TOEFL iBT – 新托福词汇专题突破

TOEFL iBT Vocabulary by Topic: Preface

> By Li Xiaolai · 2008-12-20 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20110904071216/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/3628.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

*[Click here to start reading all 192 units](http://www.lixiaolai.com/index.php/archives/category/everyone-can-use-english/toefl-vocabulary-classification)……*

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Preface

**Is it really only a vocabulary problem?**

After the first printing of the first edition of my previous vocabulary book, [Breaking Through Core TOEFL Vocabulary in 21 Days](http://www.dogwood.com.cn/p_detail.asp?catalogid=1&productid=136) (《TOEFL核心词汇21天突破》), in 2003, it went through several new editions and many reprints, and within a few years sold over a hundred thousand copies (pirated copies beyond counting). As the author I of course couldn't help being pleased about it, but on the other hand I also found it rather hard to let go. Why? Because I always felt that although I had already done my best when compiling Breaking Through Core TOEFL Vocabulary in 21 Days, even at that time I felt it was still far from enough. At the very least I knew that a single vocabulary book alone could not help students solve all their problems.

The teaching experience of these past few years has kept confirming the view I've always held, which is: a large part of students' predicament really does come from vocabulary, or vocabulary size, but there must be a more hidden yet more important problem that needs solving. Lacking a basic vocabulary often makes every step hard for students, but students who have struggled across this threshold, exhausted, find that their situation has not only not improved much, but even feels worse—every word taken out on its own seems familiar, so why, put together, can't they understand it for the life of them? If vocabulary size alone could solve everything, how could this insurmountable embarrassment arise?

If we compare each word to a brick, and an essay to a house, then it's easy to understand that an essay is not made of words alone—besides bricks, there have to be many other materials; the easiest to think of are at least steel bars and cement. Having more bricks than other people doesn't mean you can definitely build a bigger house than others; if you only have bricks and no steel bars and cement, what you have is nothing but a pile of bricks. In fact, we would all rather have a few fewer bricks but definitely enough steel bars and cement—that way we can build a house. Even if the house is a bit smaller because there aren't as many bricks, at least there's still a house to live in, which is much better than a pile of bricks that is neither good-looking nor useful, isn't it? I really like this analogy; it can explain the matter especially clearly:

> [Translator's note: quoted by the author; in English in the original and kept as written; not Li Xiaolai's own words.]
> An essay is written with words just as a house is built with bricks, but merely a collection of words cannot be called an essay any more than a pile of bricks can be called a house.

This is the problem I've always wanted to solve. The limitation of traditional vocabulary books (including the one I wrote before) is that they only provide bricks, not steel bars and cement. For example, the word "habitat": students have memorized it and know it means "栖息地" (habitat); the word "destruction" students [Translator's note: the original writes 这个学生单词早就认识, literally "this student word has long been known," with the words out of order; 学生早就认识这个单词 ("students have long known this word") is meant; translated by the intended sense] have long known, and know it means "破坏" (destruction); but because they lack "cement," they don't know that "habitat destruction" is "one of the most significant predicaments that endangered species are confronting with…" Note, I'm not saying students looking at "habitat destruction" can't guess the literal meaning "栖息地破坏"; I'm saying that students looking at "habitat destruction" often can't put these two words together and then connect them with concepts like "protecting endangered species" or "biological diversity."

The power of habit is astonishing. Good habits take a long time of accumulation before they take effect, whereas bad habits, without any accumulation, can work their side effects secretly at every moment. Many students, while all along setting their sights on the "house," pay attention only to the "bricks" and ignore the "steel bars and cement," so every day they run into countless embarrassments without understanding why. One example can illustrate this problem. The word "prey": many students have memorized it in vocabulary books and know it as "noun, 1) an animal that is hunted; 2) a victim, a sacrifice." However, add another word they can't possibly not know, "bird"—"birds of prey"—and many students will "think they know it." What does the phrase "birds of prey" mean? Very possibly exactly the opposite of what they think (actually, guess): "birds of prey" means "猛禽、食肉鸟" (raptors, carnivorous birds).

I often mention this example in my lectures, and every time someone in the audience exclaims "Oh my God!" Every time I comfort everyone, "Believe me, you're not alone……" and I go on to say, "Actually, not knowing isn't frightening; what's really frightening is not knowing 'that you don't know.'" Now that you know where your predicament comes from, there's hope of getting out of it. Before this, that embarrassment of "not knowing that you don't know" made how many people as miserable as a fly in a glass bottle, because they always "could see the light but couldn't find the way out"……

A few years ago, I once tried using "vocabulary by category" to help students expand their vocabulary. Although in effect this was obviously much better than "only providing word lists" (even with example sentences), there were still some clearly felt limitations. Now I can use the analogy of "bricks, steel bars, cement and houses" to explain vividly the limitation of "vocabulary by category": traditional vocabulary books provide "bricks"; vocabulary-by-category books provide not only "bricks" but also "steel bars" (that is, categories)—but to a certain extent they don't provide "cement," so of course something is still missing.

In the last two years, I have been trying the model of "finely divided topics + condensed passages + short word lists" to help students build "a solid basic vocabulary," and the effect is very obvious—because in this model, bricks, steel bars, cement and small houses are all there. Many students can basically master around two thousand core words within a month, and the connections between word and word and between concept and concept, and the differences of words in different contexts and of concepts in different fields [Translator's note: this sentence in the original breaks off without a verb for its second half; something like 有所了解 ("come to understand") is evidently meant; translated as written].

If you don't learn vocabulary through passages, it's hard for students to connect "'limb' in the L list" with "'twig' in the T list"—"limb" is "a main branch," "twig" is "a small branch" (in fact, most students only know "limb" as "a person's four limbs," and have never thought this word has anything to do with "trees")—this is the connection between word and word. Many students don't know that "rodents" (啮齿动物) must keep "gnawing" (磨牙, grinding their teeth) (many students don't even know what "rodents" are; while other students, even if they've memorized all kinds of "advanced vocabulary books," only know it as a noun: "constant pain")—this is the connection between concept and concept. "Fault" in most texts means "mistake," but in texts dealing with "earthquakes" (地震), it is more likely to mean "a fault line"—this is the difference of a word in different contexts. The concept of "adaption" (适应) in biology is a manifestation of competitiveness, but in philosophy it is often regarded as a manifestation of being unable to hold out and finally compromising—this is the difference of a concept in different fields.

The Importance of Common Sense

In TOEFL/GRE/SAT training there's a view popular that seems rather strange to me, and it has many believers: don't use common sense to solve questions. I wonder how these people think; common sense is one of our most powerful weapons—why disarm? Whenever you investigate carefully, you find that whenever a question is answered wrongly, there are usually only two cases: 1) wrong logical inference on the basis of correct common sense; 2) correct logical inference built on the basis of wrong common sense. Logical inference is very important, but it has to be built on a basis of sound common sense. Perhaps someone will retort, "What if an article in the exam doesn't agree with scientific common sense?" The answer is, "In ETS exams this situation doesn't exist"—all of ETS's articles agree with the scientific and natural common sense widely accepted today. So I advise students in exams to use common sense boldly, with two preconditions: 1) your common sense really is correct; 2) the exam you're taking is designed by ETS, and not China's CET-4/6, graduate entrance exams and the like.

First, an example:

> [Translator's note: the author's own retelling, in Chinese, of a TOEFL listening lecture, with the English terms given in parentheses in the original; counted as his own words.]
> Scientists wondered why squirrels (松鼠), these rodents (啮齿动物), actually have two opposite traits at once: on the one hand they "prepare for a rainy day" and accumulate (收集) acorns (橡果) to get through the cold winter; on the other hand they keep squandering (浪费、挥霍)—of every acorn they eat only 1/3, and litter up (扔掉) 2/3? After investigating, the scientists' explanation was this: a rodent's teeth have hard enamel (牙釉质) on the outside, but only constantly growing dentine (牙质) on the inside; so they must keep gnawing (磨牙) to keep their incisors (门牙) keen (锋利) enough; so in fact these squirrels aren't squandering, because they only need to gnaw 1/3 of an acorn to make their teeth quite keen, and the 2/3 of course get littered up—in fact (this is what the scientists observed later), when they eat acorns to fill their bellies, they always eat as much as they can.

Actually, the content above is in fact the complete content of a listening lecture in a certain TOEFL exam.

Imagine: when a test taker is tested on a piece like this, how much can he actually understand? At first glance, it seems he must at least know these words:

- accumulate
- acorn
- dentine
- enamel
- gnaw
- incisor
- keen
- litter (up)
- rodent
- squander
- squirrel

But in fact, even if he has memorized these words, he won't necessarily understand. There are many reasons; for example, one reason is that many students, when memorizing words, pay no attention to spelling and no attention to pronunciation; so many test takers may know enamel by sight but not know how to pronounce it (which syllable does the stress fall on?). In this case, will the enamel correctly pronounced in the recording call up the correct corresponding concept in these test takers' minds?

However, from another angle, anyone with even a little scientific and natural common sense, as long as they understand squirrel and gnawing, may be able to work out the remaining content more or less entirely just by guessing. Why? Because scientific and natural facts hardly change, and especially won't change because ETS has reformed the TOEFL. It's hard to imagine a group of little pine trees [Translator's note: the original writes 小松树, "little pine trees"; 小松鼠 ("little squirrels") is meant—the next clause already says 松鼠; translated by the intended sense] holding a meeting, with one little squirrel saying to the other squirrels:

> Everyone listen up! Now ETS has reformed the TOEFL; it's no longer the pBT, nor the cBT, it's the iBT…… To go along with ETS's reform, from now on, when we grind our teeth on acorns, we can no longer use 1/3 and throw away 2/3 as before; we have to change our behavior uniformly and must use 2/3 and throw away 1/3……

The model of "finely divided topics + condensed passages + short word lists" is of enormous help to students in this respect. Not only does it, in the process of memorizing vocabulary, let students remember words faster and more firmly through connections with context; on the other hand it also lets students build in English a complete, clearly structured, well-layered system of concepts, so that even when information is not entirely complete they have better comprehension and more reliable powers of inference.

(Note: since the topic of "rodents" has been fully explained here as an example, it is not included again in the main text.)

In The Official Guide to the New TOEFL (《新托福官方指南》), ETS clearly states the range of topics the TOEFL iBT covers (see "Appendix 1"). So while memorizing words to expand their vocabulary, test takers must get clear the related concepts and common sense, and the necessary background connecting them. ETS claims it won't test "overly specialized" content, and ETS really does practice this. However, sometimes so-called "specialized" is relative. For example, I, who never paid attention to Biology class, really never knew back then what "rodents" were, which common animals they include, why they're called "rodents," what their habits are…… There's also another factor: because of geographical differences, many concepts may not overlap completely in the two cultures. For example, in Chinese people's common sense, squirrels eat pinecones (松塔); the common little gray bird on the American continent is the wren (鹪鹩), but the common little gray bird on the Asian continent is the sparrow (麻雀)—so much so that wrens have appeared countless times in the TOEFL, yet sparrows have never been mentioned; the eagle we know is the eagle, while what Americans are familiar with are the bald eagle and the condor, and even the dictionary explains it as "(South America) vulture"……

This is the important reason why the present vocabulary book is very effective. Because this book 1) uses 192 small topics to cover completely the range of topics given in ETS's The Official Guide to the New TOEFL; 2) all the text is excerpted, condensed and adapted from the authoritative Microsoft Encarta (微软百科全书) to keep the language idiomatic; 3) the definitions of every word have been precisely selected rather than blindly included.

The last of the three above is especially important. The result of many students only memorizing vocabulary books without caring about texts is that they often unwittingly remember only "word senses that actually aren't commonly used or commonly tested"—in fact, many vocabulary books compiled out of thin air bear an unshirkable responsibility for this. For example, for the word cardinal, many students remember only the noun sense "cardinal (in the church)," which the TOEFL won't test (because the TOEFL hardly touches on religion), and don't know the adjective sense common in scientific articles, "important, primary"; for the word radical, they remember only "politically radical," which won't be tested, and not the commonly tested "drastic" (because the TOEFL hardly touches on politics); as for canopy, they only know the dictionary's first sense of the word, "a canopy, a baldachin," and not the commonly tested second sense in the dictionary, "tree crown" (because the TOEFL has only expository writing and seldom uses literary language); as for the word preoccupation, they've only memorized "absorption, rapt attention," little knowing that every time this word is tested its meaning is always "prejudice"……

How to Use This Book

**1. The first thing: "read it through quickly"**

I suggest finishing this stage within three days. In this stage the main task is not memorizing words but getting familiar with the topics. You must get to know the topics the TOEFL covers in the shortest possible time. Because all along, in the texts of all sorts of English teaching materials in China—whether textbooks within the system, "supplementary teaching books" outside the system, or all kinds of study magazines—topics have, intentionally or not, been positioned more in the "social sciences" field—perhaps because many people feel that foreign languages belong to the "humanities." In the end, the English content many Chinese students (even "science students") try their best to read day to day seldom touches on the natural sciences.

However, in the TOEFL, an exam that measures test takers' practical ability in English, English is defined as a necessary tool—the tool that must be used for studying any subject in an English-speaking country. So in the TOEFL, the topics of the natural sciences and of the humanities split the world almost evenly, half each. So at least half of the TOEFL's content will make many test takers "feel" very ill at ease, for example topics on geography and geology (glaciers, volcanoes), or on microorganisms (plankton) and paleontology (dinosaurs). Even some topics we often classify as "humanities" are actually not what Chinese students often read, for example topics on archaeology (fossils) and anthropology (ancient inscriptions).

So I suggest readers finish the first "read-through" in the shortest possible time. In the course of reading through, note the topics that "make your head spin at a glance" and mark them; in the next step, drawing up a plan, deliberately leave a bit more time for these topics. In fact, these topics are only ones you read little of day to day; they aren't that frightening. Compared with other topics you're already roughly familiar with, they just need repeating a few more times. Actually, the knack of memorizing words is only one: "repetition"; for the "diehards" among the words, what you need to do is even simpler—"repeat them many times."

**2. Determine your own capacity and draw up a reasonable plan.**

This stage needs only an hour or two, but it's very important. Carefully work out how much time you can use each day for learning vocabulary. Is it two hours, or four hours? The time you have ultimately determines the most you can possibly accomplish.

Here, first get clear one most important piece of common sense: "nobody can work at one hundred percent efficiency." You will certainly be interrupted by phone calls or text messages, unless, like me, you always keep your phone set to "silent"; at some moment you will certainly have to put the book down, because someone knocks on the door or you need to go to the bathroom…… So when drawing up a plan, you must build "redundancy" into your work and set a "loss allowance" for your time. That is, if you're sure you can spend two hours a day memorizing words, remember that the workload you assign yourself should be at most what can be finished within an hour and a half.

After determining the time you can use for this work each day, I suggest dividing each day's word-memorizing time into more than one session, say two—"once in the morning, once in the evening"; or "once in the afternoon, once in the evening." Because this is a special kind of work; as I just said, the knack of memorizing words is actually only one, which is "repetition."

This book comes with MP3 recordings of the topic texts; I suggest listening to them repeatedly many times a day. I suggest carving out scattered bits of time to do this, for example when on the road, when waiting for a bus, when working out. When listening, don't just listen silently; try to read along as much as possible (even if inaccurately, even if haltingly). In order to make gradual progress through reading along, it's best to wear the earphone in only one ear, leaving the other ear free so you can hear your own voice, so as to adjust your pronunciation more or less at any time.—Of course, there's also a precondition: the corresponding text has already been read carefully in advance.

A final suggestion about drawing up and carrying out a plan: the first pass of memorizing the whole book must be finished within a month. Nobody can firmly remember all the content in a single pass—everyone has to rely on repetition. Remember, the first pass needn't demand perfection too much, but it must be fast, because everyone's patience is limited; if the first pass drags on too long, you very likely won't want to do a second pass ever—then it's over, doomed to fail. The reason many people don't do well is actually only one: they don't even finish the first pass. Why? Besides possibly their own inertia, the more likely reason is that they want to be perfect on the first pass, little knowing that this is impossible—who can do the impossible and actually succeed in the end? Any normal person (except those with an IQ over 145) basically needs at least three or more repetitions.

The Most Important Word-Memorizing Tool—Spelling-to-Sound Rules

"The basics are important" is a platitude that is ignored as always. Actually, so-called "poor basics" have only one cause—a lack of patience when first learning. Lack of patience is the nature of almost everyone, and also a habit the great majority of people never manage to correct in the end. Many people lose out everywhere, in every aspect of life, because they lack patience, yet never know it themselves; the result of losing out everywhere is that they grow more and more eager for quick success and more and more impatient—and so all their lives they can only charge left and right in this vicious circle and finally end up with a cause of death unknown.

"The spelling-to-sound rules of English words" are just such a basic piece of knowledge, ignored by most people yet very important. If you have never ignored this important basic knowledge, congratulations—you don't need to read on; skip this subsection directly—but if you are still someone with the feeling "I've been learning English for many years now, so why does it get worse the more I learn?", then I will recommend, till I spit blood, that you be patient and keep reading—actually it won't take much time.

Many people (this proportion very possibly far exceeds 80%) memorize English words letter by letter; for example, the word exorbitant—they have to memorize a combination of 10 letters in all (e-x-o-r-b-i-t-a-n-t). While the few others who are familiar with "the spelling-to-sound rules of English words," to memorize this word, need only memorize three syllables (exor-bi-tant). Another example is the word ichthyosaur, which likewise needs only three syllables to be memorized (ich-thyo-saur).

Taking the syllable (a combination of one or more letters) as the unit rather than the letter makes memorizing words who knows how many times easier. Although not all English words follow the spelling-to-sound rules, according to the statistical survey of Hanna, Hodges and Rudorf (1966), a conservative estimate is that over 96% of English words follow the basic spelling-to-sound rules. Some people will retort that there are plenty of words that don't follow the rules! But that's only a feeling: because English has so many words, even a very small proportion will make one "feel there are many."

Before going on to learn about the spelling-to-sound rules, two principles need to be made clear:

> **1) These rules must not be used as a tool for guessing the pronunciation of words.**

That is, you should absolutely not look at a new word and guess its pronunciation from the spelling-to-sound rules alone; what you should do is first get clear the pronunciation of the word, and then use the spelling-to-sound rules as an aid to memory. Believe me, many people often violate this principle without noticing, which is why they often mispronounce words. For example, many people may mispronounce at least three of the following five words: "cellist," "facade," "heir," "niche," "specific."

> **2) There's no need to rote-memorize all the spelling-to-sound rules.**

Spending time rote-memorizing these spelling-to-sound rules actually doesn't mean much, one reason being that they are only an auxiliary tool. Just as when a carpenter is making furniture, most of the time his attention should be on the furniture to be made rather than wholly on tools such as the plane needed to make it. The most effective way of learning is this: first get a rough idea of these rules; then review them several times; and then keep "discovering" the application of these rules in newly acquired words; use them a lot and you'll remember them naturally; in the end, you'll find that memorizing words has long since become much easier.

Also, there's no need to try to master all the spelling-to-sound rules at once. For example, [ee] is very common and is almost only read as /i:/—it's hard not to remember; [ea] is usually read either as [i:] or as /e/, also easy to remember. But some other rules are not so common. For example, /ieu/ read as /e/ occurs only in "lieutenant"—and that only in British English, while in American English the syllable [lieu] in this word is simply reduced to /lu/. And cases like [ae/ée/ee/er/et/e/é] possibly being read as /ei/, for example (vertebrae, café, épée, soiree, foyer, bouquet, dente, saké……), are almost all words from French (mostly not commonly used, and the commonly used ones are few)—you can basically ignore them for the time being and first master the most common ones.

For common vowel spellings please see "Appendix 2," and for common consonant spellings please see "Appendix 3." Generally speaking, trying to remember all the spelling-to-sound rules at once is very hard, its difficulty not much less than trying to memorize [Translator's note: the original writes 被, literally "passive marker"; 背 ("memorize") is meant; translated by the intended sense] a whole dictionary at once. The method is first to get a rough idea, and then look things up and refer to them repeatedly—likewise consolidating memory through "repetition." In fact, in the course of reading, in order to remind myself effectively the next time I read, I usually mark at most only two things: 1) whether vowels are long or short, 2) where the stress falls. As long as you grasp these two things, most problems are usually solved.

For example, the word enamel mentioned earlier: should the first syllable "e" be read as /e/ or as /i/? If the first syllable is stressed, it should be /e/; if not stressed, it should be /i/; /n/ has no other reading, and since the stress falls on the syllable "na," this syllable should be read as /næ/; and the following "mel" can only be /məl/—this word is read /I'næməl/, so I only need to mark a stress sign above, between the first syllable "e" and the second syllable "na," and I can remember the pronunciation of this word. Another example: on meeting the word "beak," should it be read /bi:k/ or /bek/? Because "ea" can be read as /i:/ or as /e/. After looking it up in the dictionary, I know it should be read /bi:k/, so I draw a horizontal line above "ea" to show that this is a long vowel—there isn't even any need to mark /i:/, because there's no other reading. This actually isn't hard; use it a lot and you'll naturally become familiar with it. But once you're familiar with the spelling-to-sound rules, the efficiency of memorizing words will rise greatly.

Learning to Use—How to Improve Reading Comprehension Quickly?

Once you know a certain number of words, you must keep using them to really master them. Reading more articles is the only effective means of expanding and consolidating vocabulary. And there's a bit of method to reading articles, all the more so for the reading passages in exams (TOEFL/IELTS/SAT/GRE/GMAT). There's nothing mysterious about methods of reading comprehension, and really effective methods are often very simple. (The text below is a bit abstract, but perhaps it is itself a good piece of reading material……)

When we read in the first sentence (labeled S1), there's only one task: "What is this sentence saying [Translator's note: the original writes 在再说, with 再 ("again"); 在说 ("is saying") is meant; translated by the intended sense]?" (What does S1 mean? labeled M1) Actually, sometimes this is not a simple task. It needs two things to support it: 1) grammatical knowledge; 2) a system of concepts. But many people actually think words alone are enough (already explained above).

However, when we read in the second sentence (S2), there's one more task: not only to get M2 clear, but also to get clear the relationship between M1 and M2 (labeled R1&2)—this is something many people, surprisingly, never do.

The relationship between M1 and M2 is roughly of two kinds:

1. M1 is supported by M2 (of course, it may also be the other way round, M1 supporting M2). In this case, M2 may explain M1 from one of three angles (or a combination of the three)—What? (examples, elaboration) Why? (cause and effect, comparison, classification, purpose) How? (manner, means, steps)
2. M1 and M2 jointly support another sentence. In this case, the possible relationships between M1 and M2 are respectively: coordination, progression, contrast.

If M1, M2 and R1~2 are all known, then real "reading comprehension" has been fully accomplished.

However, in exams, the situations test takers often meet are:

1. M1 unknown, M2 known, R1~2 known;
2. M1 known, M2 unknown, R1~2 known;
3. M1 known, M2 known, R1~2 unknown;

This is really no different from simple math (just like "x+y=z")—that is, an equation with three variables, two of which are known, and now the value of the third variable has to be derived. If all three variables were known, it wouldn't count as an exam at all.

You should know that in a rigorously and scientifically designed reading comprehension exam, there won't be a situation where an equation has three variables of which two are unknown—that's not called an exam, that's called "making things hard on purpose." This is also why I always warn test takers not to trust any "mock questions" lightly—anyway, all the non-ETS-official questions I've studied are, by and large, not rigorous and not scientific, no matter how authoritative the authors and publishers—if you don't believe it, anyone can make their own judgment using the simple principle just stated.

By the same principle, the relationship between paragraphs is likewise. You must be able not only to summarize the main idea of the first paragraph (labeled MP1), and then summarize the main idea of the second paragraph (labeled MP2), but finally also must get clear the relationship between the two paragraphs (labeled RP1~2)—this is something even more people resolutely don't do—and then it's solving equations again……

Once the principles are all clear, here are the steps for everyday practice:

1. Struggle to get clear the exact meaning of every sentence. Use every means available—look things up in the dictionary, in grammar books, even on Google. "Doing it yourself" is who knows how many times more effective in this respect than "paying someone else to do the work for you" (for example, signing up for classes and listening to lectures).
2. Understand the relationships between every sentence and between every paragraph. After that there's another task—summarizing.
3. Organize the vocabulary. You should know that after reading an article, organizing the vocabulary yourself is far more efficient than memorizing vocabulary books—unfortunately, most people don't believe it.
4. Read it repeatedly several times. As you read and read, you may discover many things you didn't notice the first time.
5. Retell the article. Being able to retell an article you've just read, in writing or orally, actually requires many combined abilities: memory, logical ability, paraphrasing ability, reorganizing ability, re-understanding ability and so on.
6. Form the habit of reviewing after an interval of several days.

Actually, handle about 50 articles this way and you'll basically be invincible. For students preparing for study-abroad exams, just find a few sets of real past papers and do the same, and you'll make great progress.

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### Appendix 1: TOEFL Topic Categories (托福专题分类; TOEFL TOPIC categories)
[Translator's note: the topic list below is given in English in the original and is kept exactly as written; it is a category list, not the author's prose, and is left out of the ratio.]

**BASIC CATEGORY**

- Arts
- Life Science
- Physical Science
- Social Science

**Arts**

- Architecture
- Industrial design/art
- City planning
- Crafts: weaving, knitting, fabrics, furniture, carving, mosaics, ceramics, etc; folk and tribal art
- Cave/rock art
- Music and music history
- Photography
- Literature and authors
- Books, newspapers, magazines, journals

**Life science**

- Extinction of or conservation efforts for animals and plants
- Fish and other aquatic organisms
- Bacteria and other one-celled organisms
- Viruses
- Medical techniques
- Public health
- Physiology of sensory organs
- Biochemistry
- Animal behavior, e.g., migration, food foraging, defensive behavior
- Habitats and the adaptation of animals and plants to them
- Nutrition and its impact on the body
- Animal communication

**Physical science**

- Weather and atmosphere
- Oceanography
- Glaciers, glacial landforms, ice ages
- Deserts and other extreme environments
- Pollution, alternative energy, environmental policy
- Other planets’ atmospheres
- Astronomy and cosmology
- Properties of light, optics
- Properties of sound
- Electromagnetic radiation
- Particle physics
- Technology of TV, radio, radar
- Math
- Chemistry of inorganic things
- Computer science
- Seismology (plate structure, earthquakes, tectonics, continental drift, structure of volcanoes)

**Social science**

- Anthropology of non-industrialized civilizations
- Early writing systems
- Historical linguistics
- Business, management
- TV/radio as mass communication
- Social behavior of groups, community dynamics, communal behavior
- Child development
- Education
- Modern history (including the history of urbanization and industrialization and their economic and social effects)

Appendix 2: Spellings of Common Vowels (omitted)

Appendix 3: Spellings of Common Consonants (omitted)

Appendix 4: List of Unfamiliar Senses of Familiar Words Common in the TOEFL (omitted)

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Afterword

In the course of making this book, teachers **Zhang Yixin** (张艺馨), **Zhu Shasha** (朱莎莎), **Zhao Yuan** (赵媛), **Xu Wei** (徐薇) and others did a great deal of assisting work, and through teaching practice offered many useful suggestions for this book. I sincerely thank them here for their hard work. In addition, many students in this process provided the editor and teachers with a great deal of reasonable and effective feedback through their own learning experiences; although I can't list their names one by one, I also heartily thank them here for their efforts.

In addition, one thing that must be endured in the process of publishing English supplementary teaching books in China is that, no matter how careful one is beforehand, the printed book will certainly have one slip or another—the editor's own mistakes, printing errors, and also many errors of unknown origin. My first book, [Breaking Through Core TOEFL Vocabulary in 21 Days](http://auction1.taobao.com/auction/item_detail-null-02d2662008eb93da4420211e29b67ee0.jhtml) (《TOEFL核心词汇21天突破》), went through three new editions and a dozen-odd reprints, with who knows how many corrections made along the way, yet a few errors still remain, and some are even "new" errors that weren't there before the corrections.

Fortunately, life always provides other solutions. I always meet many readers full of goodwill and enthusiasm; perhaps this is my good luck. It is precisely because of their help that many slips that otherwise might not have been noticed, or that couldn't have been imagined, were weeded out. My personal website is [www.lixiaolai.com](http://www.lixiaolai.com/); my email is [email protected], or [email protected]. I hope enthusiastic readers, on meeting any possible slip while reading this book, will leave a message on my website or send an email directly to let me know. Many, many thanks!

Finally, I sincerely hope this book can bring readers greater progress.

**Li Xiaolai**
*Late autumn 2008, in Beijing*

*[Click here to start reading all 192 units](http://www.lixiaolai.com/index.php/archives/category/everyone-can-use-english/toefl-vocabulary-classification)……*

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