TOEFL reading passages run several hundred words with about ten questions each, and the last question is usually a prose summary — choose three sentences from six that best summarise the passage — or a table task sorting information into categories. It is worth more than a single point, and it is the question students most often reach with no time left.
Budget backwards. Whatever your pacing, leave two minutes for the final question. Reaching it with thirty seconds is a guaranteed loss of the most valuable marks in the passage.
How the wrong options are built. Three of the six sentences are wrong in predictable ways:
- Minor detail. True, stated in the passage, but an example rather than a main idea. This is
- the commonest trap, because a true sentence feels like a safe choice.
- Not stated. Plausible, related, never actually claimed.
- Distorted. Mostly right with one changed word — "most" where the passage said "some",
- "caused" where it said "is associated with".
Work from the passage's structure, not your memory. By this question you have read most of the passage answering the others. Ask what each PARAGRAPH was for, and pick the sentences that match those jobs. A correct summary usually covers the passage's main sections, one each.
In the table task, sort by what the passage says rather than what sounds sensible. Two categories often share a plausible feature, and only one of them is actually attributed to it in the text.