o 4-6 lectures and 2-3 conversations

osix questions per lecture and five

questions per conversation
o60-90 minutes to answer all of the
listening questions
 CONVERSATIONS

There are two types:

 Office hours: interactions that take place in
a professor’s office. The topic may be
academic or related to course requirements.
 Service encounters: interactions that take
place on a university campus and have non-
academic content, e.g. inquiring about a
payment for housing or registering for class
 LECTURES
o They represent the kind of language used when
teachers teach in a classroom. The lecture excerpt
may be just a teacher speaking, a student asking the
teacher a question, or the teacher asking the
students a question.
o The content of lectures reflects the content that is
presented in introductory-level academic settings.
o You will not be expected to have any prior
knowledge of the subject matter.
o All the information you need to answer the questions
will be contained in the listening passage.
 They are divided into major categories:

- Arts (architecture, literature, music history,

etc)
- Life Science (viruses, medical techniques,
animal communication)
- Physical Science (weather and atmosphere,
electromagnetic radiation, seismology)
- Social Science (education, child
development, anthropology of non-
industrialized civilizations)
 There are some types of questions

 Multiple choice questions with more than one

answer
 Questions that require you to put in order events
or steps in a process
 Questions that require you to match objects or
text to categories in a table

Replay questions: you will hear a portion of the

lecture and
then you will be asked a question.
There are nine types of questions, but they are divided into three categories:
Basic Comprehension Questions
1. Main idea
2. Main purpose
3. Detail

Pragmatic Understanding Questions

4. Purpose and method

5. Attitude

Connecting Information Questions

6. Ordering and matching

7. Completing charts
8. Inference
Understanding the main idea means
understanding the general topic stated in the
extract.

The idea may be expressed explicitly or

implicitly.

 This type of question may require you to

generalize or synthesize information in what
you hear.
They are typically phrased as follows:

- What problem does the man have?

- What are the speakers mainly discussing?
- What is the main topic of the lecture?
- What is the lecture mainly about?
- What aspect of X does the professor mainly
discuss?
Main idea questions ask about the overall
content of the listening. Eliminate choices that
refer to only small portions of the listening
passage.

Use your notes. Decide what overall theme

ties the details in your notes together. Choose
the answer that comes closest to describing
this overall theme.
 Some main idea questions focus on the
purpose of the conversation rather than on
the content.

 They will more likely occur with

conversations, but they may also
occasionally be found with lectures.
 Why does the student visit the professor?
 Why does the student visit the registrar’s office?
 Why did the professor ask to see the student?
 Why does the professor explain X?
 Listen for the unifying theme of the
conversation.
For example, during a professor’s office hours, a student asks
the professor for help with a paper on glaciers. Their
conversation includes facts about glaciers, but the unifying
theme of the conversation is that the student needs help
writing his paper. In this conversation the speakers are not
attempting to convey a main idea about glaciers.

 In Service Encounter conversations, the student

is often trying to solve a problem. Understanding
what the student’s problem is and how it will be
solved will help you answer the main purpose
question.
 Require you to understand and remember
explicit details or facts from a lecture or
conversation
 Details are typically related, directly or
indirectly, to the gist of the text, by providing
elaboration, examples or other support.
 When there is a long digression, you may be
asked about some details of this.
DIGRESSION: an act or instance of departing from
the central topic or line of argument while
speaking or writing, usually temporarily
They are phrases as follows:

- According to the professor, what is one

way that X can affect Y?
- What are X?
- What resulted from the invention of the X?
- According to the professor, what is the
main problem with the X theory?
 Refer to your notes as you answer.
 You will not be asked about minor points. Your
notes should contain the major details from the
conversation or lecture.
 Do not choose an answer only because it contains
some of the words that were used in the
conversation or lecture. Incorrect responses will
contain words from the listening
 If you aren’t sure, decide which one of the
choices is most consistent with the main idea of
the conversation or lecture.
 Test whether you can understand
the FUNCTION of what is said.

 Involve replaying a portion of the

listening passage.
They are phrased as follows:

 What does the professor imply when he

says this? (replay)
 What can be inferred from the professor’s
response to the students?
 What is the purpose of the woman’s
response?
 Why does the student say this:..
 The function of what is said may
not match what the speaker
directly states.
 Test whether you understand a speaker’s
attitude or opinion.

 You may be asked a question about the

speaker’s feelings, likes, dislikes, or reason
for anxiety or amusement, speaker’s degree
of certainty

Is the speaker referencing a source or giving a

personal opinion?
 What can be inferred about the student?
 What is the professor’s attitude toward X?
 What is the professor’s opinion of X?
 What can be inferred about the student
when she says this: (replay)
 What does the woman mean when she says
this: (replay)
 Pay attention to the speaker’s tone
of voice

Does the speaker sound apologetic?

confused?
 You may be asked about the overall organization
of the listening passage or the relationship
between two portions of the listening passage.
Ex:
1. How does the professor organize the
information that she presents to the class?
In the order in which the events occurred.
2. How does the professor clarify the points he
makes about Mexico?
By comparing Mexico to the neighboring
country.
 They are typically phrased as follows:
- How does the professor organize the
information about X that he presents to the
class?
- How is the discussion organized?

You are expected to:

 classify items in categories
 identify a sequence of events or steps in a
process
 specify relationships among objects along
some dimension
 Questions that ask about the overall
organization of the passage are more likely
to be found after lectures than after
conversations (refer to your notes to answer
them)
It may not be clear from the start that the
professor organized the information
chronologically, or from the least to most
complex or in some other way.
 Pay attention to comparisons
 Measure your understanding of the
relationships among ideas in a text. They
may be explicitly stated or you may have to
infer.
 Ask you to organize information in a different
way from the way it was presented in the
listening passage.
 You may be asked to
 identify comparisons
 cause and effect
 contradiction
 agreement
 What is the likely outcome of doing
procedure X before procedure Y?

 What can be inferred about X?

 What does the professor imply about X?

 Require you to fill in a chart or table or put
events in order

- pay attention to the way you format your

notes.

- identify terms and their definitions as well

as the steps in a process
 You have to reach a conclusion based on
facts presented in the listening passage.
 What does the professor imply about X?

 What will the student probably do next?

 What can be inferred about X?

 What does the professor imply when he

says this: (replay)
 Add up details from the passage to reach a
conclusion

 The professor may imply something without

directly stating it

 The answer you choose will use vocabulary

not found in the listening passage