With TOEIC vocabulary books, motivation usually peaks on the day you buy them. Kin no Phrase is no exception: what decides the outcome is less the quality of the contents than the number of passes you finish by test day. In January 2026, the expanded and revised edition appeared, nine years after the previous one. Just under 300 of its 1,000 headwords were replaced, more than 80 percent of the phrases are new or changed, and the page count grew from 288 to 320. If you own the old edition, treat this as a different book and buy it again. The author is TEX Kato, who keeps sitting the test himself. If you judge by numbers, the first checkpoint is simply this: the edition in circulation now is the 2026 expanded and revised one.
Four Score Bands. Let Your Current Score Decide the Range
The book has 1,000 headwords: 400 at the 600 level, 300 at 730, 200 at 860, and 100 at 990. If you make all 1,000 your assignment, someone in the 500s will burn out on the first pass. Cut the range by your current score. In the 500s, aim to perfect just the 400 words at the 600 level. Targeting 730, go up to 700 words. The 200 words at the 860 level can wait until your accuracy at the 730 level is stable. Think of the 100 words at the 990 level as the final set that top scorers pick up last.
The expanded and revised edition adds more words and expressions that appear in questions and answer choices, Part 1 summary vocabulary, and katakana English. The question-wording vocabulary in particular directly reduces a specific kind of loss: you can read the passage, but you drop the question because of how it is phrased. If you are aiming for 860 or above, this section is worth running at the same priority as the headwords.
Audio via abceed. Print Is for Judging, the App Is for Rotating
The audio is available on abceed. The division of labor is simple: the print book is for judging whether you know a word or not, and the app is for rotation. Give your 30-minute commute each way to the audio and you get an hour a day. While the phrase audio plays, mark in the book only the ones whose meaning you cannot answer instantly. When you get home, the only pages you need to open are the ones with marks.
Keep the study log down to three things: the range you covered that day (for example, No. 401–500), the number you could not answer instantly, and the time it took. If 120 of 400 words failed the instant-answer test on pass one, pass two starts by clearing those 120. Without a log, pass three tends to become just a third read-through. Measure progress not by the fact that you rotated, but by the number of holes remaining.
Decide the speed and review routine in advance, too, so you do not hesitate. Pass one at normal speed, just judging. Pass two at 1.2x, testing whether you can hear and answer instantly. Any word you miss on an abceed test, read aloud that same day from the print book, phrase and all. Rotate with audio alone and the words you only think you know quietly multiply. Close each cycle with both checks, ear and eye, as a set.
One more thing: if you want to go beyond letting phrases wash over you and listen closely to short segments again and again, Rehear is another option. It is a listening-practice app made by the team behind this magazine, and it lets you repeat just the phrases you could not catch. Devote it to the phrases you marked in Kin no Phrase and the flow comes together — judging with print and abceed, plus close listening. abceed alone is enough to keep things rotating, so try Rehear when the audio practice starts to feel like not quite enough.
Count Back from Test Day: The 6-Week, 3-Pass Allocation
If you have six weeks until the test, the allocation looks like this. Pass one: two weeks to cover your whole range, 35 to 50 phrases a day, judging only, no deep chasing. Pass two: the next two weeks re-judging only the marked words, and reading aloud whatever still remains. Pass three: the final two weeks, narrowed to the words you still cannot answer instantly plus the question-wording section, with the last three days reserved for a full review and nothing new.
If you only have three weeks, cut the range, not the number of passes. Three passes up to the 730 level will score better than one pass up to 990. With eight weeks or more, instead of a fourth pass of Kin no Phrase, spend the time harvesting vocabulary that appeared in the official practice tests after your three passes. A vocabulary book is complete as a tool at three passes; beyond that, rotate words inside practice questions.
Fix the weekly shape as well and it gets easier. Advance on the five weekdays, use Saturday for catching up and clearing marked words, and take Sunday off or just let next week's range play as audio. Go at full power all seven days and things tend to fall apart around week three. Six weeks is 42 days; divide the daily quota by the working days left after subtracting rest days first — that is the trick that keeps the plan alive to the end.
How It Differs from Gin no Phrase. Who It Suits, Who It Doesn't
Gin no Phrase is the introductory volume: the 1,000 most frequent basic words, aimed at reaching 600. Kin is the main volume, carrying you from 600 to 990 in a single book. If you are under 450 and your junior-high vocabulary itself has holes, doing two passes of Gin first will actually be faster. From the upper 500s, Kin is fine — its 400 words at the 600 level double as foundation work.
It suits people whose test date is set and who can give vocabulary 30 minutes a day, five days a week. It does not suit people whose grammar base is shaky and who bleed time in Part 5, or people who resist saying phrases out loud. In that case, finishing one grammar book first and then coming back is the better order. If you buy, buy one print copy of the expanded and revised edition, ¥990 including tax. Used copies of the old edition predate the replacement of nearly 30 percent of the words, so do not let the lower price lure you in.
Get it here: Kin no Phrase, expanded and revised edition (print).
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