Academic passage 4 — how honeybees report a food source
One short academic passage from the life sciences, written for this exercise, with eleven questions of the kinds the reading section of the TOEFL iBT® test sets on academic text. The passage is printed in full beside every question, because on the test the text stays on screen while you answer.
The passage explains how a honeybee that has found flowers tells the rest of the hive where they are: the angle of her straight "waggle run" on the upright comb gives the direction of the food in relation to the sun, the length of the run gives the distance, and the scent on her body helps the other bees pick out the right patch. It then qualifies all of this: recruits often need several flights, so the dance points to an area rather than an exact spot. No knowledge of biology is needed or rewarded; every answer is on the page.
Where the other passages in this set argue a case, this one describes a process, so several questions test whether you can follow a chain of steps and a code. The eleven items cover the main purpose, two specific details (what the angle shows, what signals distance), the order of the movements in the dance, an inference about a run pointing straight down, what "which" refers to, one word in context, why the writer mentions the moving sun, how the dance and the scent work together, one question asking which statement the passage does NOT support, and what the writer means by calling the system "less precise than its elegance suggests."
The wrong options are built the way real ones are: the direction and distance signals swapped, a qualification turned into a total failure, and statements that sound reasonable but are never made. Each explanation quotes the words that settle the item and says why the other options fail.
At about 200 words, the passage sits at the upper end of the length the current specification gives for reading texts. On the test, a passage like this carries fewer questions than this practice set gives you; the extra items let you practice every question type on one text.
The flashcards collect words and phrases that actually occur in the passage, such as "alternately," "duration," "recruit" and "elegance," each with its meaning in this context.
This passage and these questions are written by Zestly. No official test material is reproduced, and facts about the test format are paraphrased from the published specification rather than copied from it.
TOEFL iBT® is a registered trademark of ETS. This product is not endorsed or approved by ETS.
- Identify the main purpose of a passage that describes a process and then qualifies it
- Locate which signal in a described system carries which piece of information
- Follow the order of steps in a process described in a single sentence
- Draw an inference by extending a rule the passage states (upward means toward the sun)
- Work out what a relative pronoun such as "which" refers back to
- Infer the meaning of a word such as "alternately" from its sentence
- Explain why a writer includes a particular causal detail
- Answer a NOT-supported question by confirming the three statements the passage makes
Practice material written by Zestly, based on the ETS description of the Read an Academic Passage task in the TOEFL iBT test specification (2026 update).
Sample question
Passage: "A honeybee that finds a rich patch of flowers does not keep the discovery to herself. Back in the dark hive, she performs a dance on the vertical surface of the comb. She makes a short straight run while shaking her abdomen from side to side, loops back to her starting point, and repeats the run, turning alternately left and right at the end of each one. This straight segment, the waggle run, carries the message. Its angle from straight up on the comb matches the angle between the food and the sun as seen from the hive, so a run pointing directly upward means 'fly toward the sun.' Its duration reports distance: the longer the waggle, the farther away the flowers. Bees crowding around the dancer also pick up the scent of the flowers on her body, which helps them recognize the right patch once they arrive. Because the sun moves across the sky, a dancer who performs for a long time gradually shifts her angle to keep the direction accurate. The system is less precise than its elegance suggests. Many recruits need several flights before they find the patch, which implies that the dance directs them to an area rather than to a single point." What is the main purpose of this passage?
- To argue that bees rely more on the scent of flowers than on the dance to find food.
- To describe how bees decide which flowers are worth visiting.
- To explain how a honeybee's dance tells other bees where food is, and to note that the information it gives is approximate.
- To show that the waggle dance leads other bees to the exact position of a flower.
See the answer
To explain how a honeybee's dance tells other bees where food is, and to note that the information it gives is approximate.
The passage explains how the waggle run encodes direction and distance and then closes by saying the system is "less precise than its elegance suggests", because the dance points to "an area rather than to a single point." That rules out the claim that the dance leads to an exact position, which the last sentence contradicts. Scent is presented as a help once the bees arrive, never as more important than the dance. How bees decide which flowers are worth visiting is not discussed at all.