You must take active notes
focusing on subjects, verbs, and objects.
Listen to a sentence's subject, verb, and object and takes notes on
that. Don't simply take notes on what you hear. Listen actively for these
grammatical powerhouses of meaning. This requires a strong shift for most
students. We'll teach you how to make that shift in this chapter.
1. Take past TOEFL®
listening tests and become familiar with the format.
Quickly read the comprehension questions before the recording begins - this
helps you to listen out for key points – often there is a lot of content that
you will not be tested on – keep your focus and energy for the points that
count!
2. Practice note taking whenever you are
listening to something in English – only write down key words or
phrases, use abbreviations for long words and always write in English. Record
only the major points – you will not have time to write down the minor,
unimportant details in the exam.
3. Improve your vocabulary – the
more words you know, the easier it will be for you to understand the listening
section. Learn new vocab and save words you have trouble with by becoming an
English, baby! Super
member.
4. Listen for signal words that indicate
major steps, changes or ideas such as seldom, at the moment, in 1975,
so far, usually, often, up to now, at the moment. Make sure to also listen for
repetition, synonyms and pronouns.
5. Download listening practice lessons,
such as lessons on Daily English Audio
and stop it at different times. Try to guess what will happen next! This is a great
way to practice your ability to connect and combine ideas. Then go back and
listen to the lesson in full and see how well you did.
6. Determine the purpose of a
conversation or speech – what do you think the speakers are trying to
do? Are they angry? Trying to resolve a conflict? Sad? Expressing an idea?
Practice this technique every time you hear English including English movies or
TV shows, daily English lessons on
English, baby!, even people you hear speaking English on the street! This
will help you focus on the key points and improve your ability to filter out
information that is not necessary for the TOEFL® listening
exam questions.
7. Recognize key points – who or
what is the conversation about? What is the main point of the lecture? Why are
they talking about this? Remember, the TOEFL® listening
exam is testing your comprehension, not your ability to memorize and repeat
what you have just heard!
8. Find connections between ideas
– how do these points connect to the key ideas of the passage? If they do NOT
connect to the key ideas, they are probably not the major ideas of the passage
and you should not focus on them.
9. Pay attention when someone in the
exercise asks a question – often it is a clue that information is
about to be given. However, this is not always true so be careful for responses
that sound a lot like the answer to a question. Listen very carefully as these
responses are often there to test your ability to understand the context of
what you heard.
10. Categorize the type of exercise you
are listening to when taking practice TOEFL®
listening tests. Ask yourself – is it a lecture (mostly one-sided and
on academic topics) or a conversation (language is more informal, two or more
people)? This will help you understand the flow of the conversation more
clearly.
· TOEFL
LISTENING TIMING
This is a
little tricky to explain, so pay careful attention and it will be easy. First,
after the conversation or lecture finishes, you will have one question appear
on the screen. The question will be read out loud to you. When the narrator
finishes saying the question, the timer will start. This will occur throughout
each set of listenings.
The timer
will only count down in the silence that follows the narrator reading the
question. Of all the sections, this is the only one where students don’t need
much help with timing: 10 minutes is actually enough. Still, here’s a general
breakdown for how much time you should spend on each listening. Each question
should take you about 35 seconds to answer.
10 min. - 7 min.: answer 1 - 5 of the conversation (3 min)
7 min. - 3:30 min.: answer 6 - 11 of the lecture (3 min 30 sec)
3:30 min. - 0 min.: answer 12 - 17 of the discussion lecture (3 min 30 sec)
Be aware
that sometimes the order of the listenings will change in a set, so you might
hear the discussion lecture first. However, this doesn’t happen often. You
should also memorize the total time for each listening, which is in parentheses
().
When one
set finishes, the other will begin shortly. Again, each set will contain
exactly 3 listenings: a conversation, lecture, and discussion lecture. You will
always complete a total of 2 scored sets. Sometimes though, you will get an
experimental set. That’s right. You’ll have another 3 listenings to do.
The final
experimental set will not be graded and though most students (including myself)
have found that the last set is the experimental one, don’t risk it. Do your
best throughout and know that 90% of students will have an experimental set in
either the reading, the listening, or both sections.
As a side
note, when the test first came out, I noticed that it was really random.
Sometimes I would get no experimental sets and sometimes I would find an
experimental set in both the listening and the reading. Now, I find that just
about all students get an experimental set, but only one. Send us an email if
you get none or both to help us stay up-to-date.
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