Timed mini-set — three medium-length academic passages

Three short academic passages, written for this exercise, each with five questions of the kinds the reading section of the TOEFL iBT® test sets on academic text. Each passage is printed in full beside each of its questions, as the test keeps the text on screen while you answer.

The other materials in this category give you one longer passage and ten or eleven questions on it. This one is closer to the rhythm of the test: short texts of about 150 to 170 words, a handful of questions each, then on to the next. The passages sit at a medium level of difficulty, roughly the band the current specification describes as grade 10 to 11 reading, where the harder passages elsewhere in this category sit higher. The reading section is adaptive, so which band you meet depends on how the first stage goes; practicing both levels is the sensible preparation.

The three passages cover an earth and urban science topic (why cities are warmer than the countryside, and what reduces the effect), a life-science process (how warm water leads corals to lose the algae that feed them, and why a bleached coral is not yet dead), and a short piece of behavioral economics (how adding a coffee size that few people buy can raise sales of another). No subject knowledge is needed or rewarded; every answer is on the page.

Across the fifteen items you meet main idea and main purpose, stated details, cause and effect, inference, vocabulary in context and the writer's purpose in mentioning a point. Each explanation quotes the words that settle the item and says why the other options fail.

A suggested pace: give yourself about four minutes for each passage and its five questions, and work the three sets in one sitting of about twelve minutes. This is a practice target, not a figure from the test: the specification gives timing for the reading section as a whole, not per passage, and it does not say how many questions each academic passage carries.

The flashcards collect words from the three passages, such as "absorb," "evaporate," "expel," "transparent," "merits" and "decoy," each with its meaning in context.

These passages and 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.

• Read a medium-difficulty academic passage and answer five questions on it at a steady pace
• Identify the main idea of a short passage that explains causes and remedies
• Follow a cause-and-effect chain through a short scientific text
• Keep track of what each side of a two-way exchange gives and receives
• Draw a modest inference and reject one that overstates the text
• Infer the meaning of a word from how the sentence uses it
• Explain why a writer mentions an earlier assumption

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).