I read a couple issues of Analog Science Fiction and Fact this month – specifically the September/October ’25 and November/December ’25 issues. They both contained a few “science fact” articles that might make for good TOEFL practice. Sadly, they don’t publish online… but I can point you toward some related reading, I guess. The September/October issue contained a fine article by Richard A. Lovett about the solar storm in 1967 that almost triggered a nuclear war. You can read a different article about that over here. The November/December issue contained an article by Kelly Lagor about the “last universal common ancestor” or the most recent single-celled population from which all life on earth can said to be descended from. You can read a similar article over here.
Meanwhile… I spent a week in London to attend (and speak at) The Pie Live Europe. I picked up a handful of test books, which I will hopefully describe in next month’s column.
Finally, while shopping in Korea I had to take a picture of this little pamphlet… as it is a perfect representation of the sort of ephemera that appears in the reading section of the new TOEFL. Just imagine a question about what you should do to access a map of the outlet store (install an application). This sort of stuff seems to be even more common that the “read an email” items that frequently appear in test prep for the new test.
While on my trip, I read Confessions. Not my usual cup of tea, but it was next in line in the Norton Library Podcast. Otherwise, I spent my time reading travel books and booking websites. I haven’t been in the mood for much reading since getting home, but I should be back to normal with the usual recommendations in March!
While on the road in Egypt, I’ve been making use of “The Rough Guide to Egypt.” Traditional travel guidebooks have been out of fashion for quite some time, but I still use them when I can. I suppose “Rough Guide” is the best of the bunch these days, especially since Lonely Planet revamped their popular line of books into something more closely resembling a series of coffee table books on countries of the world.
Rough Guide is good, but I terribly miss the old “directory” format of the old Lonely Planets from their golden age in the late 90s and early 2000s. They included detailed route-planning and public transit information, while current guides mostly assume that travelers (even budget ones) will hire a private car to get between cities. I also love how each city listing in those books began with essentials: postal services, money services, communications services, tourist information offices, etc. They sometimes mentioned a particular restaurant owner who could arrange cheap taxis, or a hotel that was most convenient for late night bus arrivals. I know that sort of stuff is less urgent now… but it was comforting for the long-term budget traveler. I still recall the heft of the guide I used in China around 2006 and how its tissue-paper thin pages included detailed information about even the least-visited cities in that country.
The book I’m using now has really (really, really) detailed descriptions of the many tombs and temples found in Egypt, but is somewhat vague in terms of how to get around. Coverage of minor cities is minimal.
It dawns on me now that travel guides might be good sources of short “reading in daily life” passages like those that appear on the new TOEFL. I’ll be leaving my current guide behind when I move on to the next country, but I’ll hunt around my bookshelf for some materials to paste into future columns.
I spent quite a lot of time this month planning for my trip (next month) to Egypt and Jordan. My preparations included reading a handful of books about those countries. I especially enjoyed Kent R. Weeks’ “Illustrated Guide to Luxor.” I’ve been to Luxor, but I had forgotten the sheer volume of historic sites there. The book helped me narrow my itinerary down to something reasonable, given the three days I’ll spend in the area.
I also dug into my stack of unread issues of Jacobin and read the Summer 2024 issue. I liked “Welcome to Utopia, TX,” which explores the history of a curiously-named town in Texas.
Otherwise, I’ve mostly read fiction this month. I don’t usually write about fiction here, but I will mention that I enjoyed reading Colin Thubron’s first novel, “The God in the Mountain.” It tells the story of a Greek town where a copper miners are planning to dig into a sacred mountain. This one has been out of print since its original publication in the 1970s. I’ve always wondered why that is, as Thubron remains quite popular and the book is pretty decent. Sourcing a copy for myself wasn’t particularly easy.
Since this column is running short, I’ll paste in one more sample of “real world” English for you to mull over. This one comes from a travel guide to the state of West Virginia. As I indicated a few columns back, this could be a fun way to prepare for the new TOEFL. Some day, perhaps, I will put together a collection of these with TOEFLesque questions. The idea of using real materials for this sort of thing is quaint in the AI area… but it wasn’t so long ago that all English tests were cobbled together using real articles and audio snippets not specifically made for testing!
First up, I read “Our Hotel in Bali” by Louise G Koke. This slim volume relates the author’s experience running (along with her husband) the very first hotel on Kuta Beach in Bali. This hard-to-find book had been on my “must read” list for a couple of years, and when an affordably priced copy became available a few months ago I snapped it up (and, what do you know, it was signed by the author!).
I’ve been to Bali many times over the years (for the first time around 2006, and most recently in 2024) but I haven’t ever stayed very long. Bali is terribly crowded now so I mostly use it as a stepping stone to quieter places in Indonesia. That said, I’ve long had a fascination with Bali as an historically important tourist destination. Koke’s book offers great insights into that period, as it tells about a period when there were only three or four hotels on the island. Meanwhile, quite a few of the famous names in early Bali tourism make appearances in her story. Highly recommended. I suspect I will spend more time exploring the history of travel to Bali through reading in the months ahead.
Next, I read the August/September 2025 issue of the “Capital Hill Citizen.” It contained a great article about the possibility of a “cashless society.” This paper is print only (and proudly so) so I can’t link to it, but it did inspire a new writing for an academic discussion task, which I published over on prepex.
Finally, I continued my journey through the Norton Library Podcasts, and read a modern translation of “Inferno.” You can listen to the podcast episodes starting over here. I do recommend that if you attempt to tackle this work that you seek out a modern translation as I did. My first attempt, using a old public domain translation, was an abject failure.
Not a ton to report this month, as much of my reading time was spent on fiction, which I don’t usually highlight here. But I did check out a few relevant items.
First up, I read Norbert Elliot’s “On a Scale: A Social History of Writing Assessment in America.” This might be the best work on the topic, but it is a pretty niche topic. I learned a lot about why ETS raters grade TOEFL essays holistically – basically, it is pretty hard to get two raters to score an essay the same way when they are giving specific scores to various categories. That actually answers some long-standing questions I’ve had about the IELTS test, actually.
Next, I read the April 4, 2024 issue of the London Review of Books. I quite liked an article called “Zzzzzzz” about why we sleep. The topic of sleep has appeared on the TOEFL quite a few times. I think I’ll even add a question about sleep to the book I’m working on right now.
Finally, I read the latest dispatch from the Luddite Club. Now this is only available in print form and I don’t want to break that sacred trust by sharing the contents here, but if you happen to be a Luddite (or just enjoy traditional post), I do recommend joining their mailing list.
Also: I have decided to supplement this column with something called “You Should Read More Ephemera,” which will encourage everyone to read more of the odds and ends that appear on the new TOEFL, starting in January. I’ll do that by cutting out and photographing some of the various bits and bobs of English writing that cross my path. First up is a little travel guide to the mountain I look at from my window every morning, which came from a copy of “Stars and Stripes Korea” which I picked up last time I visited Incheon Airport. Enjoy:
At the last ETS Global event about the revised TOEFL, I inquired about the adaptive nature of the listening section of the test.
Specifically, I noted that both the routing module and the “hard module” contain the same item types: conversations, announcements and academic lectures.
I asked if the “hard module” would contain HARDER conversations and HARDER announcements and HARDER academic lectures. Or if it would contain a mix of items more skewed toward academic content.
The answer was that it would contain a mix of items more skewed toward academic content.
This lines up with what the paid TPO tests show us. In both adaptive sections (reading and listening) the routing, hard and easy modules seem to have items of equal difficulty. The difference lies in the mix of items presented.
Or to put it more bluntly: the hard module in each case forgoes most of the “daily life” items, while the easy module in each case forgoes most of the “academic” items.
Important to keep in mind if you are generating items for a personal question bank.
I really like this article from Cambridge about “Ethical AI for language learning and assessment.” If I were trying to position the IELTS to thrive in today’s brave new world, this is the sort of message I would use. I would express that the test is keeping up with the times, but that the makers of the test take a more cautious and thoughtful approach than its competitors. Sounds easy, right? Perhaps not. Monday I’ll write about some not-helpful articles out of Cambridge that will get in front of many more sets of eyeballs in the days ahead.
This month I read the March 21, 2024 issue of the London Review of books. A few articles caught my attention
“I Adjure You Egg” is a short history of magical amulets and charms in medieval Europe. A really fun exploration of a corner of European history we don’t often hear about. People believed in such charms with a lot of sincerity, for a very long time. It was interesting to know that charms were often scraps of written words rather than some object with more physicality, which is what we often picture when we think of charms.
“Llamas, Pizzas, Mandolins” is a long look at AI and its implications. Yeah, you are probably sick of this topic, but it is one that many still want to read about. And I bet it will be asked about on the TOEFL for some time to come.
After that, I read “Assessing Academic English for Higher Education” by John M. Norris and Xiaoming Xi of ETS. As I think I mentioned in an earlier column I am working my way through all of the books on my shelf (about tests or otherwise) that I have actually paid for with my own money. This one has been on my shelf for a couple of years at least. This was the perfect time to read it, as it serves as a sort of coda for the “old ETS” before the TOEFL gets blown up into something unrecognizable and mostly unconnected from what came before. The book is almost sorrowful, as it describes page after page of good research and good ideas about assessing English for academic purposes that never made it into the TOEFL iBT. Instead of using these ideas, ETS just sort of left the test in its original form, basically unchanged for two decades. It is no wonder that so many bright minds left to build the Duolingo English Test.
Finally, I read Richard Sennett’s “The Corrosion of Character,” a short book (really an essay) about work at the turn of this century. There is some stuff in here that ETSers might appreciate too, especially about the futility of companies trying to reform into something new by “reengineering” themselves. I was going to quote a relevant part of the book, but it was too long. So here’s a dramatic reading:
This part may hit home:
“…institutions become dysfunctional during the people-squeezing process: business plans are discarded and revised, expected benefits turn out to be ephemeral; the organization loses direction. Institutional changes, instead of following the path of a guided arrow, head in different and often conflicting directions: a profitable operating unit is suddenly sold, for example, yet a few years later the parent company tries to get back into the business in which it knew how to make money before it sought to reinvent itself.”
First up, I read a wonderful book called “How Scholars Write.” It’s a guide to good writing that is often assigned to first year students at Columbia University. It’s meant to give readers an understanding of how to approach academic writing early in their careers as students. It could be a little challenging for high schoolers (and even freshmen) but there is a lot to love here. The central idea is that writers should seek a “scholarly problem” to explore in their work. This refers to gaps in understanding that can be explored. I guess it is the difference between observing something and seeking out something new.
Next, I read Mark Fisher’s “Capitalist Realism.” Many readers have written about this book, so I’ll narrow my focus to something in Chapter 5. Here Fisher refers to the lifelong skilling and reskilling that workers were expected to do at the time he wrote this book (2008). This trend has become acute since then. It seems like all of the young people I talk to now know they need to keep learning for their whole careers. If they don’t keep learning they’ll be left behind. The trouble is, no one can tell them what, of all the things they could learn, is most useful to focus on. To make matters worse, that what is forever changing. It might be different every day they get out of bed. It’s almost kafkaesque.
Then I continued my readalong with the Norton Library Podcast, and read the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Interested readers can tune into the first episode over here.
Finally, I read the 7 March 2024 issue of the London Review of Books. An article called “Impossible Desires” describes the love we have of books. And the fear we have of them. I’m almost done with my large stack of LRB issues.
I read Christopher Schaberg’s “The Textual Life of Airports.” If you like academic writing and you also like airports, this is the book for you. In the first of his three books about airports, Loyola University professor Shaberg explores how they have been depicted in literature and popular culture over the years. This is a curious topic – and not for everyone – but the book has attracted a lot of admirers.
I also read “Challenges and Innovations in Speaking Assessment” by Larry David and John M. Norris of ETS. This one is perfect if you are obsessed with standardized English tests, or obsessed with the history of ETS. Or both. I enjoyed reading about ETS’s early forays into speaking assessment for clients like the Peace Corps and the province of New Brunswick. There is also some good stuff about the “Test of Spoken English” which existed alongside the original TOEFL, which didn’t include any speaking questions. And, of course, I was happy to learn more about the ETS “SpeechRater” AI and how they handle templated responses. Less interesting were articles about more recent research at ETS. It’s always sad to read that sort of stuff knowing that it will never find its way into an actual product. You know, in many ways the story of modern day ETS is a story of research and innovations that don’t ever get used for any real purposes.
I read a real grab bag of stuff this month. It was a good month.
First up, I read the June 2025 issue of National Geographic. It contained an excellent article called “Could Beavers be the Secret to Winning the Fight Against Wildfires?”. It explores some positive impacts of beaver dams. There is also some good stuff here about the history of beavers in the USA. This is great and accessible academic reading practice. I read this while sitting in the courtyard of the Doksan Public Library (in Geumcheon). A nice place to chill for an hour, if you are ever in the area.
Next, I read the May 12, 2025 issue of Time Magazine, which included a great article called “The Return of the Dire Wolf.” This one is about the science and ethics of resurrecting extinct species. This topic would make a perfect integrated writing question… or an even better academic discussion question. I have already added it to my “to-write” list.
I also read the February 22, 2024 issue of the London Review of Books. It included a great long article about Linnaeus, his life and his classification system. Perfect TOEFL reading practice.
Moving along, I read Kate Chopin’s novel “The Awakening,” as part of my journey through the Norton Library Podcast. This one is a bit more accessible than most books covered by the podcast, so check it out if you are interested in reading some classic American literature. The podcast episode is here. And you can find a cheap copy of the book on Amazon.
Finally, I engaged my particular brand of madness and read “Cambridge English Exams – The First Hundred Years.” Yeah… this is a detailed history of the first 100 years of the Cambridge English Exams. Pretty cool if you are into that sort of thing. If so, you can read it for free via Cambridge.
That’s all for now, but check back for some more silliness next month.
I often get questions about how timers work on the TOEFL test. So here’s a quick summary. These details will be accurate until the TOEFL Test changes on January 21, 2026.
Reading
There is one 36-minute timer for the whole reading section. You will have 36 minutes to read both of the articles and answer all of the questions.
Listening
There are two separate timers in the listening section.
One of the timers is 10 minutes. You will have 10 minutes to answer 17 questions about two lectures and one conversation. The timer only counts down when you are answering questions. It does not move while you are listening to the lectures and conversation.
The other timer is 6.5 minutes. You will have 6.5 minutes to answer 11 questions about one lecture and one conversation. The timer only counts down when you are answering questions. It does not move when you are listening to the lecture and conversation.
Speaking
Question One: After you hear the question you will have 15 seconds to prepare and 45 seconds to speak.
Question Two: You will have 45 or 50 seconds to read the announcement. Then you will listen to a conversation. Then you will have 30 seconds to prepare and 60 seconds to speak.
Question Three: You will have 45 or 50 seconds to read the article. Then you will listen to a lecture. Then you will have 30 seconds to prepare and 60 seconds to speak.
Question Four: You will first listen to a lecture. Then you will have 20 seconds to prepare and 60 seconds to speak.
Writing
Question One: First, you will have 3 minutes to read the article. Then you will listen to a lecture. Then you will have 20 minutes to write your response. The article will be visible as you write.
Question Two: You will have 10 minutes to read everything and write your response.
In all sections, timers only start after instructions have been given. There are no breaks.
