The reading section now asks around 50 items in about 30 minutes. That is well under a minute each, and it changes the approach completely: the old habit of reading a passage twice and then answering carefully does not fit inside the clock.
Three task types, and they want different things.
- Complete the Words. Short items testing vocabulary and word form directly. These are recall, not reasoning — you either hold the word or you do not, and deliberating rarely converts a maybe into a yes. Answer and move.
- Read in Daily Life. Practical, non-academic text: notices, instructions, correspondence, schedules. The information is findable; the skill is locating it fast and not being drawn into reading the whole thing.
- Read an Academic Passage. The closest thing to the old reading section. Read for structure — what the author claims, whose view is being reported, where the passage turns — and go back for detail only when a question sends you.
Three habits that buy time.
1. Answer in order and keep moving. With this many items, a minute lost to one is a minute that costs you two others. 2. Decide the part of speech first on any gap-filling item. It narrows the options before meaning is considered. 3. Never leave a blank. There is no penalty, and an unanswered item is a mark lost with certainty rather than probability.
On vocabulary. Complete the Words rewards exactly the vocabulary you cannot cram: words met often enough in real reading to arrive with a meaning attached. Wide reading in English is the only preparation that builds it, which is why this is the one section where starting four weeks out genuinely beats starting one week out.