Introduction to the TOEFL iBT®️ Listening

In the Listening lessons, you will be listening to audio recordings. You will need headphones or speakers. Before you begin, ensure your headphones or speakers are set up correctly.

Duration: 36 minutes
Number of Questions: 28
Description: This section evaluates the ability to understand spoken English in an academic setting. Test-takers will listen to lectures, classroom discussions, and conversations, answering questions about main ideas, details, and speaker intent.

Overview

The Listening section of the TOEFL iBT test measures your ability to understand spoken English in classrooms and in other campus settings. You will listen to recorded conversations and lectures and answer questions about them. You may take notes as you listen. You may use your notes to help you answer the questions.

Listening Section Overview

In an actual TOEFL iBT test, you will hear:

2 conversations
3 academic lectures

Following a conversation, you will answer 5 questions about it. Following a lecture, you will answer 6 questions about it.

The questions are designed to provide information about proficiency in the following listening skills:

Understanding main ideas/main topics
Understanding important factual points
Understanding how two pieces of information are related
Understanding how a speaker organizes a lecture (historical narrative, pros/cons, compare/contrast, etc.)
Understanding how a speaker’s intentions are shown through intonation
Determining a speaker’s stance on some point
Determining why a speaker says something
Recognizing inferred meaning

Academic Lectures

A professor always speaks in an academic lecture. One or two students participate in some academic lectures, called “interactive” lectures. In all lectures you will see at least one visual that is intended to show the speaker or speakers. In some lectures you will see other types of visuals, as described below.

There are two types of academic lectures:

1. Monologic: only the professor speaks

2. Interactive: the professor is the main speaker, but there are also exchanges between the professor and students or between students. Students might pose questions, answer questions, or express opinions.

Overview of Academic Lectures:

Location: set in a classroom or seminar room
Content: varies greatly; for example, lectures commonly cover biology, anthropology, business, history, psychology, and so on. A subject screen appears indicating the subject area of the lecture.
Level: first-year university level (101 classes)
Format: Academic lectures are delivered by a professor. Some lectures are interactive and involve the participation of one or two students. In all lectures you will see at least one visual that is intended to show the speaker or speakers. In some lectures you will see other types of visuals, as described later on. In any given lecture, you might hear a native-speaker English accent from North America, the U.K., New Zealand or Australia.

Authentic Spoken Language

The conversations and lectures that you will hear make use of some common features of authentic spoken English in an academic setting, such as the following:

Reduced speech:

wanna = want to
gonna = going to
hafta = have to
cuz = because

False starts:

Today I’d like to [pause] I’d like to talk about genetic engineering.
So, there’s gotta be a way to, well, I would think there would be a way to do this.

Mistakes with self-corrections:

So Matisse really influenced the graphic artists like [pause] graphic artists? I mean the graffiti artists like Haring, for instance.
Next week we’ll, uh, no wait, sorry, in two weeks we’ll start on section 3.

Hesitations:

I, uh, [pause] I won’t be in your class next Friday. I, uh, [longer pause] have to go to my sister’s wedding in L.A.

Digressions:

I was thinking I’d like to do my term paper about how small businesses can advertise very cheaply. Like, well, what gave me the idea is that new burger place across the school. You know, they put these fliers…really eye-catching, on all the kiosks on campus. I really like the artwork on those…So, anyway, I did some research and saw that there are all sorts of these so-called guerilla marketing techniques.

Polite interruptions:

Excuse me, professor, but I didn’t catch that.
Sorry to interrupt, but could you go over that again?
Pardon me, Professor Green, but I’m lost. Could you rephrase that?

Lecture Sequence:

1. You will see a screen with the name of the subject about which the professor is talking.

2. You will see a photograph of a professor lecturing to a class. Then you will hear a narrator introduce the lecture.

3. The lecture will begin. At the bottom of the screen is a time bar showing how much of the lecture remains.

4. During some, but not all, lectures you will see a blackboard or whiteboard with names or technical terminology used in the lecture.

5. During some, but not all, lectures you will see an illustration, photograph, or map related to the lecture topic. Test questions will not refer to elements of visually presented images unless the elements are discussed in the lectures.

6. When the lecture is over, answer the questions based on what you’ve heard.

Conversations

A student and one other person speak in the conversations.

Conversation types and examples

Office hours:

1. Location: Typically a professor’s office

2. Participants: A student and a professor

3. Topic: Typically an issue related to a class a student is taking—for example, scheduling difficulties, problems with an assignment, questions about information presented in a class, or the focus of a term paper. Conversation topics may be partly or totally academic.

Service encounters:

1. Location: Somewhere on a university campus

2. Participants: A student and a university employee—for example, a librarian, a counselor, a registrar, a loan office clerk, etc.

3. Topics: Typically, a problem that the student is having—for example, not finding a book in the library, roommate issues, difficulty registering for a class, etc.

Event Sequence

1. You will see a photograph of the two people who are talking. The test questions will not be based on this.

2. The conversation will begin. Note that at the bottom of the screen is a time bar showing how much of the conversation remains. After you listen to the conversation, answer the questions based on what you’ve heard.

3. During some, but not all, conversations you will see a notepad with words written on it.

Taking Notes

You may take notes as you listen to a lecture or conversation and you may use your notes when answering questions. Many test takers find it useful to take notes, but some may find that it distracts them from listening. If you do take notes, it is recommended that you do not try to write down every detail or point made, but rather focus on the main ideas and supporting details and how the points are connected to one another.

Strategies for Listening Success

Know the directions before taking the test. You may dismiss the listening section directions when they appear on the screen. Although dismissing the directions won’t give you any extra time for listening to the lectures and conversations or for answering the questions, you don’t have to read or listen to these directions if you already know them.
If you take notes, focus on the main ideas and supporting details and how the points are connected to one another.
While listening to the lectures and conversations, try to guess what questions will be asked.
Listen closely for the speaker’s signal phrases—questions are often based on these. For example, “Let me give you an example of what I’m getting at here.”
Answer each question as quickly as possible so that you have enough time to answer every question.
Glance at the countdown clock occasionally. Be sure to answer all of the questions before your time runs out.
If you’re unsure of an answer, use the process of elimination. Sometimes, one or more of the answer choices is clearly wrong.

Stay focused on the task at hand. After answering one question, immediately go on to the next and forget about the previous one.