TOEFL Reading: Complete the Words
Short items testing vocabulary and word form directly — one of the three Reading task types introduced in January 2026. It is the fastest-moving part of the section and the part where preparation translates into marks most mechanically.
Word families, not definitions
Because the task tests form as well as meaning, knowing a word is not enough — you need its family. *Analyse, analysis, analytical, analytically* are four answers to four different items, and a candidate who knows only the verb gets one of them.
- Learn each new word with its noun, verb, adjective and adverb forms.
- Pay attention to the suffixes that mark each: -tion and -ment for nouns, -ise and -ify for verbs, -ive, -ous and -al for adjectives.
- Notice the irregular ones, which is where items are most often built.
Under the clock
- Read the sentence to the end before choosing — the word after the gap often decides the form.
- Decide the part of speech first; it usually eliminates most of the field.
- Then decide meaning.
- Move. These items are worth the same as the longer ones and take a fraction of the time, so time banked here funds the academic passage.
Academic word lists repay study more here than anywhere else on the TOEFL, because this task tests vocabulary with nothing else wrapped around it.
Complete the Words — FAQs
2 questions
No. The old type asked what a word meant in a passage. This tests vocabulary and form as its own task.
It varies — the section adapts, so the mix of task types is not fixed.
More reading question types
Sources
Written from the test board's own published material and checked on 1 October 2026.