How do I prepare for TOEFL Read in Daily Life and Read an Academic Passage?

What do Read in Daily Life and Read an Academic Passage ask?

In Read in Daily Life you read a short nonacademic text of the kind you meet in daily life, and in Read an Academic Passage a short explanatory text of the kind read in secondary and higher education, and then answer multiple-choice questions (Test Overview, pages 6 and 7). The numbers are in the table below. We also list the numbers from ETS "TOEFL iBT Test: 2026 Update Test Blueprint and Specifications Document" (no publication date, checked 2026-10-30; hereafter the Specifications Document).

The examples ETS gives of Read in Daily Life texts are advertisements, news articles, forms, bills, receipts, posters, signs and notices, menus, social media posts or web pages, schedules, emails, and text message chains (Test Overview, page 6). The Specifications Document lists this task as sets of 2 questions and sets of 3 questions (page 8). Page 6 of the Test Overview lists six measured abilities.

• Understanding information in nonlinear text (text that does not run in sentences, such as tables and lists)
• Finding the main purpose of a text
• Understanding informal language that includes idiomatic expressions
• Making inferences based on the text
• Understanding telegraphic language (short phrases with words left out)
• Skimming and scanning

Read an Academic Passage draws its topics from history, art and music, business and economics, life science, physical science, and social science, and is written so that it can be answered without background knowledge (Test Overview, page 7). The 5 questions can ask about factual information, the meaning of a word in context, inference, relations between ideas, and the purpose of all or part of the passage (same page). The measured abilities listed on the same page are main ideas and important details, the grammatical structures of academic text, inferring meaning that is not stated, academic vocabulary and figurative and idiomatic language, relations between sentences and paragraphs, and the rhetorical structure of a text (how the text is organized).

In both tasks, the text stays on the screen while you answer the questions (Specifications Document, page 9). The ETS "Reading Section" page says all the information needed to answer is in the text (ets.org, no publication date, checked 2026-10-30).

Where do the two tasks appear in the Reading adaptive modules?

Counting scored items, the first module has 5 items from each of the two tasks, and the second module adds 5 Read in Daily Life items if it is the lower module, or 5 Read an Academic Passage items if it is the upper module. These numbers come from Table 1 on page 29 of ETS "TOEFL iBT Technical Manual" (ETS Research Report RR-25-12, 2025-10, checked 2026-10-30; hereafter the Technical Manual).

Reading is two-stage adaptive (the difficulty of the second module depends on your answers in the first module) (Specifications Document, page 3, note 5). Page 28 of the Technical Manual says the first module (Router) is built from medium-difficulty tasks (CEFR B1 or B2), and that doing well on the first module makes the second module harder.

• The table counts scored items only. Page 28 of the Technical Manual says the Reading modules can include 15 unscored items, and the note below the table on page 29 says each module may have additional unscored items. Adding 15 to the 35 scored items on each path matches the 50 Reading questions on page 4 of the Test Overview; this calculation is our own.
• Each item is scored 1 point if correct and 0 points if wrong, by machine scoring against a set answer key (Specifications Document, page 10 and page 3, note 4; Technical Manual, page 34).
• The Reading score (1 to 6 band) is set through equating (a statistical procedure that puts scores from test forms of different difficulty on the same scale), taking into account both the number of items answered correctly in the two modules and the difficulty of the module received (Technical Manual, pages 28 and 34). How the upper module relates to your score is covered in "TOEFL adaptive testing: can your score be low after an upper module?".
• Reading as a whole takes about 30 minutes (Test Overview, page 4). The table on page 2 of the Specifications Document lists 18 to 21 minutes for the first module and 9 minutes for the second module.

We read this table to mean that you should practice both tasks whichever second module you get, because the first module has 5 items from each task. The task numbers for the other sections are in a table in the Unlock Prep (unlockprep.com) guide "The 2026 TOEFL iBT four sections: what ETS has and has not disclosed".

Where do you lose points on these two tasks?

In our view, on Read in Daily Life you lose points on options that miss a one-line condition attached to the text (an asterisk or an exception), and on Read an Academic Passage on options that widen something the passage limits. What ETS has disclosed goes only as far as the measured abilities that this view rests on (the "What do they ask?" section above). Page 32 of the Technical Manual says that when multiple-choice items are reviewed, reviewers check that there is only one correct answer and that the wrong options are plausible and attractive.

The four sets below are passages and questions we wrote for illustration. They are not real test questions, and we made them shorter than the real tasks. We made the wrong options attractive by reusing words from the passage.

Set 1: Read in Daily Life (schedule)

Campus Shuttle: Winter Hours
Mon-Fri   7 a.m.-10 p.m. (every 20 min)
Sat       9 a.m.-6 p.m. (every 40 min)
Sun       No service
* Mon, Jan. 15 (holiday): Saturday hours

Question: A student wants to catch the shuttle at 8 a.m. on Monday, January 15. What will the student find?

(A) A shuttle every 20 minutes (B) No shuttle until 9 a.m. (C) No shuttle at all that day (D) A shuttle every 40 minutes from 7 a.m.

• Wrong option: (A). This answer reads only the Monday line and skips the asterisk line.
• Right option: (B). The asterisk line changes that day to Saturday hours, and Saturday service starts at 9 a.m.
• Why: We built it to test both "understanding information in nonlinear text" and "scanning" from page 6 of the Test Overview. In our view, in table-style texts an asterisk or exception line changes the answer.

Set 2: Read in Daily Life (text messages)

Mia: Still on for the study group tonight?
Jordan: Ugh, something came up at work. Rain check?
Mia: No worries! Same time next week?

Question: Why does Jordan write "Rain check?"

(A) To ask whether it will rain tonight (B) To suggest meeting at a later time (C) To ask Mia to check the weather (D) To say that the study group is canceled for good

• Wrong option: (A). This answer reads rain as weather.
• Right option: (B). Rain check is an idiom for putting a plan off until later, and Mia's reply asking about the same time next week supports that meaning.
• Why: We built it around "understanding informal language that includes idiomatic expressions" and "finding the main purpose of a text" from page 6 of the Test Overview. (D) reads the plan as canceled for good, which does not fit the last line asking about next week.

Sets 3 and 4: Read an Academic Passage (same passage)

Cities are often warmer than the surrounding countryside, a pattern known as the urban heat island. Dark roofs and roads absorb sunlight during the day and release that heat slowly at night. One common response is to paint roofs white so that they reflect more sunlight. The benefit, however, depends on the climate. In places with long, cold winters, a white roof can raise heating costs, because the building gains less warmth from the sun. As a result, a solution that saves energy in one city may waste it in another.

Set 3 question: Why does the author mention places with long, cold winters?

(A) To show that white roofs stop reflecting sunlight in winter (B) To give a case in which white roofs may not save energy (C) To explain why heat islands are stronger in cold regions (D) To argue that cities should stop painting roofs white

• Wrong option: (D). This answer widens what follows however into the claim "cities should stop using white roofs."
• Right option: (B). It is an example supporting the sentence right before it, "The benefit, however, depends on the climate", and the last sentence also narrows the scope to "it may differ from city to city" (may).
• Why: We built it to test "relations between ideas" and "the purpose of part of a passage" from page 7 of the Test Overview. In our view, when an option uses stronger words than the passage (stop, always), first compare it with the passage's qualifiers (depends, may).

Set 4 question: The word "release" in the passage is closest in meaning to

(A) publish (B) give off (C) store (D) announce

• Wrong option: (A). This answer picks the dictionary sense of release that means "put out (a book or record)."
• Right option: (B). It pairs with absorb earlier in the passage: the heat taken in during the day is given off at night.
• Why: We built it to test "the meaning of a word in context" from page 7 of the Test Overview. In our view, when choosing a word meaning, look first at its partner word in the same passage (here, absorb).

What has ETS not disclosed?

ETS has disclosed the text length, number of questions, measured abilities and number of scored items per module for the two tasks, but we did not find the time given to each task or the number of texts in a module in the ETS documents we checked.

What we did not find in ETS documents (Test Overview pages 1 to 28, Specifications Document pages 1 to 18, Technical Manual pages 12 to 16, 28 to 29, 31 to 34 and 41 plus a full-text word search, the Information Bulletin, and the ets.org "TOEFL iBT Test Content" and "Reading Section" pages, checked 2026-10-30)

• A separate time for Read in Daily Life and for Read an Academic Passage (only module times are given; Specifications Document, page 2)
• How many texts appear in one module (only the number of scored items is given; Technical Manual, page 29, Table 1)
• Which task and which module the unscored items appear in (only their number is given; Technical Manual, page 28)
• How many questions of each type (fact, vocabulary, inference, relation, purpose) appear (it says only that these "can" be asked; Test Overview, page 7)
• How many questions you must answer correctly in the first module to move to the upper module
• The numbers in the conversion table that turns raw scores into the 1 to 6 bands. The method is disclosed: page 34 of the Technical Manual says a conversion table is made for each test form through IRT (item response theory) equating, but it does not print the table itself.

Three things differ across the sources.

Two of the three documents put the raw score at 35. This article does not calculate bands from raw scores. Adding the Specifications Document numbers gives 27 to 30 minutes; this addition is our own calculation.

In what order should I practice the two tasks?

We suggest alternating the two tasks within the same week and, for each missed question, noting which of the measured abilities in the "What do they ask?" section above you missed. This is because the first module includes both tasks (Technical Manual, page 29, Table 1). Everything below is our view.

1. For Read in Daily Life, list the text types on page 6 of the Test Overview and do one text of each type to fill in the types you have not covered. In texts that are not sentences, such as schedules and receipts, mark the asterisk and date lines first.
2. For Read an Academic Passage, sort your wrong answers into the five types on page 7 of the Test Overview (factual information, word meaning in context, inference, relations between ideas, purpose) and count them. If wrong answers cluster in one type, gather questions of that type only and do them again.
3. Because the text stays on the screen while you answer (Specifications Document, page 9), practice reading without trying to memorize everything the first time, then going back to the supporting sentence to check after you read each question.
4. Time per task has not been disclosed, so time yourself by module (first module 18 to 21 minutes, second module 9 minutes; Specifications Document, page 2). That is why we practice with a full module that includes Complete the Words.
5. Academic passages are written to be answered without background knowledge (Test Overview, page 7), so even in passages from unfamiliar fields, look for the evidence for the answer in sentences within the passage.