Vocabulary for TOEFL iBT

18 VOCABULARY FOR TOEFL iBT

tell you what the unit(s) with blank(s) need to say. For example, consider this sam-

ple question:

Select the word that best fills in the blank.

➥ After finding sacred objects inside numerous Mayan caves, archaeologists

have begun to revise their opinion that the Maya used the caves solely for

________ functions.

a. reverent

b. theological

c. religious

d. secular

When you divide this sentence into punctuation-defined units, you have:

After finding sacred objects inside numerous Mayan caves,

and

archaeologists have begun to revise their opinion that the Maya used the caves solely

for ________ functions.

The first unit, the unit without the blank, tells you that the second unit has

something to do with what happened 1) after finding sacred objects and 2) in

Mayan caves. The second unit, the one with the blank, tells you that 1) archae-

ologists have begun to revise their opinion and 2) their opinion (before being

revised) was that Mayan caves were used only ( solely ) for some kindoffunction.

Your mission is to figure out what goes in the blank, namely what kind of func-

tion archaeologists used to think the caves were exclusively used for.

Now you’re ready to use the first unit to illuminate the second. If scientists used

to think one thing until they found sacred objects, it means they used to think the caves

were not used for sacred purposes. Now you know you need to fill in the blank with

a word that means “not sacred,” a word such as civic, or secular. Your final step is to

look at the answer choices to find the one that matches the idea you have formed

about what needs to be in the blank(s). Choice d , secular , is the best answer choice.

Here’s an example of a sample question that doesn’t divide neatly into a complete

unit and an incomplete unit. This question has a blank in each of its two units.