Reading: Read an Academic Passage
Learn the academic vocabulary that carries argument and evidence in a TOEFL reading passage — the hedges, connectors and abstract nouns that tell you what the writer actually claims.
How to use these words: Answers turn on the writer's stance more often than on a fact. Words that qualify a claim — suggests, tends to, largely, whereas — are what separate the right option from a close one.
Frequently asked questions
What kind of passages appear?⌄
University-level academic texts. ETS calibrates their difficulty with TextEvaluator, reaching the upper end of its Flesch-Kincaid band, so expect dense noun phrases and abstract vocabulary.
Should I memorise subject-specific terms?⌄
No. The passage explains any specialist term it needs. What pays off is the cross-subject academic vocabulary that appears in every discipline.
More Reading vocabulary
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