Day 4 — Meet the Reading Section & Find Your Baseline
Phase I · Reading · Day 4 (Reading Day 1 of 3) · ⏱ ~1.5–2 hours
📍 You are here: Day 4 – Reading Orientation → Day 5 – Module 1 (Complete the Words) → Day 6 – Module 2 (Daily Life + Academic Passage)
Hi Marathoners 👋 Today we move to the Reading Section. The 2026 Reading is multistage and adaptive — how you do in Module 1 decides whether you unlock the "hard" Module 2, and only the hard module lifts you to Band 5–6.
Same naming rule as Speaking — let's keep it straight:
- Reading has 2 modules and 3 task types: Task 1 – Complete the Words (Module 1), Task 2 – Read in Daily Life and Task 3 – Read an Academic Passage (Module 2). "Task" only ever means these exam tasks.
- What you do each day are Steps. Follow Step 1, 2, 3 in order.
🎯 Today's goal: Understand how the Reading section works and the routing rule, and record an honest baseline.
✅ You're done when: you've taken the diagnostic, tried one item of each task type, and started your vocabulary notebook.
⏰ Step 1 — Daily Warm-Up: Complete the Words
This is the routing task you'll meet today. Each word shows its first letters — type the rest. Read the whole sentence first.
10 missing words · auto-graded
📺 Step 2 — Understand the 2 modules & 3 task types
🎥 Hasmik's Reading Introduction video (Days 4-6 orientation clip)
Module 1 — Routing Module (longest, same for everyone):
- Task 1 – Complete the Words: an academic paragraph with missing word-halves. Tests vocabulary depth + grammar. The most important task — your routing depends on it.
Module 2 — Adaptive (easy OR hard, based on Module 1):
- Task 2 – Read in Daily Life: short real-world texts (15–150 words) — emails, posters, notices. MCQ on purpose or details.
- Task 3 – Read an Academic Passage: ~200-word passage, ~5 questions on inference, main ideas, structure.
⚠️ Critical rule: about 8 mistakes total across Module 1 + Module 2 caps your Reading band at 4 — even with perfect work elsewhere. Module 1 routing matters most.
📝 Step 3 — Take your baseline diagnostic
See where you stand today. Don't be hard on yourself — that's completely normal at the start 😉.
👉 Reading Diagnostic — FluentPrep
🧭 Step 4 — Try one item per task type
This is orientation, not mastery. Spend ~15 minutes getting the feel of each:
- Read in Daily Life → 🎮 FluentPrep (free, no signup)
- Read an Academic Passage → 🎮 mytoefl.io (hover over the Reading section)
📒 Step 5 — Start your vocabulary habit · ~10 min
Vocabulary is the daily thread through the whole Reading unit. Start a notebook today and add your first 10 academic words.
📄 Academic Word List (570 words)
➕ Extra (optional): Vocabulary.com and Cambridge Dictionary — look up each word's noun/verb/adjective forms as you log it.
💡 Pro Tips
- Module 1 is the routing module. Even 1–2 careless errors here can cost you the hard module — and your Band 5–6 ceiling.
- In Read in Daily Life, read like an exchange student scanning a bus-stop notice — pragmatic instinct beats deep reading.
- Always read the questions before re-reading the passage. The questions tell you what to scan for.
- Scan for keywords, don't read word-by-word. Speed and accuracy come together.
➕ Extra (optional): browse the official ETS TOEFL iBT prep to see how ETS frames the section.
📁 Portfolio Entry — log Day 4
- 📅 Date
- ✅ Steps completed (Y/N for each)
- ⏱️ Total time spent today
- 📊 Warm-up score: ___ / 3
- 🎯 Diagnostic baseline
- 🎯 My instinct on the hardest Reading task type: ___
- 🎯 Confidence today (1.0–6.0)
- 🏆 One Win + 🤔 One Challenge
➡️ Next: Day 5 — Module 1: Complete the Words