TOEIC Part 6 — Text Completion
TOEIC Part 6 presents four short business texts (emails, memos, articles), each with four blanks. Three blanks are word-level (similar to Part 5); the fourth is a full-sentence insertion. The test taker selects the option that best completes each blank.
Format
Text-only. Four answer choices per blank. Self-paced. Most test takers spend 8–10 minutes on Part 6.
Common pitfalls at the 600–800 band
- Sentence-insertion question. Each Part 6 passage has one question asking which sentence belongs in a specific spot. Test takers who treat this like a Part 5 question miss the discourse-flow cue that distinguishes the correct sentence from plausible-sounding distractors.
- Tense inconsistency across blanks. Multiple blanks in one passage often share a tense or aspect; choosing an answer that creates a tense contradiction is a frequent error.
- Reading too much of the passage. Test takers who read the entire passage before answering burn the time budget Part 6 expects you to spend on Part 7.
High-scorer strategy
- Read the sentence containing the blank, plus one sentence on either side. That's almost always enough context. Save the full re-read for the sentence-insertion question.
- For the sentence-insertion question, identify the topic transition. The correct sentence either introduces a new topic introduced in the next sentence, or closes the topic discussed in the previous one.
- Maintain Part 5's pacing. Part 6 should average about 30 seconds per question — slightly slower than Part 5 because of the sentence-insertion item.
Common questions about TOEIC Part 6
How many questions are in TOEIC Part 6?
TOEIC Part 6 contains 16 questions, organized as four passages with four blanks each. Three of the four blanks in each passage are word-level fill-ins; the fourth is a sentence-level insertion.
What's a sentence-insertion question on TOEIC?
A TOEIC Part 6 sentence-insertion question asks which of four sentence options belongs in a specific position within the passage. The correct sentence preserves the passage's logical flow — its topic, tense, and discourse markers align with the surrounding context.
Is TOEIC Part 6 harder than Part 5?
TOEIC Part 6 is generally considered slightly harder than Part 5 because of the sentence-insertion question type, which requires reasoning about passage-level coherence rather than sentence-level grammar. Most test takers' Part 6 accuracy lags their Part 5 accuracy by 5–10 percentage points.
Related guides
Practice TOEIC Part 6 adaptively
TOEIC Ready selects Part 6 items at the difficulty that moves your score fastest. Free diagnostic, then adaptive practice.
Download on theApp Store