een The Listening section of the TOEFL® iBT test measures your ability to understand spoken English. You will see photographs of students and professors speaking and hear parts of conversations and academic lectures lasting from three to five minutes. Some of the lectures include classroom discussions. Each listening passage is followed by five or six questions. Each listening passage begins with a spoken statement that sets the context. For example, you will hear, “Listen to part of a conversation between a student and an advisor.” When listening, you must concentrate carefully and focus all your attention on the passage. Taking notes is permitted and recommended. All the information necessary to answer the questions can be found within the passage. You do not need any prior knowledge about the topic of the passage in order to answer the questions. Some questions begin by replaying a short excerpt from the listening passage, but most questions require you to remember what you heard. ‘You must choose the correct answer to each question from the choices on the computer screen by either clicking on the best choice of four possible answers or by following the special directions that appear in a box on the screen. After you choose your answer, click on the Next icon. You are then given the opportunity to check your answer. When you are ready, click on the OK icon. You must confirm your answer by clicking OK in order to continue. 1, Listen to spoken English as much as possible. The more you practice listening, the better listener you will become. There are many ways in which you can practice your listening skills. If you don't have the opportunity to listen to native English speakers in person, you can hear English spoken in movies, on TV, on the radio, or on the Internet. Try to understand ‘unfamiliar words in context. Write down any words you don’t understand so you can look them up in a dictionary later. 2. Listen to natural speech. ‘Most of what you hear in movies, documentaries, and TV or radio news reports is scripted speech. This means that what you are listening to has been planned and written down so that it can be read aloud. Although these sources provide good listening practice, they do not contain many of the natural speech features that will be heard in TOEFL listening passages. By listening to unscripted interviews, discussions, or debates, you can improve your ability to understand natural speech. 3. Listen to different accents. Speakers from different English-speaking countries may be featured in the Listening section of the TOEFL iBT test. To become familiar with different accents and speech patterns, watch movies and TV shows and listen to radio programs from various English-speaking areas of the world. 249Part 2 Building Skills 4, Listen to authentic academic lectures. ‘Try to attend lectures given in English and take notes. If you have access to the Internet, the Web sites of some universities and research institutions provide free lectures and discussions that you can listen to as many times as you want. ‘These lectures and discussions are useful for several reasons: * You can improve your ability to listen to longer discourse. * You have a choice of lectures and discussions on different topics. * You have the opportunity to hear different accents and speech patterns. 5. Listen for stance. ‘When you listen to lectures and conversations in English, practice listening for clues that will help you understand the speaker's purpose, attitude, and degree of certainty. Look at the examples below: {man} I can’t get this printer to feed the paper through. |woman} Don't look at me. I'm hopeless at these things. In this conversation, we can infer that the man is seeking help to solve his problem, even though he doesn’t directly ask for help. The woman's response indicates that she doesn’t know how to help him, even though she doesn't say it directly. (woman) The exciting thing about this artist’s innovative creativity is how the exhibition is bringing in such a wide range of people. ‘The woman has not said that she likes the artist's work, but we can understand that she does because she has used the word exciting and the phrase innovative creativity when she refers to it (man) As far as I know, no one has come up with a viable solution to this problem. In this statement, we can understand that the speaker himself does not know of anyone with a solution, but he is letting his listeners know that there might be someone who has one. Strategies to Use for the Listening Section of the TOEFL iBT Test Strategies for listening to the conversations or lectures 1, Take notes. Taking notes will help you concentrate on and remember what's being said. ‘You can use your notes to help you answer the questions. Try to write what you hear in a rough outline form that organizes the main ideas and details of the conversation or lecture. 2. Identify the main idea and the important details that support it. ‘The main idea is usually found at the beginning of the Listening passage. Details may be found throughout the passage. The language in the conversations is often informal and concerns topics common to the everyday lives of young adults studying at a university. The language in the lectures and classroom discussions is more formal and usually concerns an academic topic. It is not necessary to have previous knowledge of a topic in order to answer the questions about a passage. All the information needed to answer each question is stated or implied within the passage. 250Listening 3. Understand the purpose of the visual material. ‘There are three types of visual material that will appear on the screen in the Listening section of the TOEFL test. Each type has a different purpose, as described below. Photographs of the speakers These pictures are provided to give you a general idea of who the speakers are and the context of the discussions, but they do not provide any information that will help you answer the questions. Focus your attention on what is being said — not on the photographs of the people. Blackboards These visuals show a word or words that the professor refers to during the lecture or discussion. They are provided to help you with an unfamiliar term or concept the professor is discussing and appear only while the professor is referring to it. Ilustrations or graphs These visuals support the content of the discussion or lecture, and they appear only while the professor is referring to them. The illustrations or graphs may be a key to understanding the information the professor is presenting. Focus your attention on how the visual relates to what is being said. 4. Pay attention to stance. Listen for clues to help you understand the speaker's stance. Stance refers to the speaker's purpose, attitude, or degree of certainty. Being aware of these features will help you answer some of the questions on the test. Questions about stance often begin by repeating a short section of the passage. ‘This repeated section gives the context for the question that follows. Read this, conversation and the example of this question type that follows it: (woman) Have you really decided to change your major! (man) Well, yeah, the engineering department will accept most of the work that I did toward my physics degree, so I switched to engineering just last week. {woman} But won't the change set you back, Imean....uh... as far as graduating is concerned? (man) A bit, maybe, but it looks like I will be able to catch up with most of the engineering courses by next year, so it really won't set me back too much, not that much. Besides, think that I'll be happier in engineering. Listen again to part of the conversation. Then answer the question. (man) Well, yeah, the engineering department will accept most of the work that I did toward my physics degree, so I switched to engineering just last week (woman) But won't the change set you back, Imean... uk... as far as graduating is concerned Why does the woman say this: But won't the change set you back! In this question, the first repeated part sets the context ~ the man’s change of major. The second part contains the information that the question relates to. In this case, the underlying meaning of the woman's question is that she is concerned that the man’s change of major will mean that he will “set back,” or delay, his graduation date. 251