The TOEFL® iBT Listening section comes immediately after the Reading section. The Listening section of the TOEFL iBT measures your ability to understand spoken English in academic settings. In the TOEFL® iBT, the listening is done for 3 major purposes:
Listening for basic comprehension
Listening for pragmatic understanding
To connect and combine ideas presented in multiple information sources
Each part of the Listening section (2 or 3 parts) consists of 1 long conversation and two lectures. You will hear each lecture or conversation only once. Lectures and conversations are 3-5 minutes
long. During the listening, the time is not running. The allotted time of 10 minutes for each part is only for answering the questions.
Preparation Strategies
Many teachers will tell you to listen to spoken English from multiple sources as much as possible. Listen to English spoken movies and English spoken TV channels, listen to the radio and as many other listening sources as you may find.
This is not the right thing to do! The type of material in the TOEFL® iBT is academic. The conversations and talks and/or lectures in the Listening part of the exam are of academic nature.
You will not benefit from watching movies and listening to music in English.
Wouldn´t it be better if the listening material you practice with is academic or close to what is in the TOEFL® iBT. The more you practice listening to this type of material, the better you will do in the Listening part of the Exam.
Listen for the main idea! It is usually found at the beginning of the listening passages, while the details are dispersed throughout the lecture. The main idea will give you understanding of what the
conversation/lecture is about. Then you may listen for details.
Learn to organize how the ideas are presented in the listening passage. Some of the main relations between ideas include cause/effect, compare/contrast, and steps in a process.
Learn to listen for signal words that indicate different parts of the passage - introduction, major steps, examples, conclusions, etc. I call these the road signs that you need to look out for when listening to the conversations and talks/lectures.
Many teachers will tell you to listen to spoken English from multiple sources as much as possible. Listen to English spoken movies and English spoken TV channels, listen to the radio and as many other listening sources as you may find.
This is not the right thing to do! The type of material in the TOEFL® iBT is academic. The conversations and talks and/or lectures in the Listening part of the exam are of academic nature.
You will not benefit from watching movies and listening to music in English.
Take Notes. Of course! Note-taking is allowed during all sections of TOEFL® iBT. Effective note-taking will highly improve your performance. It is almost impossible to memorize all clues and details provided in the Listening section. Moreover, you can hear the passages ONLY ONCE. Therefore, to answer the questions you have to rely on what you remember from the passage and your notes.
Summarize in writing what you have heard using your notes. Thus, you will learn to find the purpose and main idea of the listening, and also the most important details.
It also helps in improving your writing skills.
Familiarize yourself with the type of questions in the TOEFL iBT. During the preparation, you need to learn what answers are required by the different types of questions you will be asked. Some questions may ask you to provide two answers, others to click in a chart box. If you are familiar with the question types, you may save important time. Specialized software will help us prepare better.
The TOEFL® iBT Listening section comes immediately after the Reading section. The Listening section of the TOEFL iBT measures your ability to understand spoken English in academic settings. In the TOEFL® iBT, the listening is done for 3 major purposes:
