8 Tips for Taking Multiple-Choice on TOEIC Test

Effective test-taking strategies are especially important with multiple-choice questions found on language tests such as TOEIC. These types of questions often include clues that may help you identify the correct answer. You may be able to improve your performance on such tests by considering the following tips :

1. Read the direction carefully

The directions usually indicate that some alternatives may be partly correct or correct statements in themselves, but not when joined to the stem. The directions may say : "choose the most correct answers" or "mark the one best answer."Sometimes you may be asked to "mark all correct answers".

2. As you read the stem of each multiple-choice question anticipate the answer before looking at the options. If the answer you anticipated is among the options, it is likely to be the correct one.

3. Always read each question completely.

Continue reading even if you find your anticipated answer among the options. There may be a better option farther down the list.

4. Learn how to quickly eliminate options that are highly implausible.

Many questions have only two plausible options, accompanied by "throwaway" options for filler. You should work at spotting these implausible options so that yu can quickly discard them and narrow your task.

5. Be aware that information relevant to one question is sometimes given away in another test item.

6. On items that have "all of the above" as an option, if you know that just two of the options are correct, you should choose "all of the above". If you are confident that one of the options is incorrect, you should eliminate this option and "all of the above" and choose from remaining options.

7. Options that represent broad, sweeping generalizations tend to be incorrect. You should be vigilant for words such as always, never, necessarily, only, must, completely, totally, and so forth that create these improbable assertions.

8. In contrast, options that represent carefully qualified statement tend to be correct. Words such as often, sometimes, perhaps, may and generally tend to show up in these well-qualified statements.