TOEFL iBT 2026 · Reading task guide

TOEFL Read an Academic Passage: how it works and how to do well

Read an Academic Passage gives you a short passage of about 200 words, like a page from a textbook, followed by five multiple-choice questions. It’s one of three Reading tasks on the TOEFL iBT since January 2026, and its passages are much shorter than those on the TOEFL before 2026.

Words in a passage: ~200
Questions per passage: 5
Questions in a test: 5–15
For each question: 1 point

How Read an Academic Passage works

The passage is the kind you’d read in a school or university textbook, on a subject such as history, art and music, business and economics, life science, physical science or social science. You don’t need to know anything about the subject beforehand: everything you need is in the passage, and it stays on screen while you answer.

The five questions can ask about:

Facts: what the passage says directly
Vocabulary: what a word means as it’s used in the passage
Inference: what the passage suggests without saying it
How ideas connect: a cause and its effect, a contrast, or an example and the point it supports
Purpose: why the writer included a sentence or a paragraph, or what the whole passage is for

If you’ve studied for the older TOEFL: ETS no longer lists sentence-insertion or summary questions for this task.

There are 5 to 15 of these questions in a test. Read an Academic Passage has no timer of its own: it shares the Reading section’s clock with the other two tasks.

How it’s scored. Each question is worth one point, right or wrong. A wrong answer costs you nothing more than that point, so always choose an answer.

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This passage was written for this guide in the same format as the real task. Pick an answer for each question: you’ll see straight away whether it’s right, and why.

How Camels Survive in the Desert

Many people believe that a camel’s hump is full of water. In fact, the hump stores fat, which the camel’s body can break down for energy when food is scarce. Keeping its fat in one place, rather than spread under the skin all over its body, may also help the camel lose heat more easily.

Camels have several ways of saving water. Their kidneys remove as much water as possible from their waste. Their body temperature can rise by several degrees during the hottest part of the day before they start to sweat, so they sweat less and lose less water. Even their noses help: as a camel breathes out, its nose recaptures much of the moisture in its breath. When a camel does find water, it can drink a remarkable amount very quickly, sometimes more than 100 liters in about ten minutes.

None of this makes camels immune to heat and thirst. Together, however, these features allow them to travel long distances in places where most large animals could not survive. For this reason, people in dry regions have relied on camels for thousands of years to carry goods across the desert.

Question 1 of 5
According to the passage, what does a camel’s hump contain?
B. Fat. The second sentence says it directly: the hump “stores fat”. Water is the common belief the passage sets out to correct.
Question 2 of 5
The word “scarce” in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to
A. hard to find. The camel uses its stored fat when food is scarce, so food must be in short supply. Try each choice in the sentence: only “hard to find” keeps its meaning.
Question 3 of 5
What can be inferred from paragraph 2 about animals that start sweating at a lower body temperature than camels?
A. They lose more water than camels in the same heat. The passage says camels lose less water because they start sweating later. It follows that an animal that starts sweating sooner loses more, though the passage never says so directly.
Question 4 of 5
In paragraph 2, how do the details about kidneys, sweating and the nose relate to the paragraph’s first sentence?
A. They are examples of the ways camels save water. The first sentence makes a general point, that camels have several ways of saving water, and each detail after it is one of those ways.
Question 5 of 5
Why does the author mention that many people believe the hump is full of water?
A. To introduce a common mistake that the passage then corrects. The passage opens with what many people believe and then says “In fact…”. Starting with a common mistake makes the correct fact stand out.

0/5 questions

How to do well

Skim once for the shape. Before the questions, note what each paragraph is about. That map answers “why” questions and tells you where to look for facts.
Go back to the text for every answer. The passage stays on screen. For a fact or a vocabulary question, find the exact sentence and read the lines around it.
Test vocabulary choices in the sentence. Put each choice in place of the word. The right one keeps the sentence’s meaning, even if it isn’t the word’s most common meaning.
Keep inferences close to the text. The right answer follows from what’s written. A choice that needs an extra guess, or just sounds true in general, is a trap.

Try Read an Academic Passage in a real-format test

Reading Practice Test 1 has all three Reading tasks, timed and scored on the 1.0–6.0 band scale. Free, with no account needed.

Start Reading Practice Test 1

How Read an Academic Passage works

Try it yourself

How Camels Survive in the Desert

How to do well

Try Read an Academic Passage in a real-format test

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