TOEFL Reading 2026: Mastering Vocabulary and Main Idea Questions
The TOEFL Reading section doesn’t reward speed—it rewards comprehension under pressure. If you’re scoring below 26 on this part of the test, your bottleneck is almost certainly one of two things: vocabulary gaps that ripple through your entire understanding, or the inability to lock down a passage’s central argument before diving into detail questions.
Why Vocabulary Matters More Than You Think
Most TOEFL test-takers assume vocabulary questions are just annoying vocabulary tests. They’re not. A vocabulary question in context almost always rewards students who understand the passage well enough to infer meaning from surrounding sentences. But there’s a catch: if your baseline vocabulary is weak, even inference fails because you’re working with too little information.
