Mastering Strategies for TOEFL Listening Section

Listening navigates the auditory sense to hear by means of fervent concentration. TOEFL listening section urges to sustain the concentration to crack the section mastering strategies of synergy. TOEFL- ‘Test of English as a Foreign Language’ is an international and recognized test to evaluate the efficacy of reading, listening, speaking and writing English. Listening contributes greatly to the total score of TOEFL and so one needs to drive the section mastering the strategies by dint of practice, patience, perseverance, and perception. 

Understanding the Listening Section 

• The Listening section consists of questions on six passages, each 3–5 minutes in length. These passages include two student conversations and four academic lectures or discussions.
• The conversations involve a student and either a professor or a campus service provider. The lectures are a self-contained portion of an academic lecture, which may involve student participation and does not assume specialized background knowledge in the subject area.
• Each conversation and lecture passage is heard only once.
• Test-takers may take notes while they listen and they may refer to their notes when they answer the questions.
• Each conversation is associated with five questions and each lecture with six.
• The questions are meant to measure the ability to understand main ideas, important details, implications, relationships between ideas, an organization of information, speaker purpose and speaker attitude.
• The section is set for 60-90 minutes and receives a scaled score from 0 to 30. The scaled scores from the section are added to determine the total score of TOEFL.

 

Cardinal Crafts to Crack Listening

• Take Note with Tactics

• It is a vital strategy to take notes while one listens.
• Only the major points are to be noted, so one should avoid to write down every detail.
• Each of the recordings is several minutes long and contains a lot of information. So it is an urge to take notes and listen simultaneously to maintaining a link of lucid perception.
• It is highly suggested practicing to read, listen, and write together.

 

• Sense the Voice of Speaker

• One needs to pay proper attention to the speaker’s tone of voice.
• For instance, whether the speaker sounds excited, sad or confused can help to answer questions that are about the speaker’s attitude, condition, or opinion.

 

• Maintain the Sequence

• One has to make the note when listening to a lecture according to the way the lecture is organized and the way the ideas in the lecture are connected.
• It will help one referring back to the notes to answer questions about the overall organization.
• One can use diagrams, arrows, and outline format while taking notes to indicate the organization of information. It will help to save time during answer the questions.
• In order to maintain the order perfectly one has to listen for transitions keenly that indicate sequencing of the information, such as first, now the first step is, next, then, so now, the last step is, finally.

 

• Control the Consistency   

• If one is unsure of the correct response, he/she needs to figure out which choice is most consistent with the main idea of the conversation or lecture.
• One needs to control the consistency during the exam period.

 

• Answer in Order

• It should be kept in mind that the listening questions must be answered in order.
• Once one clicks on ‘OK’, he/she cannot go back to a previous question.

 

• Listen to English Regularly

• The foremost step to crack listening section is to listen English regularly.
• The more one hears English or any language, the better his/her listening skills will become and the easier he/she will find the Listening section. 
• English Talk in radio, news stations, movies, tv shows, TED talk, and podcasts are all vital options.
• It is highly recommended to listen to some English with background noise, such as an interview conducted outside or in front of a large crowd. TOEFL Listening recordings purposely include background noises.

 

• Listen to Accent Attentively

• It will be a great aid to develop the skill if one practices listening to different accents while during studying.
• TOEFL Listening test includes at least one native-speaker English accent outside of North American accents. 
• This is done to make anyone prepared for the variety of English accents from different countries around the world e.g.: U.K., Australia, or New Zealand etc.
• Even native English speakers can struggle to understand different English accents, so one needs to be sure to get some exposure to different accents before exam day.
• It is suggested to listen to news clips or radio stations from these countries on a regular basis.

 

• Practice Properly & Perpetually

• The test takers need to do a lot of practice on the basis of the strategies to be adapted and the rules of TOEFL set by ETS.
• It should be kept in mind that regular practices always aid anyone to be focused and firm to glean a goal confidently. Practice surely excels the preparation of listening greatly to crack this section scoring smartly.

 

• Perceive the Question Patterns

 

• Multiple-Choice Questions
  • The most common question type in TOEFL Listening is Multiple-Choice Questions where there are four answer choices for each question & only one of which is correct. One’ll need to choose the correct one. 
  • One has to read every answer choice. ETS will try to make some answer choices sound like the right answer when they’re actually not. So one needs to read through all the options which will help to avoid getting perplexed.
  • Notes are to be taken while listening to the audio recording. These notes are to be concise and clear so that one can easily review them when answering questions.  

 

• Multiple-Answer Questions

• Multiple-Answer Questions are like the standard multiple-choice questions except they can have more than one correct answer.
• One needs to get all the answer options correct in order to receive credit for these questions.
• Partial credit is not given for these questions, so he/she will need to select every correct answer choice in order to get the question right.
• One needs to pay proper attention when answering these questions without missing any important information.

 

• Function Questions: Replay (Audio Clip) Questions

• In this type of question, one listens again the part of a lecture or conversation and then answers the question.  
• A question on the specific portion of the clip is then asked. They follow the format of standard multiple-choice questions. 
• In this part of the Listening section, one will get to listen to part of the audio recording again specifically.  
• One needs to focus especially on the clip that is replayed as opposed to what is said in the rest of the recording. One is to be able to choose the correct answer based just on the clip, so he/she doesn’t need to confuse remembering what happened in the rest of the recording.
• It is suggested to be attentive to and listen to the overall organization of the lecture or conversation thinking about whether the purpose is to describe, explain, compare, or give an opinion.
• Apart from taking proper notes, one needs to pay proper and ardent attention to the intonation, tone, and stress of voice along with the clarity of the words pronounced.

 

• Main Idea Questions

• Main idea questions assess the understanding of the overall topic or basic idea of a lecture or conversation.
• The test taker is supposed to understand the speaker’s general purpose of giving a lecture or having a conversation as well.
• So one should listen for keywords that are emphasized or repeated.

 

• Detail Questions

• One needs to take notes of major points and important details of a lecture or conversation to solve detail questions.
• It is very important to listen for signal expressions that identify details, such as for example, the reason is, on the other hand, however, I would say, etc.
• One has to choose what speakers actually say because the detail questions do not require inference.
• Since answers to questions are found in order in the passage, one is suggested to take notes in order of what he/she can hear.
• One has to be cautious enough about the incorrect choices which may repeat within some of the speaker’s words, but they are unable to reflect correct information from the lecture or conversation.

 

• Inference Questions

• Inference questions assess the ability to guess the implied meaning or to draw a conclusion based on the main points of a lecture or conversation.
• Inference questions include words, e.g.  infer, imply or suggest.
• One needs to give attention to the tone, stress, and intonation of the audio clips and speakers to guess the meaning in a proper way.

 

Listening section of TOEFL reflects a pathway through where one needs to have the knowledge to drive safely and successfully. The pathway is designed on the basis of systematic structure and strategies on which the test takers need to be trained and mastered. Practice, patience, and perseverance can work together to make anyone enable cracking the listening section with candid confidence. The confidence always helps to get the desired score guiding towards certain goals.