Reading tips - TOEFL ibt (how to score 30/30

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode. Today we're going to talk about the rating section of the TOEFL IBT. I know I created an episode for the reading section pretty recently, but I thought I, or actually I figured, I'd make another episode because just so you know, get familiar with all the different question types because there are around nine to ten different question types. You don't need to know them, but it can't be helpful to be familiar with them, so then when you go into the test, you know, exactly what to expect and you don't waste time doing certain things and you, you know, exactly what to do. But first of all, let's talk about summary questions. So this is a type of question that will usually be towards the end of a reading section or after you get asked a couple of questions. And in these questions, you need to summarize the main information, the main points given in a passage. And here, the strategy to use and to get the correct answers are to rule out the wrong incorrect answers, and the way to do that is to first make almost like a list, it can be in your mind, but categorize and choose what are the correct answers and what are the correct summary questions. The incorrect summary questions will be the questions that have, first of all, wrong information. Either a part of info is right and the other is wrong. That may happen. If there's some detail that's wrong, that's already assigned. This is not it. This is not a summary question. This is not it. This has wrong information. If even if it has just one little bit of something wrong, but it has the rest that's right, it's wrong. Then another incorrect summary questions are details because they're asking you about the summary. They're not asking you about details or tiny parts. So that's another incorrect summary question. And then another sign that these things may not be summary questions is if they are not in the introduction sentence of a paragraph. Now, what are the correct summary questions? First, look for the keywords. Look for the keywords in the summary questions and say, have they answered like, have they talked about this concept throughout the passage? If yes, then it's probably a summary question. Then another clue to identify whether sentence is a summary sentence is whether or not the keywords are used in the introduction. Writing the introduction of the paragraph, maybe they say something they introduce what the passage will be about. If the summary sentence has words within the passage, then it's probably a sign that, yeah, this may be a summary question. And then another factor that made a term in whether or not a specific sentence is a summary question is if the information is in the beginning of paragraphs. So for these questions, I always recommend checking for the first sentence of a paragraph, and that will indicate whether or not it is a summary question or not. So just to summarize, the correct summary questions look for keywords, look for information in the introduction, and look for the keywords, check if they are in the beginning of paragraphs, and check if that information is just a detail or it actually appears in more than two paragraphs. If it appears in more than two paragraphs, it's probably a summary question. And if there is wrong information, either a part is right and the other is wrong, or they're just telling you about the details and tiny parts, or they're not in the introduction sentence of paragraphs, it's probably a sign of this is incorrect. Let's move on to inference questions. And inference questions, they don't ask you, they ask you a question, but they are not going to tell you that explicitly, you're not going to find that in the text explicitly paraphrased. You're going to have to infer, you're going to have to make guesses from that. And the way you know you're being asked an inference question is when it has words like infer, suggest. So for this question, this strategy I would use is to look for keywords. Pretty much for every single question, looking for keywords is a helpful tip. But for this type of question, it's especially beneficial. So check for keywords. Whenever you read something like the reading passage or the reading question says, what does the author imply when he says this, this and that? So then look for the keywords. Okay, what are they trying to talk about? What is this? And when you understand the meaning of a sentence, that's usually a sign that it will, I mean, what I'm trying to say is that usually the answer that you choose, everything needs to be correct, not just a little bit, but all the information needs to be correct. Everything is correct from the passage from the correct passage. And the answer should be stated in the passage. Of course, it's not going to be directly paraphrased, but the information should be stated. And something that I used to make a lot is that I used to overthink the decision. I used to think that they were deeper than they truly are. And no, the answers are simple. So really, if you're starting to overthink and overanalyze, that's not the way to go. Don't guess too much. The answer should be stated. And then another tip to keep in mind in here is that the examiners are going to try to confuse you. So for example, two terms, and I was reading or I was taking a mock test, and two terms that can easily get confused, or for example, the term dissatisfaction and lack of motivation. Yes, they both mean negative things, but they're not the same. dissatisfaction and lack of motivations are completely different things. So even though they may sound similar, there are differences. These are not synonyms. When you check for inference questions and you look for keywords, look for things like synonyms. But keep in mind that some things may appear like they are similar, like dissatisfaction and lack of motivation, but they're actually not. Let's move on to reference questions. This is when questions ask you, what does they refer to? They used to be more common, but now they're not as common. And the key here or the tip is, first of all, check if a lot of times they ask you, what does they refer to? And here a tip that you can use is that they and those refers to plurals, or they and then refer refers to usually humans. So once you know that and you have different options and one of the options is something plural, like traits and characteristics, you know that that's going to be it. Now this may not work. Sometimes you're going to have they and all the options are going to be plural. And now the tip or the strategy to use is to ask yourself who or what I would be the reference is performing the specific action. Who or what is performing the specific action? Let's move on to rhetorical purpose questions. These are questions where the reading passage asks you, why does the author mention this and that? Or what is the function of the of the author mentioning this? And here the answer usually lies if you look at the passage and you look at the previous sentence. So in the rhetorical purpose questions, they're going to ask you, what does this sentence imply? And your strategy will be to look for the previous sentence because that will answer certain, they will give you certain clues, certain hidden clues. So for example, I recently took a mock test and one of the examples why one of the rhetorical purpose questions was why does the author mention Kennedy's proposal? And the sentence was something like this. One of the most common definitions of migration is Kennedy's proposal. And the sentence that was previous to that sentence was the forms of migration defer among species, which makes it complicated to define. So then we have the different options. We had number one and it was something to emphasize the behavior that defines migration. So here you can already see in both sentences, they never mentioned behavior and they're not trying to emphasize anything. So it never mentions behavior. That's when you know it's not behavior because the word is not even mentioned. Number two, to demonstrate the behavior of animals upon migration. Once again, behavior, the word behavior is not even mentioned. Then number three is to explain why the migration of animal is a difficult of animals is a difficult term to define. And I actually got confused and I thought the answer was this one. But if we look closely, we can see that an author would usually explain something by using sentences like "but" or "therefore". So if the author would be defining, there would have to be a sentence in the reading passage that says the reason why it's difficult to define this, this, and that is because x, y, and z. But in the reading passage, it never mentions the reason why it's difficult to define the term. So it never explained why it's difficult to define. So that's a trick that they always play. A tip that you can use is whenever you answer a question and you're not sure is to ask yourself, why is this answer correct? If it's not correct and it's usually it may be that you're not as confident as you may think and the answer may be your second option. And the option number four was to specify the definition of animal migration. And this was the correct answer because here it said that migration forms are hard to define. And Kennedy's proposal is one of the most common definitions. So it essentially just defined the definition of animal migration through Kennedy's proposal. It never said why it was difficult to define. So D would be the most relevant in this case. So just keep in mind that the answer is usually lie in the previous sentence and something that you can use as a clue is to check for transition words. If they use words like "but" however or something like that, it probably means that they're trying to contrast something and the purpose can usually be something like to emphasize something. To emphasize they may use transition words like in addition to that, particularly or if they want to contrast something, they'll say something like however in contrast or if they want to provide an example, they will use, for example, take the example of this. So we need to imply and see what is the function of this. And usually looking at the previous sentence can help you identify the answer of the rhetorical purpose questions. Let's move on to detail questions. And in detail questions you've got negative factual information questions and positive factual information. And in positive factual information, these are probably the most common type of questions. They ask you to state what is the right answer and the information is usually within the passage. The information is almost, it's not usually, it's actually always in the passage. Just keep in mind that they may use synonyms. So the strategy to find out the correct answer or this type of questions is to look for the keywords. Once they ask you what is true about paragraph four, just look for the different keywords of the, of the different answers and see does this, is this actually stated in the paragraph? Is this actually stated in the paragraph and you should be able to respond to it? Now we move on to the plug in sentences. And these are the type of questions where you have a sentence and you have to insert that in either a, b, c, or d. And one of the ways in which you can back yourself is to look at what's the first word. For example, I was reading an article or one of the reading passages that talked about agriculture, iron, and the band two people. And words like there and these are often together. So for example, here it says, the diffusion of agriculture and later of iron was accompanied by a great movement of people who may have carried this innovations. These people probably originated in eastern Nigeria. Their migration may have been set in motion by an increase, whatever. So here I can see the sentence, these people probably originated in eastern Nigeria, followed by their migration. And these towards there and these usually go together. But words like these and these, that doesn't really sound that bright. So the, the word that we had to insert was these people had a linguistic impact on the continent as well. But we tried to insert that these people probably originated in eastern Nigeria. These people had linguistic impact on the continent as well. It doesn't really sound right. It sounds kind of weird if we, if we think about it two times in a row, these. So we need to check and ask ourselves, does this make sense? And the way to usually get that right is to just try through trial and error. Try through trial and error and ask yourself, does this make sense? Like read the entire sentence and the previous sentence as well. Does this make sense and make guesses? Another tip that you can use to solve these type of questions is to use your logical mind and think. There are some words that use, there are some sentences that use words like in conclusion, therefore, for these reasons. And that usually implies that this type of question should be at the end. I mean, a sentence starting with in conclusion is not going to be in the beginning, nor the middle, in the middle of the sentence. So it's usually at the end. So just making these guesses, then maybe they start by describing a very general term. That's a sign that it may be in the introduction. And then another tip that you can use to solve these questions is to check that one of the sentences in within the passage that's already written will contain a word of the sentence that you need to insert. And that's a signal that they may go together. Like for example, one of the sentences that we had to insert was these people had a linguistic impact on the continent as well. And then one of the other sentences in the passage was they spoke a language. I can't read it because it's covered, but they basically talked about language. So now I can see, oh, that's one word and that's another word. And I actually was taking a test recently and it mentioned something about variability. And then the word mentioned, then the word was mentioned again. So then you know when two words are similar or they contain a similar word, that's a signal. Yep. That's when they're trying to go together and always ask yourself, does this make sense? Does this make sense? You're going to see that some sentences also don't make sense because they just jump from one topic to a completely different topic and they need a sentence to make sure to make sense. And that may be a sign that, oh, I need to insert this right here. So everything makes sense. Now move on to fill in a table of questions. And these questions are not as common, but you may have them. And here the strategy is simple. First of all, the first step towards filling out these or identifying or answering these questions is to eliminate the wrong answer. And the way to do that is to check whether the information is actually stated in the passage at all, or if it's just not not true at all, is that maybe because probably over two or three answers are going to be incorrect. So you can already rule them out and the rest will belong to these tables. So once you eliminate the wrong answers, you should be left with the five to, I don't know, maybe four, five to six sentences. And you will see now pay attention. You will see that within these four, five to six answers, you will have patterns. You will have that maybe all of these out of these or options to talk about the same topic and to others talk about a completely different topic. So for example, in one of the examples that I saw, one of them or actually three options talked about the protection of how animals protect each other or fish more specifically. And the two other options talked about how schooling enables fishing fishes to fish is no fish to swim. So here you can see that three options talk about protection and two other options talk about fishing. So they follow certain patterns. So they usually have a strong feature in common. And here's another tip. When you identify this pattern and say, oh, these three options talk about this topic and two options talk about this topic, you're going to see that the answers off the same table are usually all in the same paragraph. This means that the answers that talk about specific patterns are usually going to be all in one paragraph. And you usually find the clues when you look for the paragraph. So once you've identified the patterns, you can look for the table. So maybe the table asks you about hypothesis of fish and the other talk about the manners of fish. So you need to then look at the reading passage and see, okay, does this talk about hypothesis and which paragraph talks about manner and one paragraph will talk about hypothesis about either school or protection and another paragraph will talk about manners or we'll talk about manners about either school or protection. But the thing is first identify the patterns, the patterns that you have. Now I move on to sentence, sentence, simplification, sentence simplification questions. And the strategy here is to ask yourself which sentence expresses the same meaning as the one just highlighted, which sentence expresses the same meaning as the highlighted sentence. Now a mistake that a lot of people make out how used to make as well is that you start to look for the different sentence options. And that's a mistake because that's only going to waste your time. Much better tip to apply is to look to go straight into the highlighted sentence and its location in the reading passage. So that's the first step. Go to the highlighted sentence and take a look at the reading passage and now break it down, break it down into keywords and understand the meaning of that sentence. So instead of looking for all the different answer questions, go directly to the reading passage and break down the highlighted sentence. Break down the highlighted sentence. So here are the steps just for you to understand. First, go directly to the highlighted sentence. Two, figure out the main idea by breaking down the sentences into keywords. And only then after you have identified the main keywords and the main goal or the main purpose of that question, then you look for the possible answers. Now you will see that some sentences will contain some information, but not all. And these answers are usually incorrect. If they contain some information, but not all of them, they're usually assigned that they are incorrect. So the sentence needs to have all of the info or at least the main info. If they only talk about a detail, that's not important because it needs to contain all the most important information. And just keep in mind that these sentences might take you around one minute and 30 seconds and that's totally okay. So once again, the steps are one, go directly to the highlighted sentence. Number two, figure out the main meaning by breaking down the sentence into keywords. And number three, compare the answers with the original sentence. Now, I have an example here where you had to look for the example. Others suggest that cause the cause to be climate change. As many scientists believe that drying up on the Indus River caused the collapse of the Indus Forest civilization since it had no irrigation system for its crops and dependent on the seasonal moonsons for the water. So as you can see, that's a conundrum of words. That's that's a, you know, quite a lot of words. And here, you need to keep in mind that there will be sentences that have some information that's correct, but some information is not mentioned or there may be sentences that have some information that's correct, but another information is not correct. And it's these, these answers that are incorrect, that contain some information, but not others, then that's a sign that it's likely to be incorrect. So for example, the first option to this was based on the suggestions of some scientists, the collapse of the Indus Valley civilization was due to its heavy reliance on climate in the Indus River and the Indus River, as well as its poor irrigation system. Why is this incorrect? Because it never mentions that it had a poor irrigation system. So that's a very subtle change. In the thing, it never mentions that they actually have a poor irrigation system because they don't have one. It mentions that, and here it mentions that they have a poor irrigation system. That's incorrect because they don't have it. Then number three was some scientists proposed the drying up on the Indus River, sorry, to be the reason behind the decline of the Indus Valley civilization as it depended on seasonal moonsoons for watering the crops. That's correct, but they never mentioned about the irrigation system and they never mentioned that. So that's a sign that it may not be correct because it doesn't have all the information. And then number four, according to some people, climate change resulting in a lack of moonsoon and the drying up of the Indus River and the Indus River was one of the primary reasons behind the collapse of the Indus Valley civilization. So here, they never mentioned word irrigation. So it's probably incomplete. Now, keep in mind that even though some questions may ask you to have all the information, some passages may only ask you about what is the most essential information? What is the most essential information? They're not asking, for example, they're not asking for details. They're going to ask you about what's the most important information that they're trying to convey? Like, for example, usually I made a mistake recently in one of the reading passages because it talked about how one volcano was the biggest in the world and how it had a diameter of 50 meters and 20 meters. And then I was choosing between two options and one of the options was the volcano has a diameter of 20 something and 50 meters. And the other question that I was thinking it was possible would be this is one of the biggest volcanoes in the world. And I chose the second one because I thought it had the most details, but it was not conveying the most important information. The correct answer that was conveying the most important information was number one, because what they wanted to emphasize in the first place was that that was a huge volcano with huge diameter, lengths and diameter. I don't know. So this is just an overall rundown of the different types of questions in the reading section. I hope they are helpful and you nail the reading test. I mean, set that. That's all that I have for today. So I'm gonna wrap it up here. Hope you have a wonderful day and I'll talk to you soon.