Has anyone found TOEFL reading tips for high score that actually helped them move from a decent score to a really strong one? I keep searching for TOEFL reading tips for high score, but most advice feels super general like “read more” or “manage your time better,” and I need something more specific.
Right now I’m usually scoring around 24 or 25 in reading on practice sets. That’s not terrible, but I’m aiming higher and I feel like I’m missing something small but important. My main problem is weirdly not the passage overall. I can usually understand the general idea. I lose points on the questions that ask about sentence purpose, inference, and sometimes the summary ones at the end.
A pattern I noticed is that I start out focused, then halfway through the passage I get too careful and spend way too long checking details. Then I rush the last few questions and make dumb mistakes. If I try to go faster from the beginning, I worry I’ll miss something and my accuracy drops anyway.
So I wanted to ask people who got a high reading score, especially 28+:
- Did you read the whole passage first, or go straight to the questions?
- How did you handle inference questions without overthinking them?
- For vocabulary questions, did you rely mostly on context or memorize word lists too?
- What did you do for the summary/table type questions at the end?
- Did you annotate anything mentally or on scratch paper, or is that just a waste of time?
I also wonder if my issue is test strategy more than English level. When I review wrong answers, a lot of them are not because I completely misunderstood the text. It’s more like I picked an answer that was technically possible but not the best answer. That makes me think I’m not reading the question in the exact way TOEFL wants.
If anyone improved a lot in reading, I’d really love to know what changed. Like was it timing drills, certain question types, reviewing mistakes in a specific way, or just doing a lot more practice passages?
One more thing: if you had a method for reviewing reading mistakes, please share it. I feel like I just check the correct answer, say “okay that makes sense,” and then repeat the same mistake two days later. I probably need a better system.
I’d appreciate any specific routines, not just general motivation. Even small habits would help, like how long you spent per passage or how you trained yourself not to panic when two answer choices looked almost the same.
Thanks in advance. Reading is the section that feels the most fixable for me, which is why it’s extra frustrating.