2016-11-28 TOEFL: reading types and test

Greg Malivuk
[email protected]
http://www.pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk - notes from all classes
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http://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-do-we-feel-nostalgia-clay-routledge
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Reading section: first section, 60 or 80 minutes (depending on whether you have 3 or 4 readings, which you have 20 minutes each to complete)
Question types (10):
- vocabulary (several for each passage)
- fact (several for each passage)
- negative fact (1-2 for each passage)
- reference (0-1 per passage)
- inference (1-2 per passage)
- paraphrase (usually 1)
- purpose (1 or 2)
- sentence insertion (always 1 after the other types of questions)
- summary (0 or 1 after the sentence insertion)
- categorization (1 or 0 after the sentence insertion)
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DELTA p. 433-435 - Identify the question types for each of these questions.
1 paraphrase (find the sentence that has the same information as the highlighted sentence)
2 vocabulary (find the word with the most similar meaning to a highlighted word in context)
3 vocabulary
4 inference (choose information that is implied by the passage but not stated directly)
5 negative fact (like a fact question, but with words like “NOT” or “EXCEPT”)
6 fact (find information that is true according to the passage)
7 vocabulary
8 fact
9 fact
10 vocabulary
11 fact
12 sentence insertion
13 summary (find the main-idea sentences that support the given topic sentence)
reference - identify which thing in the passage is referred to with a word such as “this” or “they”
purpose - identify why an author mentions a specific thing
categorization - identify the correct categories for several sentences (similar to a series of fact questions)
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Most questions should be answerable without reading the full passage first:
- vocabulary (you can read the surrounding sentences)
- fact (sometimes - you can skim for key words or numbers)
- negative fact (skim to eliminate incorrect answers)
- sentence insertion (you should usually be able to do this using transition signals and the coherence of just the given paragraph, without needing to know anything else)
- paraphrase (which sentence includes the same information as another sentence)
- reference (read surrounding sentences)
- inference (sometimes - if it’s just inference from one paragraph)
- purpose (sometimes - you can just read the single paragraph)
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For time management, you shouldn’t carefully read the whole passage before answering any questions
1 skim the passage to get an idea of what it’s about
2 read the questions (maybe answer the ones you can answer without reading the whole passage)
3 read the passage to look for specific answers to the remaining questions
(4 guess the answer to remaining questions before the time runs out)
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p. 434 question 12
- Notice it starts with “This”, so it’s not the first sentence in the paragraph, because it refers to something stated earlier.
- “This is because” means the inserted sentence explains the cause of the information in the previous sentence.
- The inserted sentence talks about “rotation period” and “orbital period”, and explains the reason for the information in the first sentence of the paragraph.
-> The correct answer is B.
(The rest of the paragraph talks about which parts of the moon we can see, which is not directly related to orbital and rotation periods, so the inserted sentence would interrupt the logical flow of the rest of the paragraph.)
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p. 435 question 13 - Which answer choices are minor details?
C - When people walked on the surface isn’t something that characterizes the moon.
F - The name for a specific moon phase doesn’t characterize the moon.
(B is also more specific than the other choices, so can probably be eliminated as well.)
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BREAK
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Reading Test (DELTA textbook test 2) - Take 20 minutes to answer the questions after each passage.
Answers explained on p. 608-609.