TOEFL 2026 Reading Section:
The Complete Guide

What it looks like: You see an academic paragraph of approximately 70 words, typically defining or explaining a concept from an academic field. The paragraph is completely intact in the first sentence. In the second sentence — and sometimes the third — 10 words have their second half missing. You type the missing letters into each blank. The paragraph usually covers a topic that is academic in tone but accessible: ecology, psychology, urban planning, economics, or similar fields that might appear in a university course or textbook.

This task is genuinely different from anything in the previous TOEFL format. It is not a vocabulary definition task — it does not ask you to choose the correct word from a list. It asks you to reconstruct the precise spelling and form of a word from context. You need to know not just what a word means but how it is spelled and how it fits grammatically into the sentence.

What a Complete the Words item looks like

Strategy for Complete the Words

• 1 Read the full paragraph before filling any blank The first sentence tells you the topic. Reading the complete context before attempting any word gives you the academic domain, the tone, and the semantic field — all of which help you reconstruct missing words accurately. Never start typing before you understand what the paragraph is about.
• 2 Identify the grammatical function of each blank first Is the missing word a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb? The grammatical position tells you what word family the answer belongs to, which narrows your options significantly. A blank after "the" is a noun or adjective. A blank after "to" is often a verb. A blank modifying another verb is often an adverb ending in -ly.
• 3 Study the Academic Word List systematically The ETS Academic Word List (AWL) is the most directly relevant vocabulary resource for this task. The words that appear in Complete the Words items are academic in register — not obscure, but precise. Words like absorption, amplification, thermal, evaporation, and integration are representative of the level and style. Spend 15 minutes per day learning AWL word families, including their noun, verb, adjective, and adverb forms.
• 4 Never leave a blank empty There is no penalty for wrong answers in the Reading section. An educated guess based on context and grammar costs you nothing if wrong and earns a point if correct. If you genuinely cannot reconstruct a word, type the letters you are confident about and make your best guess for the rest. An attempt is always better than an empty blank.
• 5 Manage your time ruthlessly Complete the Words can be deceptively time-consuming when a word is genuinely unclear. Set a mental limit of approximately 30 to 40 seconds per blank. If you are stuck after that, make your best guess and move on. Your time is more valuable in Module 1 overall than on any single blank in this task.

What it looks like: You read a short practical text — between 15 and 150 words — that represents something you might encounter in everyday campus or professional life. Text types include emails, campus announcements, text message chains, notices posted on bulletin boards, schedules, menus, invoices, social media posts, and similar real-world documents. You then answer 2 multiple-choice questions about the text.

Questions focus on practical comprehension — the main purpose of the message, a specific detail such as a deadline or instruction, the meaning of a phrase in context, or what action the reader is expected to take. These questions are deliberately practical rather than interpretive. They reward fast, accurate comprehension of real-world written English rather than the analytical close-reading that academic passages require.

According to ETS, this task type was introduced to reflect the kinds of English reading that students actually perform in academic environments every day — reading an email from a professor, a campus housing notice, a library announcement, or a group chat about a project deadline. The skills it tests are genuinely useful and genuinely different from academic reading.

Sample Read in Daily Life text and questions

Strategy for Read in Daily Life

• 1 Read the questions before the text Because the texts are short and practical, reading the two questions first takes only a few seconds and tells you exactly what to look for. This transforms your reading from general comprehension to targeted scanning, saving significant time per item.
• 2 Focus on purpose, action, and key details Almost all Read in Daily Life questions fall into three categories: what is the main purpose of this text, what specific action is required, and what does a particular word or phrase mean in context. Identifying the purpose in the first sentence, the required action in the call-to-action section, and any specific details like dates, names, or locations covers the vast majority of questions.
• 3 Do not overthink these questions Read in Daily Life rewards direct, literal comprehension. The correct answer is almost always directly stated in the text. Students who treat these like academic inference questions lose time and sometimes choose wrong answers by looking for meaning that is not there. Trust what the text says explicitly.
• 4 These items should be fast A well-prepared student should complete each Read in Daily Life item — text plus two questions — in 60 to 90 seconds. If you are spending more than two minutes on one item, you are over-analyzing. Answer both questions with your best response and move on. The time you save here is time you can invest in the Academic Passage questions.

What it looks like: You read a passage of approximately 200 words that reads like an excerpt from an academic article, textbook, or magazine — presenting an idea, a process, an argument, or a comparison in an academic register. The topics are deliberately more accessible than the old TOEFL — rather than dense passages about ancient civilizations or abstract physics, you might read about how bees affect urban environments, how social media influences language change, how urban planning affects mental health, or how sports contribute to social integration. The academic register is present but the subject matter is contemporary and relatable.

A critical difference from the old TOEFL: questions no longer tell you which paragraph to check for the answer. You are responsible for locating relevant information across the full passage. This rewards students who read with structural awareness — understanding how ideas develop across paragraphs — rather than those who rely on paragraph-level navigation cues.

According to ETS, passage topics in the harder adaptive module tend toward more traditional academic content, while easier module passages use more accessible contemporary topics. This is another reason Module 1 performance matters — the passages you see in Module 2 are shaped by your earlier results.

Question types in Read an Academic Passage

Five question types appear across Academic Passage items. Understanding each type before test day eliminates the cognitive overhead of figuring out what a question is asking during the test itself.

Main idea questions ask what the passage primarily discusses or what the author's central point is. The answer is usually a broad statement that encompasses the full passage rather than a detail from one paragraph.

Detail questions ask for specific information stated explicitly in the passage. The correct answer paraphrases the passage's language rather than reproducing it exactly. Scan for the specific noun, date, or concept in the question and read the surrounding sentences.

Inference questions ask what can be concluded or implied from the passage — information that is not stated directly but follows logically from what is. The correct answer is the one most directly supported by evidence in the text. Eliminate answers that require information not present in the passage.

Vocabulary in context questions ask what a specific word or phrase means as used in the passage. The correct answer fits the specific context — not just the general meaning of the word. Use the surrounding sentences to identify the precise sense in which the word is being used.

Organization questions ask how a passage or paragraph is structured — for example, whether it presents cause and effect, comparison and contrast, a problem and solution, or a claim followed by evidence. Recognizing text structure patterns is the most efficient way to answer these quickly and accurately.

Strategy for Read an Academic Passage

• 1 Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph before the full passage This technique builds a structural map of the passage in 20 to 30 seconds and tells you where each major idea lives. Main idea questions become trivial once you know the structure. Detail questions become faster because you know which area of the text to revisit.
• 2 Identify the rhetorical structure immediately Is the passage comparing two things? Presenting a problem and solution? Building an argument from evidence? Describing a process? Identifying this structure in the first read-through tells you how ideas connect and makes organization questions answerable without re-reading the passage.
• 3 Base every answer on textual evidence The TOEFL rewards evidence-based reading. If you cannot point to the specific sentence or phrase in the passage that supports your answer, you are guessing. For inference questions in particular, the correct answer must follow logically from the text — not from background knowledge about the topic. Prior knowledge can actually mislead you if it goes beyond what the passage states.
• 4 Use transition words as navigation signals Words and phrases like "however," "in contrast," "as a result," "for example," and "therefore" signal how ideas connect and where the argument shifts. Readers who track these transitions can navigate a passage quickly and locate the evidence each question is testing without re-reading from the beginning.
• 5 Eliminate clearly wrong answers before choosing On vocabulary in context questions especially, two or three answer choices will be meanings the word has in other contexts. Eliminate those first using the surrounding sentences, then choose from what remains. This approach is faster and more accurate than trying to identify the right answer directly when multiple options seem plausible.