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When you’re doing something hard, starting off strong can make all the difference. And on the TOEFL Reading Test, that’s exactly what you should do: the Reading is the first section of the whole test, so getting ahead here will give you confidence to go into the rest without fear. Ready to dive in?

The TOEFL Reading Test is a test of how well you can understand passages that you read in English. That might sound like the tests you take in school, but most students actually find that the TOEFL is significantly different from school tests. For one thing, the questions are different. For reading tests in school, you probably had to read books and discuss what happened in them, but on the TOEFL, you have to read passages and understand facts about them.

Each question has only one right answer, and there’s no discussion at all. Some of the questions also have a pretty strange layout that you’ve probably never seen before. These things could potentially affect your score, but there’s a simple way to deal with them: practice! In this lesson, you’ll learn about the test format so you’re prepared to handle all the weird stuff without a hitch.

On the TOEFL Reading Test, you’ll spend the whole time reading passages and answering questions about them. The test lasts between 60 and 80 minutes, depending on the number of passages. You’ll read three or four passages, with 12-14 questions each. In total, you’ll answer between 36 and 56 questions. In all, that’s roughly 20 minutes per passage and one to two minutes per question.

The passages on the test are designed to imitate the writing you’ll find in English-language textbooks. They won’t require any special knowledge, though: You’ll be able to read every passage without studying the subject beforehand. You don’t need to study anything for the TOEFL but English; if your English is good enough to read the passage, you’ll be all set for the questions.

Now, let’s talk about those questions. All the questions are based completely on the passage. You’ll never have to remember anything from any other classes. The TOEFL Reading Test is 100% about how well you understand the words on the page, not about how much you remember from other books or reading material. Each TOEFL question will be asking you to do one of three things:

1) Reading to Find Information questions ask you to find facts or information in a passage. For example, a Reading to Find Information question might ask something like, ‘According to Paragraph 2, how many asteroids are in the Asteroid Belt?’ Remember that this question is not asking you to remember a fact you memorized in science class; it’s asking you to find some information in the passage. You’d just go to ‘Paragraph 2’ and find the answer. Reading to Find Information questions will be multiple-choice questions: you’ll either have to pick an answer or insert a sentence where it belongs in the passage.

2) Basic Comprehension questions ask you to understand the topic or main idea of the passage, recognize important facts, and understand how words are used in context. Where Reading to Find Information questions are mostly about isolated facts, Basic Comprehension questions are a little more focused on understanding the passage as a whole. Like the Reading to Find Information questions, Basic Comprehension questions will also be multiple-choice.

3) Reading to Learn questions are a little different from the other two types. On these questions, you’ll have to organize the main points of the passage into either a category chart or a summary. These questions are harder than the others, and they’re also worth more points: up to two points for the summary questions and up to three for the chart questions. Each passage will have one Reading to Learn question.

In this lesson, you got a preview of what you can expect from the TOEFL Reading Section. To break it down by the numbers, you’ll see three or four passages with 12-14 questions per passage for a total of 36-56 questions in 60-80 minutes. Each passage will have 11-13 Reading to Find Information and Basic Comprehension questions; these questions ask you about details in the passage and more general information, respectively.

Each passage will also have one Reading to Learn question, where you’ll have to organize main ideas from the passage into a summary or a category chart. Reading to Learn questions are more difficult, but also worth more points.

Now you know what you’re up against; the next step is to get out some sample questions and practice until you’re confident answering all three of those question types and even the Reading to Learn questions don’t throw you for a loop.