5 TOEIC Reading Tips for Your Students

Table of Contents

TOEIC is one of the world's most popular English exams. At Engoo, we have an entire course that prepares learners for the speaking test, but many students also need help with the reading section.

The main difficulty students face is time management. The TOEIC reading test has 100 questions that need to be answered in just 75 minutes. Many students sitting TOEIC for the first time get a lower score than they deserve because they run out of time.

So today, we'll share five tips your students can use to get the highest score in the limited time available to them.

Tip #1: Start with Part 7

The TOEIC Listening & Reading Test has seven parts. Parts 1-4 are the listening section while Parts 5-7 make up the reading section.

Part 5: Incomplete Sentences (30 questions)
Part 6: Text Completion (16 questions)
Part 7: Reading Comprehension (54 questions)

Part 7 is the longest and most difficult part of the reading section. So instead of starting with Parts 5 and 6 and exhausting themselves before Part 7, you can recommend students to do the last part first.

Tip #2: Spend the Most Time on Part 7

You can also recommend spending the most time on Part 7. As a teacher's guide to the TOEIC explains:

If students don't know the key words needed to get the answers to questions in Parts 5 and 6, spending extra time isn't going to help. In Part 7, however, having an extra minute on a difficult question could make a huge difference in the search for the correct answer.

You can encourage your students to budget their time like this:

Part 7: 55 minutes (around 1 minute per question)
Part 5: 10 minutes (max 20 seconds per question)
Part 6: 10 minutes (max 30 seconds per question)

Tip #3: On Part 7, Do the Easier Questions First

Unlike Parts 5 and 6 which consist entirely of fill-in-the-blanks questions, Part 7 has many types of questions. These include:

Vocabulary questions: e.g. "The word 'highlight' in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to which of the following words?"
Factual questions: e.g. "Which product does the customer want to return?"
Inference questions: e.g. "What is most likely true about the product the customer ordered?"

Encourage students to start with the questions that can be answered with the least amount of reading. For example, vocabulary questions can sometimes be answered without even looking at the passage. Factual questions can be answered by quickly scanning the text for the answers. However, inference questions often require you to read the entire passage!

So advise students to prioritize the easier questions. This approach will also help them when they need to answer the harder questions. As the teacher's guide explains:

[By] quickly scanning the passage to answer the specific information questions they [test-takers] can pick up a general sense of what the passage is about and how it is organized. By the time they have answered the easier questions they may already have enough information to answer the more challenging ones, or at least they will have a better idea of where to look to find the answer.

Tip #4: Do Parts 5 and 6 in Two Rounds

In Tip #2, we recommended students answer each question in Parts 5 and 6 in 20-30 seconds. But what's the best way to do this? Many test-takers find it useful to go through the questions in two rounds.

In the first round, they answer as many questions as possible, as quickly as possible. They skip questions that were difficult or time-consuming.
In the second round, they return to the questions they skipped the first time and try to figure them out. If a question stumps them for more than 20-30 seconds, they take their best guess and move on.

Tip #5: Spend More Time on Grammar Questions

In Parts 5 and 6, there are two main types of questions: vocabulary and grammar questions. The main difference between them is that grammar questions can be figured out with a bit of time while vocabulary questions can't.

For example, here are two grammar questions students can figure out even without understanding the answer choices.

Here's how:

Question 1: The adverb "unnecessarily" hints that the blank must be a verb or an adjective. The verb "are" then hints that the word must be an adjective, so the answer is "(D) complicated."
Question 103: "Learning" is a verb, so the blank before it needs to be an adverb: (D) "regularly."

The answers to vocabulary questions can't be worked out like this. So if a student doesn't know the words being tested, they should take a guess and move on. Their time is better spent on the grammar questions.

👋 That’s It For Now!

We hope your students find these TOEIC tips helpful. Are there any other standardized tests you'd like to learn more about? Let us know through Tutor Support. Happy tutoring!