension at the appropriate level.

Types of Reading Material

The Reading section of the TOEFL covers many fields of study, including literature, science, and the humanities. So, as you prepare for this test, be sure to seek out a variety of practice reading material. Note that reading nonfiction often requires an additional set of reading skills that aren’t as necessary for fiction, including reading headings and picture captions.

Level of Reading Material

The passages may be excerpts from college-level textbooks, but they will be on an introductory level. Consider this when choosing practice reading material. Practicing with books used in college courses is a good idea. All the information you need to answer the questions on the TOEFL is contained in the passage, so you do not need any extra background knowledge. You just need to be able to read and understand the content.

Sources

There are many sources of material that can help you improve your reading skills. Because the TOEFL is a measurement of your comprehension skills in an academic environment, we recommend you choose reading selections that focus on subjects common in academic texts. Here are some examples:

Books are an obvious recommendation for improving your reading skills. They are descriptive and include information similar to reading material you will encounter on the TOEFL. Choose a variety of books to help you increase your comprehension and vocabulary. Focus on nonfiction books, professional books, and university textbooks.
Periodicals and magazines are another helpful source of reading material. Whether online or in print, periodicals and magazines offer rich language with subject-specific details. Pop culture and celebrity-style magazines have a lower vocabulary level to reach the masses, while news magazines or specialized publications (e.g., financial, political, professional) use a richer vocabulary and are closer in style to the excerpts you might find on the actual test.
Online ESL reading sites will help you improve your comprehension skills. However, not all comprehension texts and passages provide the same value. Some quiz you after reading, covering vocabulary or factual information. Do your best to search online sources that include what is arguably the most important ingredient: critical thinking. Critical-thinking questions teach the reader to manipulate bits of information that can be used to formulate their own answer, one that may not be clearly outlined in the text. Choose reading comprehension exercises that include a short passage followed by questions about details in the passage. These exercises are interactive and are usually colorful and unique. They are sure to improve your reading comprehension and vocabulary.

Specific Reading Strategies to Practice

If you want to gain more out of what you read, there are certain things you can do. Strong readers use the reading strategies discussed below, as they can help you comprehend all kinds of reading material. These strategies are especially helpful when you read text about an unfamiliar subject or material that contains terms that are new to you.

Note: The 2026 edition of the TOEFL Reading Test contains much shorter passages than its predecessor, so, during the test, you will not have time to do many of these things. They will be helpful, however, as you read to prepare for the test. For example, taking quick notes as you read is a great comprehension strategy, but there will not be time to do much of this during the actual test.

Before Reading

Your before reading skills are very important when preparing to read a passage. You can use several of these strategies to improve your comprehension, vocabulary, and preparedness for the TOEFL, even though you won’t have time to do them completely during the actual exam.

These skills activate prior knowledge, which maps out what you already know about the subject. Here are some strategies for doing this:

Analyze the title of the passage you are about to read. List all the information that comes to mind about this title. Ask yourself, “What do I already know about this information?” Do any of your experiences help you recall related information?
Examine the visual items in the passage, if any. Pictures and other visual material can activate your prior knowledge.
Skim through the material and get a basic idea of its content. Look at highlighted words or headings to get a clearer idea of what you already know and what you expect to read.

Use these pieces of information to recall and understand the material before you read. This will help you while you’re reading.

While Reading

When you have “warmed up” your mind, you are ready to read. Use the following strategies to connect your prior knowledge, comprehension, and critical thinking.

Take notes to help you organize the information you receive from the material.
Determine what you think is meant in the passage. Ask yourself questions or hypothesize about what you’re reading: “I think this word means…” or “This word is similar to…”
Identify important concepts and write them down.
Summarize what you understand at the end of each section.
Review the passage to ensure you have an accurate understanding. If you understand a piece of the passage and then, during another paragraph, come to a different understanding, you should go back and relate the two thoughts. Review until you come to a singular understanding of the passage.

After Reading

When you’ve finished reading, you’re not quite finished. Here are some valuable tips for retaining the information:

Summarize and reflect on the passage. You can do this by summarizing in your mind and rereading selected, important elements of the passage.
Review your notes and verify that they reflect your understanding. Ask yourself if you can relate the information to personal experiences.
Think about how this information might be used in the future.

Strategies for Reading Tests

These are things you can practice before test day that will transfer directly to your test-taking experience, as well as make you a better reader, in general. On test day, when you don’t have a lot of time to read the whole passage and answer the questions, these quick tips and strategies will help you answer the questions successfully and promptly. Be sure you are comfortable with each before you take the TOEFL.

Scanning the Questions

If you have the opportunity, scan the questions quickly. As you scan the questions, look for paragraph numbers, as certain questions will be about a particular paragraph. Look for key words like mainly about, why, refer to, mean, imply, and most likely. These will give you a good idea of the types of questions you’ll be answering, and you can find the answers more easily while going over the passage.

Skimming before Reading

Note: Since the reading passages in the 2026 TOEFL Reading Test are rather short (maximum of 200 words in the academic reading tasks), this strategy and the next one may not be necessary and/or appropriate. So, try utilizing them as you practice, but consider omitting them during the actual test.

Getting a general impression of a passage before reading it more thoroughly is useful. To skim is to read quickly for the general idea. You will note only information and clues that provide an idea of the central theme or topic of the passage.

When you skim, it is necessary to read only selected sentences to get the passage’s main idea or gist. How do you do this? First, read the title and get an idea of what the passage is about. If the title is, for instance, “Celestial Bodies,” you will understand that the passage is most likely about objects in the sky, such as stars, planets, moons, etc.

Next, note how many paragraphs there are in the passage. It’s also important to pay close attention to transition words at the beginning of each paragraph. For example, if the paragraphs begin with first, second, finally, etc., the paragraphs are most likely giving reasons or steps in a process. If you see transition words like additionally, furthermore, or however, you likely have arguments that are for and against a position.

Paying attention to these signals will help you map out how the passage is organized, which will, in turn, help you answer the questions quickly and accurately. While skimming, do not read every word or sentence, but instead read the first sentence in the paragraph, which is most likely the topic sentence.

Scanning the Text

As with the questions, scanning the text provides a more detailed look at paragraphs in a passage. This is a good practice when looking for specific information in a passage, such as an answer to a question. Here are the basic steps for scanning:

Step 1: Read the questions and decide exactly what information you are looking for, and think about the form it may take. For example, if a question wants to know when something happened, you would look for dates in the passage. If the question wants to know who did something, you would look for a name.
Step 2: Decide where you need to look for this information. Because you skimmed the passage, you should already have a good idea of which paragraph to look at.
Step 3: Move your eyes as quickly as possible down the page until you find the information you need. Read it carefully.
Step 4: When you find what you need, do not read further. Fortunately, in many instances, the TOEFL questions will tell you which paragraph to look in.

Reading Speed

Being a good reader means knowing how to approach different types of reading. While improving your reading skills, you will get information from everything you read, yet you won’t read everything for the same purpose or in the same way. Good readers are flexible. When you know your purpose for reading, you can adjust your rate to fit that specific type of material.

Reading rate (or reading speed) can be of several types:

careful—used to improve understanding, memorize, outline, summarize, paraphrase, analyze, solve problems, and evaluate material
normal—used to find answers to questions, understand the relationship of details to main ideas, solve problems, and note details
rapid—used to review familiar material, get the main idea, retrieve information for short-term use, and comprehend the basic plot (of fiction)
scanning—used to preview or get an overview of the content
skimming—used to search for something particular in the text, find a specific reference, locate the answer to a specific question, get the main idea of a selection, or briefly review

Knowing how to use all five reading styles is a great advantage, because it will give you a wide variety of ways to tackle the Reading section of the TOEFL. While reading the short passages while practicing for this test, be aware of the reading speed that best fits the tasks you need to accomplish and also allows you to finish within the allotted time.