TOEFL · Guides · October 25, 2026 · 8 min read

TOEFL Complete the Words: how it works, tips and practice (2026)

Complete the Words opens the TOEFL iBT Reading section since the 2026 update. You get a short academic paragraph in which, from the second sentence on, every second word has lost its second half, and you type the missing letters. Each paragraph has 10 gaps, and each correctly spelled word is worth 1 point. It is a C-test: a classic way of measuring general language ability, because filling a gap needs grammar, vocabulary and reading for meaning at the same time. The good news is that the rule is fixed, so the task rewards a clear method more than any other part of Reading.

How the task works

The cutting rule works like this:

• The first sentence is complete. It is there to give you the topic. Read it carefully.
• From the second sentence, every second word is cut. Count the words: the 1st stays, the 2nd is cut, the 3rd stays, the 4th is cut, and so on, until there are 10 gaps. The rest of the paragraph is complete.
• The second half disappears. You always see the beginning of the word. For a word with an even number of letters, exactly half is missing (bats → ba__). For a word with an odd number of letters, the larger half is missing (flowers, 7 letters → flo____: 3 shown, 4 missing; one → o__).
• Short words count too. to becomes t_, at becomes a_. These are often the easiest points on the page, and also the easiest to waste by guessing too fast.

In the Nomto room, names and other capitalized words, words with apostrophes or hyphens, and one-letter words like a are left whole and not counted, so the count always runs through ordinary lower-case words.

An example paragraph

This paragraph was written for this guide. Try it before you read the answers.

Bees are not the only animals that pollinate flowers. In many trop____ forests, ba__ carry pol___ from o__ tree t_ another a_ night. These ba__ visit flo____ that op__ after da__ and give off a strong smell. Because the bats can travel long distances, they help plants that grow far apart.

Answers and the clue for each:

Gap 10 is the kind that separates careful readers from fast ones. Dawn is a real word and fits the letters, but it contradicts the sentence before it. In a C-test the meaning of the whole paragraph always decides.

The clues that solve most gaps

1. Grammar around the gap. Before you think about meaning, ask what kind of word fits.

• After a, the, these, many: a noun or an adjective + noun.
• After can, will, to: a base verb.
• After has, have, was, were: often a past participle (-ed, -en).
• Subject–verb agreement: the plant gr___ is grows (three letters missing), while the plants gr__ is grow (two missing). The length and the subject agree, so check both.

2. Word endings you can predict. Many gaps are only missing an ending: -tion, -ment, -ally, -ing, -ed, -er, -ous. Once you know the part of speech, the ending often follows: an adverb after a verb ends in -ly; a noun after the often ends in -tion or -ment.

3. Collocations and fixed pairs. from… to…, at night, in contrast, as a result, depend on, rely on, both… and…. These are near-free points if you read the words around the gap.

4. Repetition. Academic paragraphs repeat key nouns. If bats or pollen appears in full somewhere, the gap with ba__ or pol___ is probably the same word.

5. The first sentence. It names the topic. Almost every content word in the gaps belongs to the same small field.

6. The number of letters. Because the rule is fixed, you can work out how long the word is from the part you see: for 3 visible letters, the word has 6 or 7 letters. In the Nomto room each missing letter has its own box, so the length is right in front of you.

A method for each paragraph

1. Read the whole paragraph once, quickly, before typing anything. Ten gaps make more sense together than one by one.
2. Fill the sure ones first: short function words (to, at, the, and), repeated nouns, fixed phrases.
3. Go back for the content words. Decide the part of speech, then the meaning, then the spelling.
4. Check agreement and endings. Plural -s, third-person -s, past -ed. A correct word with the wrong ending is a wrong answer.
5. Read the paragraph through with your answers. If a sentence sounds odd, one of your words is probably a near-miss like dawn for dark.

Common mistakes

• Spelling. Enviroment, goverment, recieve, begining. The word must be spelled correctly to score. Learn the high-frequency academic words you tend to misspell.
• Typing the whole word. You add only the missing letters; the start of the word is already there. Double-check that you did not repeat a letter at the join.
• The wrong form of the right word. produce for produces, rapid for rapidly, develop for development. Look at what comes before and after.
• Ignoring the length. If you see 4 letters, the word has 8 or 9. Plan does not fit plan____; planning or planting might.
• Spending too long on one gap. Ten gaps on one paragraph, and the Reading clock covers several tasks. Leave a hard gap, finish the others, come back.
• Skipping the short words. t_ and a_ look trivial and get typed without reading. Then from one tree t_ another becomes the by habit.

How to get better at it

Complete the Words reflects general reading ability, so it improves with general reading, but a few habits speed things up:

• Read short academic texts daily: encyclopedia-style articles on biology, history, economics, psychology. That is the kind of vocabulary the paragraphs use.
• Make your own C-tests. Copy a paragraph, keep the first sentence, then delete the second half of every second word from the next sentence on. Come back the next day and fill it in. It takes five minutes and trains exactly the right skill.
• Keep a spelling list of every word you misspell in practice, and look at it before each session.
• Learn word families: produce, product, production, productive, productivity. Many gaps are a matter of picking the right member.

The same academic vocabulary carries into the rest of the test. Spelling and word endings matter again when you type an email or an Academic Discussion post, and the grammar clues you use here are the ones Build a Sentence tests directly. For where Complete the Words sits in the adaptive Reading section, see the TOEFL iBT format; for how Reading points turn into a 1–6 band, see TOEFL scores.

Practise Complete the Words in the Nomto room

The Complete the Words practice in the Nomto TOEFL room gives you academic paragraphs with ten gaps cut by the rule above and a box for every missing letter. Your answers are checked instantly, with explanations in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Vietnamese, Turkish or Indonesian. A free account includes 10 Reading and Listening items. To see how you do with the full adaptive Reading section, take a section or full mock test, which reports your result on the 1–6 scale and the comparable 0–120 total.

Common questions

How many words are missing in Complete the Words? Ten per paragraph, cut from the second sentence on.

Which half of the word is missing? The second half. For a word with an odd number of letters, the larger half is missing, so you see fewer letters than you type.

Does spelling count? Yes. Each gap is scored as right or wrong, and a misspelled word is wrong.

Is the first sentence ever cut? No. It stays whole so that you know the topic.

Is Complete the Words the same as a cloze test? It is a type of cloze test called a C-test. In a classic cloze whole words are removed; in a C-test you always see the first half of each word, which makes it faster and gives you more clues.

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