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.

Reading: Read an Academic Passage

Reading: Read an Academic Passage is part of the Reading section of the TOEFL Essentials test. You get 5 questions and 5 minutes. It is scored by the number of correct answers.

Questions: 5
Time: 5 minutes
Prompts here: 26 published

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.

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.

TOEFL Essentials · Reading

Read an Academic Passage — Urban heat islands

One of 26 published prompts · free, no account

Cities are consistently warmer than the countryside surrounding them, a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect. The difference is not trivial: on a still summer night a large city may be five to seven degrees Celsius warmer than nearby farmland. Two mechanisms account for most of the gap. First, the materials cities are built from — asphalt, brick, concrete — absorb solar radiation during the day and release it slowly after sunset, whereas vegetation and soil shed heat far more quickly. Second, cities remove the water that would otherwise cool them. Rain that falls on a field evaporates from leaves and soil, and evaporation consumes energy; rain that falls on a city is channelled into drains and gone within minutes. The consequences reach well beyond discomfort. Heat islands raise demand for air conditioning, which in turn releases more waste heat into the street, and the cycle reinforces itself. They also worsen air quality, since the chemical reactions that produce ground-level ozone accelerate as temperatures rise. Mitigation efforts have focused on reversing the two mechanisms directly: reflective roofing that returns sunlight rather than storing it, and planting that restores evaporative cooling. Trials in several cities suggest that reflective surfaces act faster, but that tree cover produces the larger effect once the canopy matures — a difference that matters when a city must choose where to spend a limited budget.

Questions & answer key5 questions

Reading is scored by the number of correct answers, so there is no rubric to satisfy — only the text in front of you. Every question below has its answer and an explanation of why the other options fail.

1According to the passage, why does a field stay cooler than a street after rain?
1. AFields receive less rainfall than cities do.
2. ✓Water on a field evaporates, and evaporation uses energy.
3. CSoil reflects more sunlight than asphalt.
4. DDrains in cities carry warm water into the ground.
Answer
B
The passage states that rain on a field evaporates from leaves and soil, and that evaporation consumes energy, while city rainwater is drained away.
2The word "shed" in the first paragraph is closest in meaning to
1. ✓release
2. Babsorb
3. Creflect
4. Dstore
Answer
A
It is contrasted with materials that "release it slowly" — vegetation sheds, that is releases, heat quickly.
3Why does the author describe air conditioning as part of a cycle?
1. AIt is used more often in rural areas than in cities.
2. ✓It cools buildings but expels heat outdoors, raising demand further.
3. CIt produces ground-level ozone directly.
4. DIt becomes less efficient as the canopy matures.
Answer
B
The passage says demand for air conditioning releases more waste heat into the street, and that the cycle reinforces itself.
4What can be inferred about a city choosing between reflective roofs and tree planting?
1. AReflective roofs are always the better investment.
2. BTrees are cheaper to install than reflective roofing.
3. ✓The better choice depends partly on how soon results are needed.
4. DNeither approach addresses the causes described earlier.
Answer
C
Reflective surfaces "act faster" while tree cover gives the larger effect "once the canopy matures" — so timing distinguishes them.
5What is the main purpose of the second paragraph?
1. ATo explain why heat islands form.
2. BTo argue that heat islands cannot be reduced.
3. ✓To describe the effects of heat islands and the responses to them.
4. DTo compare city temperatures in different countries.
Answer
C
The first paragraph explains causes; the second moves to consequences and then to mitigation.

Now do it yourself and find out where you land

You can check right and wrong on this page. What a page cannot do is tell you which question types you keep losing, under real timing.

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Questions people ask

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.

The other 25 Academic Passage prompts6 free

·Read an Academic Passage — Birdsong dialectsfree
·Read an Academic Passage — The Convergent Evolution of Flight
·Read an Academic Passage — Plant Communication Through Chemical Signals
·Read an Academic Passage — Camouflage Strategies in Cephalopods
·Read an Academic Passage — The Puzzle of Contagious Yawning
·Read an Academic Passage — Magnetoreception in Migratory Birds
·Read an Academic Passage — The Science of Déjà Vu
·Read an Academic Passage — The Puzzle of Emotional Tears
·Read an Academic Passage — The Function of Goosebumps
·Read an Academic Passage — Circadian Rhythms and the Body's Internal Clock
·Read an Academic Passage — Synesthesia: When Senses Blend
·Read an Academic Passage — Epigenetics and the Limits of Genetic Determinism
·Read an Academic Passage — Quorum Sensing: How Bacteria Coordinate Behavior
·Read an Academic Passage — The Tragedy of the Commons and the Limits of Self-Interest
·Read an Academic Passage — Survivorship Bias and the Illusion of a Clear Pattern
·Read an Academic Passage — The Bystander Effect and the Diffusion of Responsibility
·Read an Academic Passage — The Availability Heuristic and Distorted Risk Perception
·Read an Academic Passage — The Anchoring Effect and the Persistence of First Numbers
·Read an Academic Passage — The Halo Effect and the Bias of First Impressions
·Read an Academic Passage — The Barnum Effect and the Illusion of Personal Accuracy
·Read an Academic Passage — The Spotlight Effect and the Overestimation of Social Attention
·Read an Academic Passage — Why we sleep in cyclesfree
·Read an Academic Passage — Coral bleachingfree
·Read an Academic Passage — City bike-sharingfree
·Read an Academic Passage — The placebo effectfree

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