what's going on everybody my name is Josh from TSC prep and this is the top 10 toal reading tips yay so I'm sure you're very excited but this is going to be really helpful you're going to learn a lot let's get right into it tip number one is to Beware of the modifiers so what does that mean uh basically a modifier let me show you an example first so this word only totally changes the meaning of option b so there are only two classes of meteorites when they include that word only it totally changes the meaning here it says meteorites are often classified between primitive and differentiated meteorites So when you say often classified and only these are two different meanings often doesn't mean only often means you know most of the time 70% of the time only is 100% of the time so that is a modifier they are it is a word or phrase that supplies additional information about another word or phrase so for example we'll keep it simple and just say adjective and adjectives and adverbs it's more complicated than that but that this is okay for our purposes the big dog so big is changing the word dog and ran quickly quickly is changing the word run so these change words there's a couple modifiers to keep in mind for the TOEFL this is an easy now the reason we're talking about this is because it's an easy way to make an incorrect Choice remember when you're doing a toal reading there's options a b c and d and they have to make an option look correct but it's not correct so an easy way to make something look correct is just to change the modifier and that totally changes the meaning of the word in the sentence so be aware of extreme modifiers where it's like all always and never frequency modifiers usually sometimes and almost always so uh this uh uh only here is a good example of an extreme modifier it's too extreme you want to avoid choices that uses extreme modifiers in Academia that's University things are hardly certain all the time it's usually not 100% is 0% it's usually not never or always things are usually almost always or hardly ever usually they don't say never it's too strong or always it's too strong and I think you guys know frequency modifiers usually sometimes okay degree modifiers how much of something some most almost all some meteorites do end up land landing on Earth's surface most meteorites fall to Earth's surface so some and most completely changes the meaning of the sentence so you want to make sure that you pay attention to these modifiers they can really really really throw you off now before I get into the last type of modifier I want to say all the things that we're going to do together because we're going to do a lot in a very short amount of time you're going to be able to use keywords to find answers faster you're going to know more about modifiers you're going to know how to choose uh how to know if an option is incorrect and which one is correct and you're also going to learn how to practice at home so there's going to be a lot of things I really encourage you to take a tol practice test first because some of this might not make sense if you haven't taken a tol reading practice test yet so definitely you know if you do a quick YouTube search and find one but I recommend you having an experience with a toal reading test first before you check out these tips they'll make more sense but you don't have to do that and really quickly before I get into the last modifier let me shout out the TST preps toal emergency premium course this is perfect for anybody who has less than a month to prepare and you don't want to waste time you want to get your score as quickly and as easily as possible all the practice that you need there's like eight practice tests there's uh a couple hundred practice questions maybe a thousand practice questions I don't remember the numbers exactly uh but lots of practice questions lots lots of practice tests on top of of the most important tips and tricks and strategies I love this course put a lot of work into it this offer is only for the YouTube audience so check it out at TST prep.com and I'll put a link to it in the description actually this isn't at TST prep.com you have to follow the link in the description because it's only for the YouTube audience okay so the last type of modifier is a t time modifier dozen Century Millennium dozen is 12 centuries 100 Millennium is a th they don't do this too often on the test but they'll do something they could do something like this where during the 15th century and 1500s is that the same time period 15th century 1500s no 15th century you got to go back it's 1400s so this would be incorrect so make sure that you know the time some time modifiers especially the century and the hundreds that's an easy thing to avoid make sure you know that but remember changing the modifier is an easy and popular way to make an incorrect choice so look for it on test day I'm sure it'll come up uh eventually at some point so be very careful of it all right reading tip number two moving right along is to remember the question location so one thing about the TOEFL is that sorry for the ugly small writing but I wanted to show you kind of what the test looks like on test day with the questions on the left and the passage on the right and so this is what it looks like on test day and it will tell you what paragraph It's in like here it tells you paragraph 4 so you're like okay cool 1 2 3 4 right there pretty simple but actually besides the fact that they give you the paragraph number uh also you could find the answer a bit faster even within the paragraph so for example here since that last question was here in yellow this one in blue the next one why does the author mention tropical vegetables will probably be in this blue part here right after because we already answered this one so again if you know that the questions are in order you'll know where to look oh the last question was here I should be looking right below it here yeah so and again I I kind of made this bigger so you could see what it looks like in uh bigger size so this is the sixth question the answer is here the part highlighted in yellow but for the seventh question it's here right after so that note that I put let me go back to my note here you can find answers Faster by focusing on the location of the previous question okay the last question was here it's probably down here somewhere if it says the same paragraph sometimes they don't say the same paragraph So you you should know where to look around here all right one other thing to keep in mind is that this doesn't always work I like to make sure that students know that these tips are just tips and they're not you know 100% truth all the time so for example what point does the author not make in paragraph 8 you kind of have to read this whole paragraph to get this answer so you would have to go back a little bit here so keep that in mind the third tip is to identify the question types so there are uh in they reading 10 different question types I'm not going to go through them in too much detail here you can pause this and take a screenshot of it but there are a couple and you should know which one you're answering cuz to give you an example like a factual information question according to paragraph 3 what is X it's pretty simple right but a negative factual information they're asking you what is not correct and if you misread that if you read it wrong you're going to get that wrong or an inference question an inference is not the same as a factual information question so make sure that you know the difference between these question types it will help you answer there's also rhetorical per purpose sentence simplification insert Tech reference proud summary and filling table so I know these are weird terms and you're probably not so familiar with them that's okay it'll take just a little bit of time to get used to once you take a practice test or two you'll start seeing patterns and I think you'll get used to it one thing I want to mention as well this one reference questions and this one fill in a table questions I hardly ever see them on the test they barely show up if ever you probably will not see one on test day I've taken the test I don't know five times something like that and I've never seen it on the actual test on test I've never seen a reference question never seen a fill on the table question but ETS says it's there so and you might get it but just like so you know these questions are very rare tip number four is to narrow your focus and limit your keywords so you probably heard you might have heard teachers talk about keywords this is kind of like a famous tol teacher tip uh keywords provide the most valuable information in a given statement they usually consist of nouns verbs and adjectives so for example this sentence the cat is in the house cat and house are the keywords now what do I mean when why are we talking about this and why is it important because when you do the tol and you're reading a question there are a lot of words uh you want to focus on the words that are important they help you find information faster and they help you identify what the what the sentence is about and oh yeah so I I have a list while I study keywords you read the questions fast faster you find information faster trigger active reading strategies so this one I like this trigger active reading strategies this is like you are thinking actively about the reading you're like okay what's the keyword what's the question here okay it's this this is a keyword this keyword okay so I have to find this word let me go look for this word that's a great way of attacking the reading passage instead of just being like and you're just kind of going back and forth trying to find answer and you're and you're not really sure what you're looking for focusing on keywords get you focused on okay I got to look for this I got to look for this word and you get a better more active approach to the tol you also become a more efficient test taker you you finish faster when you focus on keywords so if you look here this is what a typical factual information question looks like and I'll just show you what it looks like when I just focus on the keywords so game theorist discovered altruistic Behavior animals okay so I'm looking for altruistic Behavior I see it there I'm looking for game theorists I see game theory here and I'm looking for most not qualify okay so they're not altruistic so I'm going to focus on these keywords to find that information it's pretty easy this one is pretty easy another example here you so sometimes you can just focus on one word so like this question here all of this is like tful vocabulary what can be inferred about Columbus based on the information from the like you don't need to know this based on the information from the paragraph you only word you really need to know is infer and Columbus what can you infer about Columbus so this can really help you uh eliminate a lot of unnecessary words and focus on the most important information now of course you don't want to not understand what you're reading so make sure you understand what you're reading and focus on these keywords to help you find information faster tip number five five eliminate before you answer so the toe full reading is really tricky when you eliminate and now by the way this math I'm going to do some pseudo math here here we go you have four choices a 25% chance of uh getting the answer correct but hey if you eliminate you have three choices and 33% you have two choices you have a 50/50 shot so in other words when you eliminate choices you increase your odds of getting the correct answer but what if you eliminate the correct Choice then your chances are zero so this math doesn't really work but I I put it here anyway so you get the idea that by eliminating choices you narrow down your focus and you focus in on just the important options that are left so you look at the question here you're like okay maybe uh I'm not going to answer this for real I'm just showing you the process um a might be okay uh B I'm not so sure C I don't think so and D I don't think so I'm going to eliminate those two so I have a or b left so and I'm reading A and B carefully because I eliminated C and D so narrow your choices by eliminating them them these these questions are really tricky so some questions look correct but actually are not correct um so you got to be really really careful because some questions you'll see oh this is going to be a it said it here so this is a easy you Circle A and then you move on but wait you didn't see b c and d you didn't notice the modifier here that changed everything so you want to make sure it's the best choice out of all the other options the test is is tricky so make sure that you do that go through each choice and eliminate if possible do not answer until you're certain the other three are incorrect so you want to look through you want to make sure okay a is not correct B is not correct C is not correct it's got to be D you know or whatever it is right uh let's do this example together seed plants are the foundation of human diets AC okay so I have Okay so this I don't have any keywords here to help me I'm I'm going to focus here for keywords most societies vegetarian diets no meat or fish okay so I'm going to focus on a okay this is the foundation of human diets many societies eat vegetarian dishes so here I have many societies and most societies look at that look at how this uh modifier many most is that the same thing is many and most the same thing no it's not many is a lot of most is like 90% a is incorrect but it's very easy to say hey that looks really good it's going to be a next and you don't look at B or C or D you have to look at all of them so B humans started farming after Lely a hunter G so humans started farming after Hunter Gathering okay okay few crops okay so they made the transition from nomadic hunter gatherers to Horticultural this is like gardening and agriculture so that looks good so be looks pretty good let me see see nuts and beans make up an essential part okay where's nuts and beans I'm looking for my keywords nuts and beans I see beans here beans and nuts Supply proteins good it doesn't say that they are the essential part so here's that extra information sneaky TOEFL I don't think it's see humans get protein foods like Oil and Olive Well I don't think that's true but fats are derived from yeah peanuts and oils okay so can to eliminate that b is going to be the best answer and you can see how it's really easy to pick a but if I read b c and d I can tell that b is a better answer so make sure you try to eliminate choices before you answer test is tricky practice with the same test more than once tip number six so a lot of people when they practice take practice test they don't like to do the same PR practice test again because they feel like they know the test already they remember the answers so it's not a good way to practice think of doing the same practice test again not like it's taking the toll full not like the real thing of taking the toll full but like you're you're remembering what you learned you're remembering the questions you got wrong you remember you're remembering the vocabulary you didn't know you're remembering the speaking question you didn't do well on you're going to remember a lot of things that you learned from that experience and by taking the same practice test again you're going to make that really strong in your mind those things that you learned you don't have to take the test three times if you're studying for two months or more you could do that but really just twice and a couple weeks apart would be fine the next thing is to plan your time manage that's a big hand wow that hand looks so weird in my big screen uh okay anyway um by your time management to for reading time management is really tough I give a amount of time for each question type but I don't want you to take the test and think like oh which question type is this I can only take 90 seconds no let's not let's not think like that instead think about in five minute intervals and I'm actually going to make this even easier um so you know you could think of each each passage you have 10 questions and you have have to answer 18 questions so you have to answer I'm sorry no you have to answer 10 questions in 18 minutes there we go so at 10 minutes you want to be at question 6 at 15 minutes you want to be at question 9 question 10 is summary so it takes a little long so you want to be there by minute 15 okay uh so the 10-minute Mark is a big one 10 minutes you should be at question six and you should be maybe even finishing question six 20 minutes you should be at the second question of the second passage and then 30 minutes you should be at question 17 and then you're going to finish up uh that the 35 minute Mark you should be a minute or two early and finishing all the questions question 20 the next tip is to explain your anwers so of course you don't do this on test day this is a way to practice um you want to make sure that whenever you're practicing with the reading you know why you got the question right and why the other choices are wrong just like I did here I went through each choice and I explained why I chose B and why I think a c and d are wrong and that actually is in the uh the uh what am I think the answer key so in the answer key of this uh of all the tests at TST prep and all the practice at TST prep we have an answer key for all questions because because it's very important for you to know why a question is right and why the other choices are wrong and you want to do the same when you're practicing as well you want to make sure you under if you got lucky don't think that that's correct think of that as like oh I got to learn something here because I got lucky I shouldn't have got that correct but somehow I did you don't want to think that way you want to think instead like oh I got lucky I need to know why I didn't know the answer to this okay all right so there are three reasons why a choice is probably wrong so when you're looking at your uh test and you're thinking why did I get this wrong there's one of these three reasons either you misread the question you thought it was a uh inference question but it was really a factual information question or you just didn't understand the question you misread the passage so you thought the passage said something but really it said something else and you didn't understand the vocabulary just as too hard the grammar is too hard vocabulary is too hard I really just didn't get it I didn't get the passage or I didn't really get the question so just figure out why you got it wrong and what you can do better next time the next tip is to pick the right time and place to study so this is important you want to make sure that you study in the morning now I get a lot of push back from people that say no I study better at night fine go ahead if you study you know yourself better than I do I know myself and I know a lot of other people and most people I know when we have to do something that we kind of don't want to do like study for a tol test at night time we tend to push it back to the end and when we do it we're really tired and we're not focused we got the kids in the other room there's just too many distractions uh so I recommend doing it in the morning when you're fresh when you have a clear mind and you have energy so you don't have to worry about it later but that's just a personal preference and it's helped other students but I know some people like working at night if that's you go for it every time I try to study something like this at night I just fall asleep the last tip is to get professional support from an experienced teacher so definitely check out TSD prep.com if you need help with teachers you know if you're taking the test and you just keep getting things wrong you probably want to talk to a teacher and just be sure that you understand why you're getting them wrong but that's it those are the 10 tips I hope you found this helpful and I hope you learned something new if you have a question leave it in the comments I try to answer all of them and I hope you feel like you've achieved these objectives you know about keywords modifiers how to find an incorrect choice and how to practice at home you can check out the next one 10 I I wasn't supposed to go to that slide forget that uh so I'm going to put the video here of of the tips for the listening check that out I'm going to put that up now and you can learn more about the listening but thank you for listening and I will see you in the next one all right take care everybody