This lesson shows the first of the really different types of reading questions. This is a type of question that maybe you’ve never seen before on an English test. The insert text question. This type of question asks you to put text into a paragraph, that is, you will see a new sentence and you must decide where in the original passage that new sentence must go.
You have one of these in every passage in the TOEFL reading. So if you have three readings you’ll have three insert text questions. If you have four, you’ll have four questions, and so on. That makes them medium frequency, so they’re pretty important. They’re also one of the more unique types of questions on a test, so they take practice.
The best way to answer them is to use connecting words and phrases. So for example, pronouns, pronouns connect a sentence. When you say, Jim walked his dog, say. And then in the next sentence you start with he. We know that he means Jim. This pronoun, he, connects the two sentences.
He, she, it, they, that, those, there, any words like that are very important for insert text questions. Transition words are also very important, of course. They’re important on the whole test, but they’re especially important on these questions. Words like although, but, however and, so, because, they connect to ideas.
If you can find how they should be related, then you can place the sentence next to the other sentence in the text which connects to it. You should also pay attention to time words, which are really just a type transition, after, before, next, second, finally, those tell us the order of events. Besides that, we should look at topic words.
If the beginning of the paragraph talks about topic A and the end of the paragraph talks about topic B, and your sentence that you have to insert talks about topic B, then you probably want to put the sentence somewhere here. Pay attention to what the key words are in that new sentence. Let’s take a look at an example. In order to answer this question, you should have read the text in the sample lesson linked below.
Okay, here’s our question. Look at the four squares that indicate where the following sentence can be added to the passage. This text is always the same, you shouldn’t need to read it. You know what an insert text question looks like and you know what to do so it’s faster.
Below that, we have our sentence which is much more important. Regardless, even the most conservative guess points to a truly astounding figure. There are a few things we should notice here. First, this transition word, regardless. This tells us there will be a contrast between the previous sentence, and this sentence.
Next we want to talk about the astounding figure. So, there should be something about very large numbers. Similarly, the word guess, we’re talking about guesses so we should see something about guessing numbers. So we want to know, where would the sentence best fit. Let’s look at our text.
Okay, so we have a few options. You will select one of these black squares where the sentence will go. Let’s try the first square. This doesn’t work here, why not? Well, we have nothing about guess before the sentence. We’re definitely not talking about a guest here.
This is a scientific fact. So, it’s a bit strange to have something about a guess in the next sentence, it refers to nothing. Okay, how about the next option? Is there a guess in this sentence which the bold sentence, the new sentence might refer to?
Yes, some estimates are as high as one million. So, guess actually works here. Now does the regardless make sense? We say a conservative guess, shows a large number. Well, here are some large numbers, and we’re saying that we don’t know how big that number is, how old Pando is, and in the next sentence we say, but, it is old, it is a large number.
So this does make sense because this sentence says we don’t know and this sentence contrasts by saying still, we know that it’s large. All right, let’s try the other options just to be sure. Does this work here? Well, guess could be about this part here believed to be 6,000 tons. That sounds okay, and astounding figure makes sense again talking about 6,000 tons, some very large number.
But regardless does not make sense here because we are not contrasting this sentence with this sentence. So, we have to move on. Let’s try the last one. Okay, approximately sounds like a guess, but if you look at this it says for reference, the blue whale, so this is something probably factual that we’re using for reference.
Approximately is not quite the same type of guess as here and again the word regardless would not make sense here. We’re not guessing about the size of the blue whale, we are guessing about the age of Pando. So, this cannot be correct. In the end, we have to settle on the second square for our answer.