Understanding the 4 types of questions in Part 7 - Reading comprehension

Hope your preparation for the TOEIC is going well! In this blog post, I’m going to discuss what you need to do in part 7 of the test. You probably have to spend most of your time on this part. A series of passages are given to you to read, and you have to find information from those passages to answer the questions. This part is split into two sections: Single Passages, which are questions 153 to 180 and Double Passages, which are questions 181 to 200.

There are 48 questions in this part. But generally, there are four types of questions, which are

1.    Specific information: The answers to this type of questions are quite straightforward as they are directly mentioned in the text. For instance:

When will the opening ceremony take place?

2.    Vocabulary: You will be asked which word has a similar meaning to the word taken from the text. This type of questions seems easy if you know what the given word means, but it can be a tough question if you do not know that word. For example:

Which word has the closest meaning to “advent” in paragraph 2 line 4?

3.    Main idea / inference: This type of questions asks you what the passage is about, what the writer’s purpose is, what you infer from the passage, and so on. The answers may not be obviously stated. You have to skim the text and think what the text is mainly about. Skimming is a technique which involves quickly looking at a text to understand the main idea or topic of the text. Following are the points you should pay attention to:

·      Title and headings

·      First and last sentences of the first paragraph

·      Captions under the pictures, tables, graphs, etc.

·      Words frequently appearing throughout the text

4.    Negative information: Sometimes you may be asked what statement or information is “not true”, “not stated”, “not mentioned”, and not available”. These types of question are the most time-consuming as you need to check each given choice one by one and find which choice is not in concordance with the text.

Most test takers cannot finish the test in time because they spend too much on reading everything. Don’t be one of them! Here are 5 tips for finding information while saving valuable time:

1.    Scan the passage to see what kind of message it is. For example, it might advertisement, article, email, or letter. However, do not read the whole passage until you know what you are asked.

2.    Start reading the questions so that you know what kind of information you are required to answer.

3.    Underline keywords in the question and use them as clues to look for the information in the passage.

4.    When you see the keywords, stop and read the sentences.

5.    Compare what you read with the given choice. After getting the answer, mark it and move on to the next question.

I hope you found this information useful and as always make sure to read my other tips and strategies for the other parts of the test!