TOEFL 2026 note
When the formality goes up, the patience has run out
A second email that is politer than the first is not friendlier. In institutional English, rising formality is how impatience is expressed — and TOEFL Reading uses it.
The same request, twice
Correspondence items sometimes give you a thread rather than a single message. When they do, the relationship between the two emails is usually the question.
Why it reads backwards to most people
Formality is taught as respect, so a more formal email looks like a more respectful one. In workplace and academic English it is closer to the opposite: informality signals an easy relationship, and reverting to formal register signals that the easy relationship is being suspended.
What to watch
Titles and surnames replacing a first name. “I am writing to” appearing where none was needed. Contractions disappearing. The disappearance of thanks. Any of these between one message and the next is an escalation, whatever the words say.
This one is genuinely harder for readers from cultures where formality is constant rather than variable. If every email is formal, the shift carries no signal — so the axis being used here is invisible until someone points at it.
What the options do with it
The answer set will contain one option that treats the second email as routine — reply when convenient, acknowledge and schedule — and one that treats it as urgent. The words in the second email are more polite than the first, which is exactly what makes the wrong option comfortable.
The same trick in one message →Where politeness carries an instruction rather than an escalation.Play Arrivals →Real correspondence, the actual question, and why each wrong read is wrong. Free, no card.On the numbers in this note
ETS notes that its 2026 specifications are “subject to minor revisions … until the official launch”. The emails above are illustrative and not ETS items. Not affiliated with ETS. TOEFL is a registered trademark of ETS.