TOEFL Reading: How I Improved My Reading Score From 3 To 27

Hello, everyone! I’m Carrie. Welcome to my YouTube channel. Today on the video: TOEFL reading. How did I improve my reading score from 3 to 27? I took TOEFL in May this year, and I got a, 100 at my first time taking the test. I don't plan to take another one for a higher, score because it's good enough for the MBA program that I was applying to. Reading was so difficult for me at the beginning. I didn’t complete three passages at my first time taking a mock exam, so I got only 3 points in reading. But on the official exam, I ended up getting 27 points. That means we can improve our reading skills. in a short time. TOEFL reading is about long and difficult. academic passages. Each passage is followed by 10 multiple choice. questions. There are 54 minutes to complete 3 passages. On average, we have only 18 minutes for each, passage. Time is so tight! Sometimes, TOEFL adds one more passage for. testing the quality of new questions, so the whole testing time for reading becomes 72, minutes because there are 4 passages. But that added passage doesn’t even count for points. What? Are you kidding me? What’s worse, we don’t know which passage. is that extra one. So, we need to try our best to complete all, of them. On my test, I was unlucky to be given four, passages! Hope you won’t get that! At first, I took a mock exam of reading about 3 months before the actual test. TOEFL was new to me, so I only finished one, and a half passages in the 54 minutes. And I answered most of the questions wrong! I was pretty upset. But after I reflected on my reading, I found. my reading speed was so slow that I couldn’t finish all passages in the required time. Ohh! You again! This snail is very annoying. He showed up last time in my video and said. I was slow. Hey! Go away! I’m sorry. Let’s go back to the topic. This was the main reason that I got such a, low score. I realized I needed to beat the reading section, with strategies. After finishing 3 reading passages, I found they always ask us to figure out the meaning of a word or plug a sentence in the correct location. The patterns of these questions are very similar,, so I organized and arranged them into 7 types of reading questions. I named these questions in a simple way so that you can understand them more easily. If you haven’t watched my last video, go ahead and check it out. One of my subscribers left a comment asking.

me how to find out my weaknesses in reading. The key to this question is being familiar. with the reading question types. Whenever I finished the reading section, I checked which types of reading questions I always made mistakes on. After a few times of practice, we’ll realize, which types of questions are our weaknesses. For example, I often made mistakes on plug-in questions. Then we can figure out some strategies and, spend more time practicing on these types of questions. I ranked these 7 question types in five levels. They are ordered from the easiest to the hardest. Vocabulary questions, reference word questions,, and sentence questions are level-1, which are the easiest. These questions ask us to use context clues, to find the meaning or connection between words, phrases, or sentences. Details questions are level-2. They test our abilities to find detailed information fast. Inference questions are level-3. They are more difficult than details questions. because we need to make logical guesses and draw conclusions based on details in the passage. Plug-in questions are level-4. They ask us to understand the logical connection, between sentences in a whole paragraph. Of course, final questions are the most difficult, questions, which I consider level-5. They are the Final Boss! They are about summarizing or finding information based on the whole passage. These can take most of our time! I’ll share my specific strategies for each type of questions in future videos. Stay tuned! Before we move on, please share my videos, and subscribe to my channel. Don’t forget to hit the bell button. Let’s continue. Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention. It’s important to answer the reading questions, in the order TOEFL presents to you. That’s because TOEFL arranges the questions, in the same order as the information shown in the passages. Doing it this way will help you find information. more easily. Sometimes information from earlier questions, can be useful for questions that come later. So now you know reading questions are very important in TOEFL reading, especially TOEFL tells us where in the passage we can find an answer to a given question. That means we don’t need to read the entire. passage before answering the questions. Only check the reading title to see what the. passage is about. Then go straight to the first question. Some people suggest reading the first sentence. of each paragraph. Don’t waste time doing that. Some paragraphs are useless even for the final. questions. Go straight to the questions. Then figure out the question types for each. question. Should we read the answer choices before looking for answers in the passage? It depends. For some question types, we should check the

answer choices first, but for some we shouldn’t. Stay tuned! I’ll explain the different situations in, future videos. After doing the things I just mentioned, now go straight to the passage that TOEFL tells us Scan through the portion of the passage to find the correct answer. The answer is always in the guided paragraph. On average, we only have 1.8 minutes for each question, but don’t distribute the total time evenly to the questions. Remember, the easiest questions are at the, beginning. Do them fast and earn these easy points so. that you have more time for the hardest questions. Again, move quickly at the beginning and don’t. stop for a single word which can eat up your time. If you don’t know how to answer a question,, make an educated guess and move on. When practicing TOEFL reading, set a shorter. time to improve our scanning abilities and reading speed. I mentioned this point in my previous video:, six must do things about TOEFL. You can check it out later. It’ll be helpful for your preparation. When I practiced reading, although the actual. test allows 54 minutes, I always pushed myself to complete it within 44 minutes. I wanted to improve my reading speed in this. way. At first, I couldn’t finish it within 44, minutes. If I couldn’t finish it in time, I made, a guess and review those questions later. Remember we’re just practicing. Getting questions wrong won’t cost us anything. What you want first, is the speed! After practicing over and over, I found my. reading speed improved. I was able to finish the reading within 44 minutes. Oh! Just one more thing. Remember to keep practicing before the test. Because of Covid-19, I didn’t practice reading, for three weeks, so my reading speed dropped. After that, I practiced at least one reading, section every day. Remember every time when we practice, it’s, a good idea to do four passages without stopping. That’s because we’ll wanna get used to it if TOEFL does give us four passages instead of three. If TOEFL ends up giving us three only, then, it’s our lucky day! If we have more time, it’s always a good idea to read in English more to improve our comprehension and reading speed. I’m a big fan of reading. Leave me a comment if you wanna talk about, books. I’ll share my strategies for each reading, question type and explain how I prepared for them in future videos. Stay tuned! Please share my videos and subscribe to my. channel to help me make English learning available to everyone. Don’t forget to hit the bell button. Thank you for watching. See ya!.