TOEFL Reading Section - Inference Questions

Inference Questions

These questions will be asking you to find the implicit, inferred, or implied meaning of a passage - to understand ideas that have not be directly stated by the author. Answering these questions will require you to pay attention to the details that are mentioned and use logic to fid the implied meaning. These questions can be recognized relatively easily as they most often include the words infer, suggest, or imply. There will be no more then 2 question of this type per reading passage, and there may not be any at all.

How to deal:

1. Identify the key idea(s) or theme in question. Make sure you’re looking for the idea and not the word since you’re attempting to infer something you won’t find in the text. Ex: If the questions is asking ‘Which of the following can be inferred about Jim’s time as a student’ look for the paragraph that discusses Jim’s time at school.
2. Once you locate the key idea/theme, read the relevant sentences carefully to make sure you completely understand the information
3. Look for cohesive devices (which may be adverbs, adjectives, transitions, repetition, etc) that connect various ideas in the text.
4. Check your final choice against the given passage and ask yourself, does this make logical sense?

Watch out for:

* Wrong answers that list information that isn’t correct. Inferred information must still be correct.
* Facts/details choices. The question is asking you to infer something, meaning the answer won’t be stated in the passage.

Types of questions you can except.

1) Fact/Detail Questions
2) Not/Except Questions
3) Referent Questions
4) Vocabulary Questions
5) Inference Questions
6) Rhetorical Structure Questions
7) Coherence Questions
8) Paraphrasing Questions
9) Table Completion Questions
10) Prose Summary Questions


Related Articles :


  • TOEFL Reading Section - Not/Except Questions
  • TOEFL Reading Section - Prose Summary Questions
  • TOEFL Reading Section - Paraphrasing Questions
  • TOEFL Reading Section - Table Completion Questions
  • TOEFL Reading Section - Rhetorical Structure Questions
  • TOEFL Reading Section
  • TOEFL Reading Section - Vocabulary Questions
  • TOEFL Reading Section - Fact/Detail Questions
  • TOEFL Reading Section - Referent Questions
  • TOEFL Reading Section - Coherence Questions

  • 2 comments ↓

    #1 TOEFL Reading Section - Coherence Questions | KoolKareers.com on 08.20.09 at 2:43 pm

    [...] Fact/Detail Questions 2) Not/Except Questions 3) Referent Questions 4) Vocabulary Questions 5) Inference Questions 6) Rhetorical Structure Questions 7) Coherence Questions 8) Paraphrasing Questions 9) Table [...]

    #2 TOEFL Reading Section - Table Completion Questions | KoolKareers.com on 08.21.09 at 5:06 pm

    [...] Fact/Detail Questions 2) Not/Except Questions 3) Referent Questions 4) Vocabulary Questions 5) Inference Questions 6) Rhetorical Structure Questions 7) Coherence Questions 8) Paraphrasing Questions 9) Table [...]

    Leave a Comment

    *
    To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.
    Click to hear an audio file of the anti-spam word