TOEFL iBT Listening Section

By Abhi Tom on Feb 01, 2012 with Comments 0

TOEFL iBT Listening Section-

In TOEFL iBT, the second section is the Listening Section. TOEFL iBT Listening section is delivered immediately after the Reading section. This section measures candidate’s abilities to understand spoken English as it is used in colleges and universities or everyday settings. In order to succeed in an academic environment, candidates must be able to listen to lectures and conversation and, most importantly, to understand the information provided orally.

Academic Listening Skills

The TOEFL listening section measures the candidate’s ability to understand spoken English fromNorth America and other English-speaking countries. In academic environments candidate’s need to listen to lectures and conversations.

Academic Listening is typically done for one of the three following purposes:-

1. Listening for basic comprehension.
2. Listening for pragmatic understanding.
3. To connecting and synthesizing information.

1. Listening for basic comprehension- This involves the ability to comprehend the main idea, major points and important details related to the main idea (Note: Comprehension for all details is not necessary).
2.  Listening for pragmatic understanding- This requires the listener to recognize a speaker’s attitude or degree of certainty and recognize a speaker’s function or purpose.
3.  Connecting and synthesizing information-This involves the ability to recognize the information of information presented and  understand the relationships between ideas presented (for example, compare and contrast, cause and effect, or steps in process).Make inferences and draw conclusions based on what is implied in the listening material and make connections among pieces of information in a conversation or lecture. Recognize topic changes, examples, digressions, aside statements, in lectures and conversations; recognize introductions and conclusions in lectures.

TOEFL iBT Listening Section Organization

TOEFL iBT Listening section measures the candidate’s ability to understand conversations and lectures in English. The section is divided into separately timed parts (2 or 3). Each part consists of 1 long conversation and two lectures. The test takers hear each lecture or conversation only once.

Lectures and conversations are 3-5 minutes long. While listening the time is not running. The allotted time of 10 minutes for each section is only for answering the questions.

Academic lectures represent the kind of listening during university classes. Some of the lectures are entirely done by the professor, while in others students are engaged in the discussion by asking or answering questions.

The conversations in TOEFL iBT may occur between students and professor or teaching advisor or between students and university officials.

After each lecture or conversation, candidates have to answer some questions related to the lecture/conversation. The questions typically ask for the main idea, supporting details, and speaker’s purpose or attitude.

Listening Section Format-