The three practice tests, including the diagnostic test, are designed to help you prepare with little anxiety. Remember that knowledge is power. By using Peterson's Master TOEFL Reading Skills as a supplement to your other TOEFL test preparation, you will fine tune your reading comprehension skills. | Developing Reading Comprehension Skills OVERVIEW Finding main ideas and supporting details Skimming for specific information Making inferences Understanding advertisements How thoughts are related Understanding contemporary reading passages Reading history textbooks Summing it up FINDING MAIN IDEAS AND SUPPORTING DETAILS The most valuable reading comprehension skill is probably the ability to determine the most important thing an author is saying. Read the following paragraph to see if you can distinguish between essential and nonessential information and between the main idea and the supporting details. Sample Reading Passage 1 Left-handed people suffer more from stress than their right-handed peers according to a study of 1 100 adults by University of Michigan researchers. As a result they smoke and drink more. Fifty-five percent of the lefties 5 smoked whereas fewer than half of the righties smoked. Furthermore the lefties consumed more alcohol per year than their right-handed counterparts. The main idea is Notice that in this paragraph it was the first sentence that told you the main idea. This sentence called a topic sentence usually appears at the beginning. Sometimes however the paragraph s main idea is expressed in the last sentence and sometimes readers must determine the main idea of a paragraph by summarizing the author s message themselves. chapter 3 33 34 PART III TOEFL Reading Review Answer The main idea of the passage is that left-handed people suffer more from stress than right-handed people. Directions Underline the main idea and circle the supporting details as you read the paragraph below. Then write them in note form in the space provided. Sample Reading Passage 2 You ought to know what to do to help a person who is choking. First you stand behind the choking victim and put your arms around his or her waist. Second you make a fist and place the thumb side against the person s stomach just above the navel 5
