I bombed my first reading section because I was trying to understand every single word. The biggest shift for me, and honestly the best TOEFL reading tips for a high score I found, was reading for structure instead of details first.
What helped most:
- Read the first sentence of each paragraph carefully so you know the main idea fast.
- Do the easy factual questions first and leave vocab/summary ones for later.
- Stop rereading whole paragraphs — go back to 3-4 lines around the keyword only.
- Watch for trap answers: if one word makes it too extreme, it is usually wrong.
- Practice with a timer even when reviewing. My score improved when timing stopped feeling scary.
I also kept a tiny mistake log like missed because I assumed or ran out of time on last passage. That showed patterns way faster than just doing more sets.