The Reading section consists of 3–5 passages, each about 700 words in length and questions about the passages. The passages are on academic topics and they are the kind of material that might be found in an undergraduate university textbook. Passages require understanding of rhetorical functions such as cause-effect, compare-contrast and argumentation.
Students answer questions about main ideas, details, inferences, essential information, sentence insertion, vocabulary, rhetorical purpose and overall ideas. New types of questions in the iBT require filling out tables or completing summaries. Prior knowledge of the subject under discussion is not necessary to come to the correct answer.
The best study strategy I can give is to review for the TOEFL as you would for the SAT since the concepts and testing methods are pretty similar. For students who are not as comfortable with English, reading English literature and watching American television usually helps you familiarize with certain terms.