What makes this task different from the other reading tasks?

It is the one task where spelling counts. ETS targets it at roughly B1 to C1 and above, and asks you to reconstruct the word from missing letters rather than recognise it.

How should I study for it?

Practise producing each word, not just recognising it: its exact spelling, its part of speech, and the other members of its word family.

Reading: Complete the Words

Reading: Complete the Words is part of the Reading section of the TOEFL Essentials test. You get 10 questions and 3 minutes. It is scored by the number of correct answers.

Questions: 10
Time: 3 minutes
Prompts here: 26 published

Train the spelling and word-form knowledge this task actually tests: you see part of a word inside an academic paragraph and must complete it correctly.

ETS describes this task as testing word-ordering rules, lexical knowledge and reading comprehension together. Knowing a word's meaning is not enough — you have to be able to spell it and pick the right form from a partial cue.

Questions & answer key10 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.

1Gap 1 in the reply
Answer
rm
2Gap 2 in the reply
Answer
ad
3Gap 3 in the reply
Answer
om
4Gap 4 in the reply
Answer
in
5Gap 5 in the reply
Answer
erous
6Gap 6 in the reply
Answer
at
7Gap 7 in the reply
Answer
dy
8Gap 8 in the reply
Answer
rm
9Gap 9 in the reply
Answer
dent
10Gap 10 in the reply
Answer
ing

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 makes this task different from the other reading tasks?: It is the one task where spelling counts. ETS targets it at roughly B1 to C1 and above, and asks you to reconstruct the word from missing letters rather than recognise it.
How should I study for it?: Practise producing each word, not just recognising it: its exact spelling, its part of speech, and the other members of its word family.

The other 25 Complete the Words prompts6 free

·Complete the Words — Test 1 Module 1
·Complete the Words — Test 2 Module 1
·Complete the Words — Test 3 Module 1
·Complete the Words — Test 4 Module 1
·Complete the Words — Test 5 Module 1
·Complete the Words — Test 6 Module 1
·Complete the Words — Test 7 Module 1
·Complete the Words — Test 8 Module 1
·Complete the Words — Test 9 Module 1
·Complete the Words — Test 10 Module 1
·Complete the Words — Recycling glassfree
·Complete the Words — Test 1 Module 2
·Complete the Words — Test 2 Module 2
·Complete the Words — Test 3 Module 2
·Complete the Words — Test 4 Module 2
·Complete the Words — Test 5 Module 2
·Complete the Words — Test 6 Module 2
·Complete the Words — Test 7 Module 2
·Complete the Words — Test 8 Module 2
·Complete the Words — Test 9 Module 2
·Complete the Words — Test 10 Module 2
·Complete the Words — Reading the tidefree
·Complete the Words — How honeybees share directionsfree
·Complete the Words — Recycling paperfree
·Complete the Words — Glacier mass balancefree

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