Reading Strategies
TOEFL 2026 — the most practiced Reading questions, August 2026
How this list was measured
Every entry below is ranked by the number of different Reach120 learners who submitted an answer to it during August 2026 — not by how often the question was shown, and not by anything anyone chose to feature. One learner practicing the same question repeatedly counts once.
A question needs at least 3 different learners to appear at all, a task type needs at least 5 such questions before it is ranked, and Reading needs at least 10 learners in the month before this post is generated.
At most 8 questions per task type are listed.
Two things are removed before anything is counted, so that nothing in this order was put there by us: Reach120's own accounts — staff, test users and the internal harnesses that exercise the product — and the fallback questions the app hands out when there is no question bank to draw from, which measure our own placement rather than anybody's choice.
The exact learner counts are deliberately not published — the order is the finding, the headcount is not. This ranking measures practice, not opinion: it is not a vote and it is not a quality judgement by us or by ETS. Where a question has separately been rated by enough learners or tutors to carry a verification mark, that mark is shown next to it and explained at the end.
Try it — one real Reading item
This passage and question come from the same bank Reach120 learners practice against. Answer it here — Reading is free and unlimited on every account.
A Butterfly's Long Journey
Each autumn, millions of monarch butterflies leave the cooling regions where they spent the summer and travel enormous distances to warmer wintering grounds. What makes the feat remarkable is that no single butterfly makes the round trip. [A] The insects that fly south have never seen the destination. [B] Their great-grandparents left it the previous spring. [C] Somehow, the route is passed down without being taught. [D] No parent survives long enough to guide the next flight.
How the butterflies find their way is a puzzle scientists are still unraveling. Evidence suggests they use the position of the sun as a kind of compass, adjusting for the time of day so that they keep heading in a steady direction.
The wintering sites are strikingly specific. Generation after generation, the butterflies cluster in the same small patches of forest, where the temperature and shelter suit their needs. Crowded together on the trees, they wait out the cold months in a resting state.
Because the journey depends on these few sites and on food plants along the route, the migration is fragile. Loss of habitat at either end, or in between, can threaten a spectacle that has unfolded for countless generations.
Why C is the answer: Scientists are still figuring out the puzzle, so unraveling means working out.
- A. Celebrating is unrelated to solving a puzzle.
- B. Tying together is nearly the opposite of unraveling a puzzle.
- D. They are actively studying it, not ignoring it.
Reading passages
1. How Mangroves Protect Coastlines
Task type: COMPLETE_THE_WORDS
Subject area: Environmental science
How it opens: Mangrove trees grow where tropical coastlines meet the sea. Their tangled roots prot____ young fish from larger predators and slow waves before they reach the shore. The roots also tra____ mud and plant material, gradually building new soil. Although salty water creates difficult conditions, mangroves have ada____ by…
2. How Desert Plants Make Food
Task type: COMPLETE_THE_WORDS
Subject area: botany
How it opens: Desert plants face a harsh challenge: they must cap____ sunlight to make food while losing as little pre____ water as possible. Many suc____ solve this by opening their tiny pores only at night, when the cooler air reduces eva____. During darkness they abs____ carbon dioxide and store it as an acid inside their cells.…
3. Cafe Lunch Menu Note
Task type: READ_IN_DAILY_LIFE
Subject area: Restaurant menu
How it opens: MIDDAY MENU (served 11:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.) Soup of the day — 5. Ask your server; it changes daily. Garden salad — 8. Add grilled chicken for 3 or tofu for 2. House sandwich — 10, served with a side of fruit or chips. All lunch plates come with a free refill of coffee or tea. Please tell us about any allergies before…
4. Islands Born From Fire
Task type: COMPLETE_THE_WORDS
Subject area: geology
How it opens: In the middle of the ocean, brand-new islands can rise from the sea____ through repeated volcanic eru____. Deep beneath the crust, hot mol____ rock forces its way upward through cracks and weak points. As the material reaches the cold water, it cools and har____ into solid layers of dark bas____. With each eruption,…
5. The Spread of the Printing Press
Task type: COMPLETE_THE_WORDS
Subject area: History
How it opens: Before the middle of the fifteenth century, books in Europe were copied slowly by hand, which made them rare and costly. The printing press, refined in the 1450s, dram____ changed this situation. Using movable metal type, printers could produce many identical copies of a text in a fraction of the time. As a result,…
6. Hidden in Plain Sight
Task type: COMPLETE_THE_WORDS
Subject area: biology
How it opens: To survive among hungry pre____, countless animals have evolved clever ways to escape det____. The most common trick is ble____ in, so a mot____ moth resting on bark seems to van____ against the pattern behind it. Some creatures go further and mim____ the shape of a leaf or a harmless twig. Others carry bold stripes…
7. The Dance of the Honeybee
Task type: COMPLETE_THE_WORDS
Subject area: animal behavior
How it opens: When a for____ honeybee returns to the hive, she sha____ the location of a rich food sou____ through a special dance. If the flowers are close, she per____ a simple round dance that tells other bees to search nearby. For dis____ patches, she switches to the waggle dance, moving in a figure eight while vib____ her…
8. The Life Cycle of Stars
Task type: COMPLETE_THE_WORDS
Subject area: Astronomy
How it opens: Stars begin their lives inside vast clouds of gas and dust. Gravity pulls this material together until the center becomes hot and dense enough to ign____ nuclear reactions. For most of its life a star remains stable because the outward push of these reactions bal____ the inward pull of gravity. Eventually the star…
Practice Reading passages on Reach120
About the verification marks
No question in this list carries a verification mark yet. A mark is earned from learner and tutor ratings, which are still accumulating, so an unmarked question here means "not yet rated enough" — not "rated badly".
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