A TOEFL Academic Passage Sample

This TOEFL academic passage sample is one original text of about 200 words and four questions: main idea, vocabulary in context, inference, and purpose. The keys are marked, and each wrong option is wrong for a reason you can reuse. It is not an ETS form. A solo passage on this site costs 1 credit when the exam starts. Each question is right or wrong. Outside knowledge does not score.

In this guide

1. What these four questions want
2. The passage
3. The four items
4. What the misses have in common
5. Try this yourself
6. Frequently asked questions

What this TOEFL academic passage sample asks

The 2026 academic task is one focused text, not the older pair of 700-word passages. Practice passages here are about 200 words. The questions do not reward a fact you learned in a course. They reward the claim, the sense of one word in its sentence, a conclusion the sentences force, and the job of an example.

The practice guide uses a vacant-lot paragraph and names the four jobs. This page gives a different text and writes the options out, so you can see a true sentence lose. How Reading is scored still gives the point only to the keyed option.

The passage

City roofs are often painted dark, and dark surfaces store heat. Some building crews have started coating flat roofs with a pale layer that reflects more sunlight than tar does. The coating is not a garden. It does not hold soil, and it does not need watering. Its job is narrower: it sends a larger share of the sun’s energy back upward instead of into the rooms below.

Researchers who measured one office block found that top-floor rooms under a pale roof stayed a little cooler on hot afternoons than the same rooms had stayed under tar. The difference was local. Lower floors barely changed. The team also warned that a pale roof does not replace shade trees along the street, because the trees cool the sidewalk, and the roof coating does not.

Cost is the practical limit they emphasized. The coating has to be renewed after several years of weather, and a building that skips renewal loses the benefit. A one-time coat is not a permanent climate policy. It is a maintenance task with a small, measurable effect on the rooms directly beneath it.

The four items

Main idea
A. Dark roofs store heat, so cities should ban tar.
B. A pale roof coating can keep top-floor rooms a little cooler, and the effect is local and temporary.
C. Roof gardens are the best way to cool an office block.
D. Lower floors benefit as much as top floors when a roof is painted pale.

Key: B. The passage states the cooling, then limits it to top floors, and then limits it again to a coat that must be renewed. A turns a description into a ban. C imports gardens the passage says the coating is not. D contradicts “lower floors barely changed.”

Vocabulary
In the sentence about researchers, “local” means
A. famous in that city.
B. limited to the top-floor rooms they measured.
C. required by a local law.
D. popular with the people who live nearby.

Key: B. The next sentence says lower floors barely changed. That is the sense of “local” here. A, C, and D are other meanings of the word that this paragraph does not use.

Inference
Which conclusion do the sentences force?
A. A building that never renews the coating should not expect the cooling to last.
B. Pale roofs make street trees unnecessary.
C. Every dark roof in a city is illegal.
D. Lower floors are warmer because they have more windows.

Key: A. Renewal is the condition the last paragraph states. B contradicts the warning about trees. C and D add rules and window facts the passage never gives.

Purpose
Why does the passage mention shade trees?
A. To recommend planting trees on the roof.
B. To show a cooling job the roof coating does not do.
C. To prove that tar is cheaper than trees.
D. To explain how researchers measured the office block.

Key: B. The trees cool the sidewalk. The coating does not. That contrast stops the reader from treating the roof as a full heat plan. A moves the trees onto the roof. C invents a price comparison. D attaches the trees to the measurement method, which was about rooms under the roof.

Job	What must survive in your note	Option that sounds true and still fails
Main idea	cooler top floors, local, must be renewed	“ban tar”
Vocabulary	“local” = not the lower floors	“local law”
Inference	no renewal, no lasting benefit	“trees are unnecessary”
Purpose	trees do a job the coating does not	“plant trees on the roof”

What the misses have in common

Each tempting miss is one step larger than the text. Cooling becomes a ban. “Local” becomes a law. A maintenance task becomes a reason to remove trees. The passage spent sentences stopping those steps. On a 200-word text the limit is part of the claim, because there is no later paragraph that will add it for you.

The report on a real attempt shows the supporting sentence and why the other choices do not fit. Copy the job. “Contrast stops a bigger claim” will transfer. “Pale roofs and tar” will not. If your note is a topic, rewrite it as a job before you spend another credit.

Question types separates the four jobs without this passage. Use that page when you can name the job and still pick the larger claim. Use this page when you need to see the options written out.

A full Reading section costs 3 credits and places a passage beside Complete the Words and daily-life texts. Stay on the 1-credit passage until the purpose item is right because you named the contrast, not because two options shared the word “trees.”

Try this yourself

Cover the keys. Answer the four questions in eight minutes. For any miss, write whether you dropped a limit or imported a fact. That sentence is the note for the scored passage.

Start an academic passage the same day. TOEFL Reading practice is the hub if you still need to choose a task. Compare your note with the rationale. Keep the note that matches the rationale’s job.

Frequently asked questions

How long is this passage supposed to be?

About 200 words in this product’s solo task. The public academic task is a short passage, not a 700-word reading. Count the questions on the attempt you took.

Do I get credit for a reasonable inference?

Only if the sentences force it. A hopeful city policy the passage does not state scores 0. There is no partial credit on a receptive item.

Is the indicative band an official score?

No. The report maps how many items you got right onto a 1.0–6.0 practice figure. It is not an ETS result.

Next steps

Open a new passage and say the question’s job before you read the options. Then check the 14-day Reading plan if you want this task placed in a week.