Moving along, here are all of the major changes to Chapter 2 of the new Official Guide to the TOEFL. This chapter covers the reading section of the TOEFL test.
You can read the whole blog series on changes at the following links: chapter one, chapter two, chapter three and four, chapter five, the tests.
Throughout the chapter, the “how to recognize” stuff for each question type has been rephrased to emphasize that questions are based on single paragraphs instead of on the whole article.
Page 37: again, “historical” articles are now referred to “historical and biographical narrative” articles.
Page 38: The frequency of “reference questions” is reduced from “0 to 2 questions per set” to “0 to 1 questions per set.”
Page 38: Again, “fill in a table” questions are not referred to.
Page 45: The book includes a more detailed description of what an “inference” actually is.
Page 58: The old book had the following practice sets: “The Origins of Cetaceans” and “Desert Formation” and “Early Cinema” and “Aggression” and “Artisans and Industrialization” and “Swimming Machines.”
The new book has: “Impact of Railroad Transportation in the United States” and “Desert Formation” and “Early Cinema” and “Water and Ocean Life” and “Frederick Taylor and United States Industry” and “The Distribution of Plants and Animals.”
This means that all of the passages with with fill-in-a-table questions have been removed. Note that the “Artisans and Industrialization” set also had an inference question that required reading of the whole passage.
I spotted at least one reference question, by the way. That is found in “Early Cinema.” That question type is not dead yet!