TOEFL 2026 Reading – Complete the Words, Read in Daily Life, and Academic Passage

You’ve spent months practicing, reading 700-word academic passages about mitochondria, the industrial revolution, and the migration of Arctic birds. You took notes in the margins, highlighted authors’ theses, and eliminated traps in “insert sentence” and “prose summary” questions. You were ready for the old TOEFL Reading, and then ETS flipped the table. The new TOEFL 2026 doesn’t have 700-word passages. It doesn’t have sentence insertion questions. It doesn’t have summaries. Instead, it has something no one expected: filling in missing letters in words, reading restaurant menus, and emails from roommates.

Sounds like a joke? It’s not a joke – it’s the most radical change in the history of the TOEFL exam. The TOEFL 2026 Reading section now consists of three completely new task types: Complete the Words (filling in missing letters in academic words), Read in Daily Life (reading short, practical texts from everyday life), and Read an Academic Passage (reading an academic passage, but only 200 words long, not 700). The entire section lasts up to 27 minutes and is adaptive, meaning the difficulty level changes based on your answers. In this guide, we break down each task type – with strategies, examples, and a preparation plan designed specifically for test-takers.

Complete the Words – What it is and How to Practice

If someone had told you a year ago that you’d be filling in missing letters in words on the TOEFL exam, you’d have thought it was a joke or a test for children. But Complete the Words is one of the most innovative tasks in the new TOEFL 2026, and – let’s be honest, it’s harder than it looks at first glance.

How does it work in practice? You get an academic paragraph where 10 words have missing letters. Not entire words are missing – only fragments. For example, you see “photo_____sis” and you have to type the missing letters to get “photosynthesis.” Or “hypo_____cal,” which gives “hypothetical.” Or “infra_____ure” – “infrastructure.” The task tests three things simultaneously: your knowledge of academic vocabulary, your ability to spell correctly, and your skill in inferring from context.

Why did ETS add this type of task? Because in the real academic world, you not only need to understand words but also to spell them correctly in essays, notes, and emails to professors. Complete the Words simulates a situation where you encounter a partially known word and must reconstruct it based on context and your morphological knowledge.

What exactly does this task expect from you?

Each Complete the Words set is a single academic paragraph – typically 100–150 words, with exactly 10 gaps. The gaps are not random: ETS deliberately selects words from the Academic Word List (AWL) and from specialized scientific vocabulary. You won’t find simple words like “table” or “happy” here – you’ll encounter “meth_____ogy” (methodology), “phen_____non” (phenomenon), “sust_____ble” (sustainable).

Interestingly, it’s not always the same part of the word that’s missing. Sometimes the middle part is missing (“con_____tion,” contribution? constitution? contradiction?), and the sentence context helps you decide which word fits. Sometimes the ending is missing (“signifi_____” – significance? significant? significantly?), and the grammatical form of the sentence suggests the correct answer. This is why Complete the Words simultaneously tests vocabulary, grammar, and reading comprehension.

Strategies for Test-Takers

Non-native English speakers often face specific challenges with this task type. Many learn English primarily through listening and speaking; you might know the word “environment” and be able to say it, but can you spell it correctly without hesitation? “Envir_____ent” – how many test-takers would instinctively write “o” instead of mentally checking if it’s “enviroment” or “environment”? (Correct: environment, with an “n” before “m.”)

Here are proven strategies that work:

1. Learn prefixes and suffixes. This is your superpower in Complete the Words. If you know common prefixes (pre-, post-, anti-, inter-, trans-, sub-, super-, micro-, macro-) and suffixes (-tion, -ment, -ness, -ity, -able, -ible, -ous, -ive, -al, -ful), you can reconstruct most academic words even with significant gaps. Prefix + root + suffix = a pattern that repeats. On prepclass.io, you’ll find dedicated exercises on English morphology that will prepare you specifically for these types of tasks.

2. Read the context before filling in the gaps. Don’t jump to the first gap immediately. Read the entire paragraph once, quickly, to grasp the topic and context. Then return to the gaps. The sentence context often eliminates ambiguity: if the sentence is about cell biology, “photo_____sis” is almost certainly “photosynthesis,” not “photoanalysis.”

3. Practice dictation. It sounds old-fashioned, but academic dictations are the best form of preparation for Complete the Words. Listen to lectures on YouTube (channels like CrashCourse, TED-Ed, Khan Academy), pause the video after each sentence, and write down key terms. Then check your spelling. This builds automaticity – on exam day, you won’t hesitate over “nece_____ry” (necessary) because your hand will type it automatically.

4. Create flashcards for challenging words. Test-takers often confuse spelling in words with double letters (accommodation, recommend, occurrence, embarrassment), silent letters (psychology, pneumonia, rhythm), and words with “ie/ei” (receive, believe, achieve). Make a flashcard for every word you misspell; Anki or Quizlet work great.

5. Pay attention to grammatical form. If the gap is in an adjective position (before a noun), the ending is likely -al, -ive, -ous, -ful, or -ble. If in an adverb position – look for -ly. If a noun, -tion, -ment, -ness, -ity. Sentence grammar is your GPS.

Common Pitfalls for Non-Native Speakers in Complete the Words

Non-native English speakers often make several recurring errors in this task type. Firstly – the influence of their native phonetics on English spelling. For example, in some languages, the “i” sound might be closer to the English “ee,” leading test-takers to instinctively write “recieve” instead of “receive,” or “beleive” instead of “believe.” Secondly, double consonants. Many languages do not have as many double consonants as English, so “accomodation” (incorrect, correct: accommodation) and “occurence” (incorrect, correct: occurrence) are classic traps. Thirdly – silent letters. “Know” has a silent “k,” “psychology” has a silent “p,” “debt” has a silent “b,” and in Complete the Words, the missing letter might be precisely that silent one.

The good news: these patterns are finite and predictable. Learn the 200–300 most common words from the Academic Word List – this will be enough to cover the vast majority of gaps on the exam.

Read in Daily Life, Practical English in Action

If the old TOEFL was a tweed-jacketed professor delivering a lecture on paleontology, then Read in Daily Life is your dorm roommate leaving notes on the fridge. This task type tests something the old TOEFL completely ignored: the ability to understand everyday, practical texts in English.

What exactly will you read in the Read in Daily Life section? Short texts, 15–150 words long – significantly shorter than anything on the old TOEFL. But “short” doesn’t mean “easy.” These texts mimic situations you’ll encounter as a student abroad: an email from a professor announcing a room change, a text from a roommate asking if they should buy milk, a university cafeteria menu with allergen information, an electricity bill with confusing charges, a post on a university forum about a lost backpack, a job advertisement for part-time work in the library.

Text Types and What They Test

In Read in Daily Life, you’ll encounter the following formats:

Emails and text messages, the most common format. You need to understand the tone (formal vs. informal), the sender’s intention (asking? informing? complaining?), and specific details (when? where? what time?). Watch out for abbreviations and colloquial language – “btw” (by the way), “fyi” (for your information), “asap” (as soon as possible), which you wouldn’t find in academic texts.

Menus, bills, and invoices – texts with numbers, prices, dates. Questions might involve calculations (“How much will you pay for two slices of pizza and a drink?”) or interpreting terms (“Does the price include tax?”). For students unfamiliar with ordering food in English, menu terminology can be surprising; “entree” in American English means the main course, not an appetizer.

Leaflets, advertisements, and social media posts – short but information-dense. Questions check if you can extract key information: event date, promotion terms, contact details. Pitfall: fine print conditions, “first 50 customers only” or “valid weekdays only.”

Institutional materials – library regulations, office hours information, course registration instructions. Here, the ability to navigate informational text, formatted differently from an academic essay, is tested.

Strategies for Read in Daily Life

1. Read the question BEFORE the text. In Read in Daily Life, the text is short – 15–150 words, so the natural impulse is to read it in its entirety. But if you read the question first, you know exactly what you’re looking for. If the question is “What does Sarah ask Tom to bring?”, you now scan the text for Sarah’s request, ignoring the rest. This saves seconds that add up throughout the section.

2. Pay attention to tone and register. Questions in Read in Daily Life often concern implications, not literal meaning. “I guess we could try that restaurant, if you really want to” is literally agreement, but the tone suggests reluctance. “Feel free to reach out if you have any questions” – this isn’t a sincere invitation to ask questions, it’s a polite closing phrase for an email. Non-native speakers, accustomed to literal English from textbooks, often miss these nuances.

3. Practice with authentic texts. The best preparation for Read in Daily Life is… living in English. Set your phone to English. Read emails from services (Netflix, Spotify, Amazon) in English; they have exactly the style that TOEFL tests. Browse Reddit, Yelp reviews, Craigslist ads. The more authentic texts you read, the more naturally you’ll navigate this task type. On prepclass.io, you’ll find practice sets with texts modeled after real emails, menus, and advertisements.

Why is Read in Daily Life Important?

You might think: “This is simple, I’ll read a text message and answer the question.” But ETS didn’t add this task type without reason. Read in Daily Life tests a competency that is crucial for surviving at a foreign university, and which the old TOEFL completely failed to assess. On a daily basis as a student abroad, you don’t read 700-word passages about the theory of evolution – you read emails from the admissions office about a missing document, a note from your dorm manager about the hot water being turned off, and a text from a group project colleague asking if you can swap presentation slots. The ability to quickly and precisely understand such texts, with their abbreviations, implications, and specific formatting – that’s pure practicality.

Read an Academic Passage, Shorter but More Challenging

This is the task type that will be most familiar to you if you’ve practiced for the old TOEFL. Read an Academic Passage is a classic academic passage with multiple-choice questions. But the difference is colossal: the old TOEFL gave you a text of ~700 words with 10 questions. The new TOEFL gives you a text of ~200 words with 5 questions. Three and a half times shorter text – but every sentence carries more weight.

Passage topics cover four areas: natural sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, geology), history (mainly American and European), social sciences (psychology, sociology, economics), and arts (literature, music, architecture). You don’t need prior knowledge of these fields; everything you need to answer is in the text. But you must be able to read dense academic text quickly and precisely.

What has the shortened format changed?

A shorter passage has several consequences that many test-takers don’t consider. Firstly – every sentence is crucial. In a 700-word text, you might overlook one sentence and still answer most questions. In a 200-word text, one sentence is ~5% of the content; skipping it could cost you a point.

Secondly – “insert sentence” and “prose summary” questions are gone. These question types required understanding the structure of the entire long text. With 200 words, they don’t make sense. Instead, you have classic questions about: main idea, details, inference, vocabulary in context, and author’s purpose. Five questions, five types, clean and predictable.

Thirdly – the pace is faster. You have less text to read, but the ratio of questions to words is higher. You need to be precise from the first sentence.

Strategies for Read an Academic Passage

1. Read actively, not passively. 200 words is 60–90 seconds of reading. After that time, you need to know: (a) what the text is about, (b) what the author’s main thesis is, (c) what arguments support it. Don’t read mechanically; identify the structure: introduction → argument → example → conclusion. If you’ve practiced for the old TOEFL or for SAT Reading & Writing, you already have this skill – now you need to apply it to a shorter text.

2. Watch out for distractors. Multiple-choice questions in Read an Academic Passage have four options, three of which are distractors. ETS is masterful at this: distractors often contain true information from the text but don’t answer the specific question. Or they paraphrase a part of the text in a way that changes the meaning. Always go back to the text and verify your answer – don’t rely on memory.

3. Vocabulary in context ≠ dictionary. Questions like “The word X in the passage is closest in meaning to…” don’t test whether you know the dictionary definition. They test whether you understand how the author uses that word in that specific context. “Address” can mean “a location,” “a speech,” or “to deal with”; context decides. Read the entire sentence with your chosen answer and check if the meaning holds.

If you want to practice short academic passages under exam-like conditions, prepclass.io offers sets of 200-word texts with questions mirroring the new TOEFL 2026 format.

The Adaptive System in Reading – How it Works and Why it Matters

If you’ve taken the digital SAT or read our SAT exam guide, the adaptive mechanism will be familiar to you. TOEFL 2026 Reading uses a multi-stage adaptive testing approach, the same concept that College Board introduced in the Digital SAT.

How does it work? The Reading section is divided into two modules. Module 1 contains questions of mixed difficulty – easy, medium, and hard. Based on how you perform in Module 1, the ETS algorithm selects Module 2 for you: harder (if you did well in Module 1) or easier (if you struggled). The key principle: a harder Module 2 means a higher score ceiling; even if you make a few mistakes, your potential score is higher than if you flawlessly completed an easier module.

What does this mean for your strategy? Module 1 is critical. It’s not about speed – it’s about accuracy. Every correct answer in Module 1 increases your chance of getting a harder (and higher-scoring) Module 2. Therefore: don’t guess hastily, don’t skip difficult questions, spend an extra 10 seconds verifying your answers. Seconds lost in Module 1 can pay off in the form of a higher score ceiling in Module 2.

Another important piece of information: you cannot return to Module 1 after moving to Module 2. Once you confirm your answers in Module 1, there’s no going back. You can mark questions for review within a single module, but not between modules. The timer is separate for each module; time from Module 1 does not carry over.

Also, remember that adaptation applies to the entire module, not individual questions. This is not CAT (Computer Adaptive Testing), where each subsequent question is selected based on the previous answer. Here, the entire set of questions in Module 2 is predetermined based on your overall performance in Module 1. This is an important distinction – it means that one mistake in Module 1 does not immediately change the difficulty level of the next question, but the sum of your answers determines which module you receive in the end.

The adaptive format works identically in the other sections of the new TOEFL: Listening, Speaking, and Writing. If you want to understand the full mechanics of the new exam, check out our complete guide to TOEFL 2026.

Preparation Plan, 8 Weeks to the New TOEFL Reading

Preparing for TOEFL 2026 Reading requires a different approach than the old format. It’s not enough to read long academic texts – you need to train three completely different skills simultaneously. Here’s a weekly plan that covers all three task types:

Weeks 1–2: Diagnosis and Foundations

Start with a diagnostic test; complete a full Reading set in the new format on prepclass.io or the ETS website. Don’t prepare specifically – you want to see your true starting point. Record your score and identify which task type gives you the most trouble. Most test-takers find Complete the Words harder than they expected, especially the spelling of words with double letters and silent letters.

During this time: make a list of 100 words from the Academic Word List whose spelling you are unsure of. Learn them through dictation – have someone dictate them to you, you write them down and check. Daily: 20 new words + review 20 old ones. Simultaneously: set your phone and computer to English, browse emails and notifications in English. This builds the intuition needed for Read in Daily Life.

Weeks 3–4: Complete the Words, Intensive Phase

Dedicate 60% of your study time to Complete the Words. Work with prefixes and suffixes – create a table with 30 common prefixes (un-, re-, pre-, dis-, mis-, over-, under-, out-, inter-, trans-…) and 20 suffixes (-tion, -ment, -ness, -ity, -ous, -ive, -able, -ful, -less, -ly…). Practice reconstructing words with gaps: cover part of a word in an academic text and try to recreate it. prepclass.io has dedicated sets for this exercise.

The remaining 40% of the time: read short practical texts (Reddit, emails, product descriptions on Amazon) and practice questions for 200-word academic passages. Try to maintain a 3:2 ratio, three Complete the Words sessions for every two Reading sessions.

Weeks 5–6: Read in Daily Life and Academic Passage

Reverse the proportions: 60% of your time on Read in Daily Life and Academic Passage, 40% on reviewing Complete the Words. In Read in Daily Life, practice recognizing tone and implications – this is often the most challenging element for non-native speakers. Read TripAdvisor reviews, Reddit complaints, customer service emails, paying attention to what is said between the lines.

In Academic Passage, focus on speed: you have ~200 words and 5 questions, so you need to develop the habit of active reading in 60–90 seconds. Practice with a timer. If you have trouble with inference questions, go back to the text and look for the sentence that supports your answer – there is always such a sentence on the exam.

Weeks 7–8: Full Test Simulations

The last two weeks: full simulations of the Reading section under exam conditions. Timer, silence, no breaks. Complete one full set daily. After each simulation: analyze your mistakes. It’s not enough to check what was wrong; you need to understand why you chose the wrong answer. Did you not know a word? Did you misunderstand the context? Did you rush? Keep an error log.

In the last week before the exam: reduce intensity to 30 minutes a day. Review your Academic Word List, browse your error log, solve light sets. Don’t learn new material – consolidate what you already know. Get enough sleep. TOEFL Reading requires a clear mind; fatigue costs more points than lack of knowledge.

Remember that the Reading section is only one part of the TOEFL 2026 exam. Simultaneously, you must practice Listening, Speaking, and Writing. If you plan to take the TOEFL as an alternative to IELTS, check our TOEFL vs IELTS comparison guide to make sure you’ve chosen the right exam.

What TOEFL Reading Score Do You Need?

The Reading section is one of four TOEFL sections, each scored on a scale of 0–30, yielding a total score of 0–120. Most universities requiring TOEFL specify minimum total scores, but some also have minimum scores per section. Here’s what you need to know about Reading section requirements:

• Oxford University: total minimum 100, Reading minimum 24
• Cambridge University: total minimum 100, Reading minimum 25
• ETH Zurich: total minimum 100
• UCL: total minimum 92, Reading minimum 24
• University of Amsterdam: total minimum 80, Reading minimum 20
• Maastricht University: total minimum 80, Reading minimum 18

More about TOEFL requirements at European universities can be found in our guide to TOEFL scores for studies in Europe. If you’re planning IELTS instead of TOEFL – or want to compare both exams, check our TOEFL vs IELTS comparison to ensure you’ve chosen the right exam.

Summary – New Rules of the Game

TOEFL 2026 Reading is not a “slightly refreshed” old exam; it’s a completely new game. Three task types require three different skill sets: Complete the Words tests spelling and morphology, Read in Daily Life tests understanding everyday language, and Read an Academic Passage tests classic academic reading, albeit in a much shorter form. The adaptive system adds a strategic layer – Module 1 is crucial because it determines the score ceiling in Module 2.

Good news for test-takers: the new format is fairer. The old TOEFL with 700-word passages favored native speakers who read faster simply because English was their first language. The new TOEFL, with its short texts and specific tasks, gives a chance to candidates who have solid knowledge but don’t read at native speed. If you know academic vocabulary, can spell correctly in English, and understand implications in everyday texts, you have a real chance of scoring 25+ in Reading.

Next Steps

1. Take a diagnostic test – on prepclass.io or the ETS website, to find your starting point in the new format.
2. Identify your weakest task type – Complete the Words, Read in Daily Life, or Academic Passage?
3. Start with the Academic Word List – learn the spelling of 200–300 common academic words.
4. Implement the 8-week preparation plan – systematically, 30–60 minutes a day.
5. Practice other sections simultaneously – Listening, Speaking, Writing.
6. Check university requirements – does your dream university have a minimum per section, or only a total score? (score guide)

If you’re considering whether to take TOEFL or IELTS, read our TOEFL vs IELTS comparison guide. And if, in addition to a language certificate, you also need the SAT – on okiro.io, you can prepare for both exams on one platform.

Good luck, and remember: the new TOEFL rewards those who practice in the new format. Throw out old textbooks. The future of TOEFL Reading is short, practical, and adaptive – just like the studies it prepares you for.