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English & TOEIC learning guides
Practical, expert guides on vocabulary, grammar, and TOEIC Reading — written to help you study smarter, then practise free on eng-test.com.
TOEIC Part 1 Photographs: Tips, Traps and the “Is Being” Rule
TOEIC Part 1 gives you 6 photographs and, for each one, 4 spoken statements that are not printed and are played only once. Most wrong statements fail in predictable ways. In eng-test.com’s 180 Part 1 practice questions, a sound-alike word or a wrong action explains two thirds of the 540 wrong statements, and “is being” was the right answer only 4 times out of 64. Here is how to use that, with four worked examples.
· 10 min readRead article →TOEIC Part 2 Tips: Why the Right Response Often Doesn't Answer the Question
TOEIC Part 2 plays 25 questions or statements, each followed by three spoken responses, and prints none of them. A common mistake is waiting for a reply that answers the question word for word. In eng-test.com's 378 Part 2 practice questions, 180 correct answers (48%) are indirect, and only 24 of the 102 yes/no-type questions have a correct answer that opens with “Yes” or “No”. This guide shows which prompt types work that way, the three traps behind 86% of the bank's wrong options, and six practice items with answers.
· 12 min readRead article →TOEIC Part 3 Conversations: How the 39 Questions Work and How to Answer Them
TOEIC Part 3 plays 13 short conversations, once each, and asks three printed questions about every one: 39 questions in all. The conversation itself is never printed, the narrator leaves 8 seconds after each question (12 for a graphic question), and some conversations have three speakers. This guide explains each question type, shows why wrong options sound right using the 78 Part 3 questions eng-test.com has written, and ends with a sample set you can check yourself.
· 10 min readRead article →Present Perfect vs Past Simple: The One Rule That Decides It
If the sentence names a time period that is over — yesterday, last week, in 2019 — use the past simple. If the period still includes the present moment, or no time is named at all, use the present perfect. Almost every hard case is really a question about whether the time period has closed, not about what the verb means.
· 6 min readRead article →Future Tenses in English: Will, Going To, and Four More Ways
Every future form places the event at the same point in time. What separates them is why you believe it will happen: a decision made as you speak takes will, an intention formed earlier takes be going to, a fixed arrangement takes the present continuous, and a published schedule takes the present simple. Choose by evidence, not by date.
· 7 min readRead article →Past Tenses in English: How the Four Forms Order Events
The past forms are not four ways of saying “earlier”. They set events in order relative to one another: the past continuous supplies the background, the past simple supplies the event, the past perfect reaches back behind the point the story has already reached, and the past perfect continuous measures how long something ran before that point.
· 7 min readRead article →English Tenses Exercises: 24 Sentences, With Answers and Reasons
Four sets of six, built so that each item turns on a single visible signal — a time expression, a conjunction, or a stative verb. Work through a set, check the reasons rather than just the answers, and use the diagnostic table to pick what to read next.
· 8 min readRead article →TOEIC Relative Pronouns: Who, Which, That and Whose
Use who for people and which for things, then check what the relative clause is missing: a subject, an object, or a possessive determiner. That can refer to either people or things in defining clauses, but cannot replace who or which after a comma in a non-defining clause. These checks are more reliable than memorising one word per noun.
· 6 min readRead article →TOEIC Conditionals: If Clauses, Had, Were and Should
To solve a conditional sentence, identify when the condition and result happen, then match their verb forms. Had we known means If we had known; Should you need means If you should need. These inverted openings express conditions, not questions. In our bank, 204 of 278 conditional-labelled items are rated hard, making this a useful topic for focused review.
· 6 min readRead article →TOEIC Confusing Words: Grammar and Meaning Traps
TOEIC-style confusing choices fall into different problems: grammatical roles, verb forms, and opposite meanings. Decide which problem you have before translating every option. Our new count finds 16,706 distinct correct-answer/distractor pairs; this measures how questions are built, not which words learners get wrong most often.
· 6 min readRead article →TOEIC Gerund vs Infinitive: V-ing or To + Verb?
Choose a gerund or infinitive from the word that controls the blank. Enjoy and avoid take V-ing; decide and plan take to + base verb; a preposition takes a noun or V-ing. But to can itself be a preposition, as in look forward to meeting. Meaning also changes in pairs such as stop working and stop to work.
· 6 min readRead article →TOEIC Modal Verbs: Must, Should, Can, May and Will
After a core modal such as must, should, can, may or will, use the base form of the next verb. Then check meaning: must states an obligation, should often gives advice, and may can express permission or possibility. Must not prohibits an action; do not have to removes the obligation. That difference matters in workplace notices.
· 5 min readRead article →TOEIC Subject–Verb Agreement: Find the Real Subject
Match the finite verb to the subject’s head noun, not automatically to the noun closest to the blank. In The list of suppliers is ready, list controls is. With either…or or neither…nor joining subjects of different number, standard usage commonly follows the nearer subject. That is a specific coordination rule, not a rule for every sentence.
· 6 min readRead article →TOEIC IT Vocabulary: Software, Maintenance and Outages
For TOEIC-style IT notices, learn the language of access, timing and user action: unavailable, maintenance, sign out and resolve. You do not need to study programming to understand a notice. Our bank contains 1,512 IT-tagged questions (9.3% of active items); improve and enhance are keyed answers 104 and 92 times in that group.
· 6 min readRead article →TOEIC Marketing Vocabulary: Campaigns, Launches and Offers
TOEIC-style marketing texts connect a goal, an audience, an action and a response. Learn launch a campaign, devise a strategy and expand a customer base as phrases. In our 1,225 marketing-tagged questions, increase, boost and enhance are keyed answers 40, 39 and 38 times; their frequency is a study aid, not an official exam forecast.
· 6 min readRead article →TOEIC Customer Service Vocabulary: Complaints and Refunds
Customer-service reading is about identifying the problem, the proposed remedy and the customer’s next action. Address a complaint means deal with it; resolve an issue means solve it. A refund returns money, while a replacement supplies another item. Our bank has 1,060 customer-service-tagged questions, with 5.9% labelled hard.
· 6 min readRead article →TOEIC Project Management Vocabulary: Deadlines and Resources
Project updates ask you to track what changed, what stayed the same and what must happen first. Extend a deadline gives more time; postpone a launch moves an event later. Allocate resources assigns people, money or equipment. Our bank has 1,062 project-management-tagged questions, and extend is the keyed answer 69 times in that group.
· 6 min readRead article →Thailand TOEIC Reading: 230 in 2024, 224 in 2025
ETS’s 2024 report lists a Reading mean of 230 for test takers whose native country was Thailand; the 2025 report lists 224. These describe the reported test-taker groups, not everyone in Thailand. Counting all rows in Table 1 gives 39 countries in each edition: Thailand is fourth from the bottom for Reading in 2024 and third in 2025.
· 6 min readRead article →TOEIC Legal Vocabulary: Contracts, Clauses and Approval
For TOEIC-style contract reading, focus on who may act, what must be approved, which conditions apply and what is excluded. Scrutinize means examine closely; ratify means formally approve; amend means change. Our legal-tagged group is small—286 questions—but 146 are labelled hard (51.0%), so careful reading of formal wording is useful.
· 6 min readRead article →TOEIC HR Vocabulary: The 38 Words That Actually Appear, Counted Across 2,830 Questions
Human resources is the single most common business context in TOEIC-style Reading: 2,830 of the 16,214 questions eng-test.com analysed, or 17.5%. It is also one of the easiest — just 9.8% of HR questions are rated hard, against 39.9% in finance. That combination makes HR vocabulary the highest-return list a learner can start with, and this is the list, ranked by how often each word is the correct answer.
· 12 min readRead article →TOEIC Email Questions Are Reading Questions, Not Vocabulary Questions — What 1,951 of Them Actually Test
Email is the second most common context in TOEIC-style Reading: 1,951 of the 16,214 questions eng-test.com analysed, or 12.0%. But the counts show something most study guides get wrong. Of those questions, 932 test a reading skill and only about 90 test vocabulary choice. Learning a list of email phrases is not what these questions reward — knowing where in an email the answer hides is.
· 11 min readRead article →Why TOEIC Finance Questions Are the Hardest in the Bank — and the 18 Words That Make Them That Way
Finance is the hardest of the major business contexts in TOEIC-style Reading. Of the 1,594 finance questions eng-test.com analysed, 39.9% are rated hard, against 9.8% for HR and 5.9% for customer service. Only one niche context beats it — legal, at 51.0% hard, but on 286 questions rather than 1,594. The reason is not that the accounting is complicated — it is that the vocabulary is low-frequency formal register. Words like scrutinize, bolster, curtail and discrepancies do the damage, and there are fewer of them than you would fear.
· 11 min readRead article →TOEIC Collocations: The Verb + Noun Pairs Behind One Question in Six
Verb choice is the single most-tested skill in TOEIC-style Reading. In eng-test.com’s analysis of 16,214 questions, 2,597 of them — 16.0%, or one question in six — come down to choosing the right verb. The distractors are almost always verbs that mean roughly the same thing but do not pair with the noun in the sentence. This is the counted list of the pairs that actually get tested.
· 12 min readRead article →TOEIC Verb Forms: Eight Trigger Words That Decide the Answer Before You Read the Options
Verb form is a useful early grammar topic in our TOEIC-style bank. Of the 16,214 questions eng-test.com analysed, 633 test it, 45.5% of those are rated easy and only 6.0% hard. Often, a word before the blank decides the form; this guide explains eight common triggers.
· 9 min readRead article →TOEIC Word Forms: Why Choosing Between "Effective" and "Effectively" Is 13.2% of the Exam
Part-of-speech choice is the largest grammar cluster in the bank, and the hardest of the ones that appear at volume. Of the 16,214 questions eng-test.com analysed, 2,140 — 13.2% — test whether you pick the adjective, the adverb or the noun form, and 25.7% of them are rated hard, four times the rate for verb-form questions. The fix is not more vocabulary. It is knowing which suffix signals which part of speech, and where in a sentence each one is allowed to stand.
· 11 min readRead article →TOEIC Prepositions: 980 Questions, and "By" Is the Answer 133 Times
Prepositions are a frequent grammar topic in our TOEIC-style bank. Of the 16,214 questions eng-test.com analysed, 980 test a preposition, 40.3% are rated easy and 6.1% hard. By is the correct answer 133 times, nearly twice the next preposition. Many of these items concern deadlines.
· 10 min readRead article →TOEIC Passive Voice: Why Business English Keeps Hiding Who Did It — and How to Spot the Answer
The passive is tested on 455 of the 16,214 questions eng-test.com analysed, 2.8% of the bank, and 13.0% of those are rated hard. It appears so often because business English deliberately avoids naming who acted: the meeting was postponed, the budget was approved, the data is stored securely. Once you see that pattern, the question answers itself — the blank almost always wants a past participle.
· 9 min readRead article →Where Your 75 Minutes Actually Goes: TOEIC Reading Pacing, Measured Across 16,214 Questions
Counting questions tells you almost nothing about TOEIC Reading pacing, because the five categories are nearly identical by count and nothing like each other by clock. Across the 16,214 questions eng-test.com analysed, vocabulary and grammar are 40.1% of the items but only 21.7% of the estimated time, while the two passage-based categories are 40.3% of the items and 65.5% of the time. That imbalance is why people run out of time in Part 7.
· 10 min readRead article →TOEIC Part 7: Why Scanning Beats Reading, Five to One
Detail questions outnumber main-idea questions by roughly five to one on TOEIC-style Reading — 1,605 against 335 across the 16,214 questions eng-test.com analysed. That single ratio should change how you approach Part 7: you are being asked to locate specific facts far more often than to summarise, and a Part 7 item carries an estimated 128.5 seconds you do not have. Scanning is not a shortcut. It is the skill being tested.
· 10 min readRead article →Is the TOEIC Hard? What 16,214 Analysed Questions and ETS's 2024 Data Actually Show
Not in the way most people expect. Across 16,214 TOEIC-style Reading questions analysed by eng-test.com in July 2026, 79.5% sit at easy or medium difficulty, so the language is not the barrier. The clock is: the two passage-based categories take 65.5% of the estimated working time. And for Thai test takers the difficulty concentrates in Reading, where ETS puts the mean at 230 out of 495.
· 13 min readRead article →What Is the TOEIC Test? The Complete 2026 Guide to Format, Scoring, Fees and Registration in Thailand
The TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) is a multiple-choice English exam developed by ETS that measures everyday workplace English. The most widely taken version, TOEIC Listening and Reading, has 200 questions across 7 parts, takes about 2 hours, and is scored from 10 to 990. In Thailand, you register by phone through the Center for Professional Assessment (CPA Thailand), which runs test centres in Bangkok and Chiang Mai; the personal exam fee is 1,800 THB as of 2026.
· 10 min readRead article →What Is a Good TOEIC Score? Score Chart, CEFR Mapping, and Thai Job Benchmarks (2026)
For most Thai job applications, a TOEIC Listening & Reading score of 600 or higher is "good" — it clears common employer filters, including Thai Airways' published cabin-crew minimum, and beats the Thai test-taker mean of 546 in ETS's 2024 Report on Test Takers Worldwide. A score of 785+ corresponds to CEFR B2 in both skills under ETS's official mapping, and 900+ sits above every national mean in that report. This guide explains what every score band means and how to set a target you can actually hit.
· 9 min readRead article →The 100 Most Common TOEIC Vocabulary Words — Mined From 9,678 Correct Answers
This is the TOEIC word list you actually need: the 100 words that most often ARE the correct answer, mined from 9,678 questions we analysed in our bank of 20,000+ original questions — each with type, meaning and a real collocation. The #1 word by a wide margin: enhance, correct 178 times.
· 9 min readRead article →What's Actually on TOEIC Reading? We Analysed 16,214 Practice Questions to Find Out
Based on an analysis of 16,214 original TOEIC-style Reading questions from the eng-test bank, verb choice is the single most-tested skill (2,597 questions, about 16% of the analysed set), detail-finding questions outnumber main-idea questions almost 5 to 1, and half of all items (50.6%) sit at medium difficulty. HR and email scenarios dominate the business contexts. This post shows the full numbers — and the study plan they imply.
· 9 min readRead article →TOEIC Part 6 & 7 Tips: The Time-Management Playbook for Reading
TOEIC Part 6 and Part 7 make up 70 of the 100 Reading questions, and running out of time is one of the most common reasons candidates underscore. Budget about 10 minutes for Part 5, 8-10 for Part 6, and 55 for Part 7, learn the seven Part 7 question types, and never leave a blank — there is no guessing penalty.
· 7 min readRead article →TOEIC Reading Sample Questions with Answers & Explanations
The TOEIC Reading section is 100 multiple-choice questions in 75 minutes, split into Part 5 (Incomplete Sentences), Part 6 (Text Completion), and Part 7 (Reading Comprehension). Below are eight original sample questions — with the correct answers and full explanations — so you know exactly what to expect on test day.
· 8 min readRead article →TOEIC Part 5 Tips: Strategy, Question Types, and Practice with Answers
TOEIC Part 5 is the Incomplete Sentences section: 30 single-sentence, fill-in-the-blank questions that test grammar and vocabulary. Once you can recognize its four question types and work at a steady 20–25 seconds per item, it becomes the fastest place to gain Reading points.
· 6 min readRead article →How to Memorize English Vocabulary: 9 Techniques That Actually Work
To memorize English vocabulary so it sticks, stop re-reading word lists and instead test yourself from memory and review words at growing intervals (spaced repetition), always learning each word inside a real sentence. This guide covers the vocabulary memorization techniques that help you remember new words for the long term — spaced repetition, active recall, context, word families, mnemonics, and a simple weekly routine — with examples drawn from TOEIC and business English.
· 7 min readRead article →The 12 English Tenses, Summarized: Chart, Formulas, and Examples
English has 12 tenses, built by combining three time frames (present, past, future) with four aspects (simple, continuous, perfect, perfect continuous). This guide gives you a complete English tenses chart with structures and example sentences, then explains the trickiest contrasts — like present perfect vs past simple — that show up again and again in TOEIC grammar questions.
· 8 min readRead article →