درباره سوالات خواندن برای یادگیری

On the TOEFL Reading Test most of the questions are pretty standard.

They’re multiple-choice; they ask you about information in the passage.

You’ve seen these before; you know how they work.

But the Reading to Learn questions are in a league of their own.

Reading to Learn questions ask you to organize key points of the passage in one of two ways: a category chart or a summary.

If the question asks you to work with the category chart, you’ll get a chart with two columns.

Each column will be labeled with a major category from the passage.

For example, if the passage discusses two different countries, the columns might be labeled with the country names.

It will look something like this.

Below the columns, you’ll get several sentences.

There will be more sentences than numbers in the columns.

You’ll have to choose which sentences fit in Column A, which fit in Column B, and which don’t fit in either.

Then, you’ll drag the sentences that fit in one of the columns into the appropriate column.

The example above would be worth four points.

Sometimes, you’ll also get slightly smaller category questions with only five spaces in the chart.

These will be worth three points.

You can get partial credit for getting some of the answers right.

Summary questions are the other type of Reading to Learn questions.

They’ll look something like this:

At the top of the chart, you’ll see a sentence summarizing the entire passage.

You’ll have to pick the three sentences that best express the three main points of the passage and insert them into the summary chart as appropriate.

These questions are worth two points, and you can get partial credit.

Each Reading passage on the TOEFL will have at least one Reading to Learn question.

That’s a guaranteed three to four of these on the whole test.

Before heading into the practice, here are some general tips for managing Reading to Learn questions:

Save them for last.

Reading to Learn questions are typically the hardest Reading questions of all because you have to understand the entire passage to answer them.

Use the other questions to get a feel for the passage and then look at the Reading to Learn question once you’re already familiar with the passage.

Use elimination.

Even if you don’t know exactly which answers are correct, get rid of anything that’s wrong right away.

This will help you narrow down your options.

Use your scrap paper.

Don’t just ‘eliminate’ things in your head.

Instead, write down the letters of every answer choice on your scrap paper and cross off the ones that are wrong.

This will help you focus and stay on track.

Ready to test your skills?

Here’s a passage followed by a practice summary question:

Although we have many sources about the Late Republic (147-30 BC) and the Roman Empire (27 BC-476 AD), information about the early days of the Roman Republic, from approximately 458-274 BC, is still hard to come by.

One reason why sources from this period are so few and far between is simply time.

Several historians recorded the events of the early Republic, but many of their chronicles have been lost or damaged in the intervening 2,500 years.

Manuscripts were often accidentally destroyed, lost, or simply mis-copied by the generations of Medieval monks who handed them down through the Middle Ages.

Even records more permanent than paper have suffered the ravages of time.

Architecture, for example, can tell us a great deal about a city and its people, but the Rome of the early Republic was rebuilt and beautified by the emperor Augustus, and traumatic events like the Great Fire of Rome (64 AD) and the sack of the city by the Goths in 410 AD further damaged whatever early buildings were left.

Another problem, from the point of view of modern historians, is that the sources we do have are often less concerned with historical accuracy than with moral rectitude.

For example, the historian Titus Livy, who wrote a history of Rome starting with its foundation, was primarily concerned to show that the aristocracy was the pillar of Roman society.

He frequently bent historical truths to present Rome’s political elite in a good light, making it hard to determine what actually happened.

While some sources on the Republic still do remain, much of our potential source material has been destroyed by time or neglect, and the material we do have is often factually imprecise to begin with.

This makes studying the Early Republic frustrating for modern historians.

If you want to read through the passage again while you’re working on the question, just click on the video marker that will take you back to the beginning of the Practice Question section.

Now for the question!

The summary chart below shows a summary sentence for the entire passage.

Fill in the three sentences that best complete the summary by expressing the main points of the passage.

Pause the video while you work on the question.

Remember that you can go back to the passage by clicking on the video marker for the Practice Question section.

Are you ready to hear the answer?

The three correct answers are (a), (c), and (f).

These three sentences all express major points in the passage.

Choice (b) is not correct because the passage doesn’t talk about illuminated manuscripts.

Choice (d) is not correct because the passage doesn’t mention the historian Polybius.

Choice (e) is not correct because this statement is not an important part of the argument of the passage.

Note that choices (b), (d), and (e) are all factually true, but that doesn’t matter.

The question asks you what’s in the passage, not what’s factually correct.

In this lesson, you got a preview of Reading to Learn questions.

These questions are not like typical multiple-choice questions; they’re more involved and are also worth more points.

On Reading to Learn questions, you’ll either fill out a summary of the passage or fill out a category chart organizing different sentences from the passage into categories.

Category chart questions are worth either three or four points, depending on length, and summary questions are worth two.

You’ll get one Reading to Learn question on each TOEFL passage.

While you’re working on these questions, remember:

Save them for last - Get familiar with the passage by doing the other questions first.

Use elimination - It can help you start working even if you don’t know the answer right away.

Use your scrap paper - Don’t waste mental energy remembering what you eliminated; write it down on your scrap paper instead.

If the format still looks strange to you, don’t worry - that’s normal!

A little practice goes a long way - soon you’ll be working through them like a pro.