Academic passage 2 — the railways and the clock
A short academic passage from the social-science end of the range, written for this exercise, with ten questions of the kinds the reading section of the TOEFL iBT® test sets on academic text — and the passage printed beside every one of them.
The passage explains why every town once kept its own solar time, why slow travel made the differences harmless, and why railway timetables turned them into a safety problem that companies solved by adopting a single time. It then does something the reading section likes to test: it closes by rejecting the obvious explanation. It is tempting to say technology imposed uniformity; the passage argues the sequence runs the other way, that the railways made disagreement expensive and institutions then converged because that was cheaper than living with the cost.
That closing move is what two of the ten questions are built on, and it is the kind of item that separates candidates who read for information from candidates who read for argument. The other items cover main purpose, two specific details, an inference, what a reference phrase points back to, two vocabulary-in-context items, the order in which two changes happened, and one question asking which statement the passage does NOT support.
No historical knowledge is needed. The passage names no date, no country and no company, precisely so that nothing outside it can help or mislead you.
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 both narrates and argues
- Find the reason a passage actually gives, rather than a reason that is true in the world
- Infer a consequence the text implies without stating it outright
- Recognize when a writer is rejecting an explanation and say what they put in its place
- Work out what a reference phrase such as "that slack" points back to
- Infer the meaning of an academic word from the sentence around it
- Establish the order in which two changes happened when a passage states it only once
- Answer a NOT-supported question by locating the one option the text contradicts
"It is tempting to describe this as technology imposing uniformity. The sequence is better read the other way round: the railways created a situation in which disagreement about the time had a cost, and institutions then converged on a standard because the cost was easier to remove than to bear." — from the passage, written for this exercise.
Sample question
Passage: "Before the railways, a town kept its own time. Noon was when the sun stood highest over that town, so a clock in one city might differ by several minutes from a clock a hundred miles to the west, and nobody was inconvenienced by it. A coach took long enough that the discrepancy was absorbed by the journey. The railway removed that slack. A timetable that promised a departure at ten o'clock had to mean the same ten o'clock at both ends of the line, and a train running on one clock towards a train running on another was a danger rather than an untidiness. Railway companies therefore adopted a single time along their routes, usually the time of the capital, and printed it in their timetables. Public clocks followed, sometimes after local resistance, and the legal definition of time followed the public clocks rather than leading them. It is tempting to describe this as technology imposing uniformity. The sequence is better read the other way round: the railways created a situation in which disagreement about the time had a cost, and institutions then converged on a standard because the cost was easier to remove than to bear." What is the main purpose of this passage?
- Criticizing the public for resisting the introduction of a standard time.
- Explaining how the railways made local time unworkable and how a standard was adopted, and correcting a simple account of why it happened.
- Arguing that the railways were the most important technology of their century.
- Describing how noon was determined in a town before clocks were synchronized.
See the answer
Explaining how the railways made local time unworkable and how a standard was adopted, and correcting a simple account of why it happened.
The passage explains the transition to standardized time and explicitly challenges the idea that technology simply imposed uniformity, suggesting instead that institutions converged due to costs. The other options focus on minor details or unsupported claims.