The Strategy for the Vocabulary Question in TOEFL Reading

The Strategy for the Vocabulary Question in TOEFL Reading

Here in this article, we are going to be analyzing the vocabulary question in TOEFL Reading. Vocabulary question is quite common in the reading part of the TOEFL test. You should expect to come across this question in pretty much every passage in the reading part. This is a type of question where the students can easily gain time by answering the question quickly. We will first take a look at how to determine the vocabulary question and then we are going to be analyzing the strategy for the vocabulary question in TOEFL Reading.

How to Determine The Vocabulary Question in TOEFL Reading

Determining the vocabulary question in TOEFL is fairly easy. There will be a highlighted word in the question and you need to find another word that has the closest meaning. There is no other variety of this type of question where you might have a problem determining the vocabulary question. Let us now analyze an example question to clarify the question type.

Example For The Vocabulary Question In TOEFL Reading

Deserts, which occupy about a quarter of the Earth’s surface, have been growing at an alarming rate over the past few decades. The extension of desert-like conditions to previously non-existent areas is known as desertification. It is estimated that another quarter of the earth’s surface is threatened by this process.

The word “threatened” in the passage is closest in meaning to

  1. Restricted
  2. Endangered
  3. Prevented
  4. Rejected

This is a typical example of the vocabulary question in TOEFL Reading. Let us now analyze how to apply the strategy for this question.

The Strategy for The Vocabulary Question In TOEFL Reading

The strategy for the vocabulary question in TOEFL Reading is fairly easy and applicable. The most important factor in this question is knowing the dictionary meaning of the vocabulary. If you know the dictionary meaning of this word then you do not even have to check the word in the paragraph. You can directly choose the correct choice. However, if you don’t know the dictionary meaning of the word then you need to replace the word in the paragraph with each of the answer choices and check which choice fits. Your comprehension skills will be helpful here. You can also read both the sentence before and the sentence after to get more idea about the paragraph so that you can find out the correct meaning with ease.

  1. Check if you know the meaning of the word
  2. If you don’t know the dictionary meaning then plug it in the passage
  3. Try out all the answer choices until you find the correct one

Conclusion

The vocabulary question in the TOEFL Reading is pretty doable if the dictionary meaning is known. Otherwise, we need to check out all the answer choices in the paragraph until we find the correct meaning. The amount of time we need to spend on this question should be minimum so that we can use that time in the summary question. Try to memorize more vocabularies specific to TOEFL. It will not only help you with the vocabulary question but also it will help you to understand the passages better.

If you would like to get more information about the TOEFL Coaching program, please take a look at the following link: https://drlanguage.org/toefl-tutoring/

For more information in the reading part please check out the following link: https://www.ets.org/toefl/test-takers/ibt/about/content/

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