Lesson 6 of 41 in the Test Ninjas TOEFL course: Read in Daily Life, Reading. In Read in Daily Life, you read a short everyday text, such as a notice, email or social media post, and answer two or three questions about it.
Test Ninjas Research · Updated October 1, 2026
Lesson at a glance
Detail
This lesson
Module
Read in Daily Life (Reading)
English focus
Register and purpose verbs in notices, emails and posts (announce, remind, warn, request, confirm, recommend)
Task skill
Main purpose: naming what the whole text does and rejecting options with the wrong function
In Read in Daily Life, you read a short everyday text, such as a notice, email or social media post, and answer two or three questions about it. One question often asks what the whole text is for.
This lesson teaches the English that answers it: purpose verbs such as announce, remind, warn and confirm, the patterns you use to report them, and the register that shows who is writing to whom.
Then you’ll name a text’s job in one verb before you read the options, and reject options that keep the right topic but use the wrong verb.
By the end of the lesson, you can
Choose the purpose verb that matches what a message does (announce, remind, warn, request, confirm, recommend, complain, apologize), and report it with the verb’s own pattern: remind someone of, warn someone not to, ask someone to, apologize for + noun or ‑ing.
Recognize the register of an official notice, a service email and a personal post, find the audience line, and read an informal line (a question the writer answers, an idiom) for what it means.
Answer main-purpose questions by naming the whole text’s job in one verb before you read the options, then reject options with the wrong verb, one detail promoted to the purpose, or a claim the text never makes.
What’s inside
Around the 3 teaching cycles below, the lesson opens with a quick check and closes with applied practice, a Check and a debrief. How every course lesson is built.
Teaching cycles in lesson 6
Cycle
Focus
What it teaches
Drills
Cycle 1
English
Purpose verbs: what a text does
7
Cycle 2
English
Register: who is writing to whom
7
Cycle 3
Task skill
Main purpose: the whole text and the right verb
8
Word bank
The 10 words and phrases this lesson teaches. They come from the real course questions you practice on in the Apply step, so you meet each one again in context.
reservation noun
an arrangement to keep a table, seat or room for you
We made a reservation for six at the noodle bar near campus.
Goes with:
make a reservation; a seat reservation
Word family:
reserve (verb); reserved (adjective): a reserved seat
sell out phrasal verb
to sell all the tickets or items available
The spring concert sold out in under an hour.
Goes with:
tickets sell out; a sold-out show
Word family:
sold out (adjective): no tickets left; a sellout (noun): an event with every ticket sold
cover verb
to pay for or include something
The student fee covers entry to the gallery but not the special exhibitions.
Goes with:
cover the cost; cover the entry fee
Word family:
coverage (noun): what a plan or policy includes; cover (noun): protection
in advance adverb phrase
before something happens
The pottery studio asks you to book a wheel two days in advance.
The campus café has two self-service coffee machines, so you don’t have to wait at the counter.
Goes with:
a self-service checkout / kiosk / laundry
Word family:
serve (verb); service (noun); self- words: self-check-in, self-study
end up phrasal verb
to finally be in a situation you did not plan
We missed the last bus and ended up walking home.
Goes with:
end up walking; end up in; end up with
Word family:
end (noun, verb); end up + ‑ing / + a place / + with
The takeaway: Before reading the options, name what the whole text does in one verb: something new is announced, something known is a reminder, a risk is a warning.
More in Read in Daily Life
Purpose and audience in everyday texts (this lesson)