ارتباط دادن و ترکیب اطلاعات

Connecting and Synthesizing Information questions are some of the hardest parts of the TOEFL Listening section.

These questions ask you to understand the passage as a whole.

You’ll have to understand the organization of the passage and relationships between ideas, draw conclusions, and make inferences from the information presented.

In other words, you’ll need to have a handle on more than what the main idea is. You’ll have to understand how the speaker presents his ideas. This can be really tough, especially under time pressure.

So, in this lesson, we’ll go over a few tips and then work on some practice questions.

Before heading into the practice questions, here are a few tips for success on the Connecting and Synthesizing Information questions:

As you’re listening, take notes on the organization of the passage.

Find a system that works for you and practice with it - for example, you might mark topic changes with a star, or put brackets around the introduction and conclusion.

Listen for transition words - words like ‘first,’ ‘second,’ ‘third’ guide you through the speaker’s ideas.

Note logical relationships between ideas in your notes - for example, you could show cause and effect with arrows or comparisons with a quick chart.

And now for the actual practice passage. Make sure you’re taking notes. If you don’t have a pen and paper, go get one right now.

PROFESSOR: Okay class, today, we’re going to discuss the problem of charter schools. Now, charter schools, those are schools that are funded with public money, so they’re paid for by taxes, but are governed independently, so, um, the curriculum isn’t necessarily the same as it is with public schools.

With a charter school, you can have a specialized school for specific subjects, like a school that really focuses on math and science. Or, you can have a school for specific types of students, like a whole school just for English-language learners.

For your reading, you read about charter schools and whether or not they work to reduce inequality in education. The author talked about the evidence for both sides, and today we’re going to go over that: the pro-charter and the anti-charter arguments. So, can someone summarize for me the major points in support of charter schools?

STUDENT 1: Well, um, the idea is that they’ll be more flexible, so you have schools that serve all different kinds of students better, so it gives more students a fair chance, like, if English isn’t your fist language, you don’t have to fall behind.

STUDENT 2: And, that you’re going to give parents a choice, so it’s like, um, if the regular schools have some competition, they’ll have to get better to compete with the charter schools. So, in the end, everyone has to improve.

STUDENT 3: Right, and so because of that, it’ll help reduce inequality, like the way that schools in poor areas tend to be worse than schools in richer areas. If all the students from poor areas can just go somewhere else, they can, like, escape and they aren’t trapped in just the one bad school.

PROFESSOR: All right, good. So, now we have these arguments in support of charter schools - what about against?

STUDENT 4: Um, okay, first of all, the author cites a bunch of studies that actually the schools don’t reduce inequality; they actually increase it because the applications are really complicated, so the parents of poor students don’t always understand how to do it, and it ends up just being the richer students who go there anyway.

STUDENT 1: Right, and also, um, the managers of the charter schools have to show that their school is successful, so they’re really motivated to pick the kids who are doing really well, not the kids who need help. So, they won’t take people who really need it, like the kids who don’t know English really well, they can’t get in.

Okay, you’ve heard the passage. Now here are some questions:

1) Listen to the following section of the passage again:

PROFESSOR: All right, good. So, now we have these arguments in support of charter schools - what about against?

Here, the professor is:

a) Encouraging the students to explore the subject more thoroughly

b) Refuting an argument made by one of the students

c) Implying that the students are correct in their praise of charter schools

d) Moving the discussion forward according to his previously stated agenda

The answer’s coming up, so pause the video if you need time to think about it. The correct answer is d. The professor said at the start of the passage that the discussion will focus on the pro-charter school and anti-charter school arguments. In this section, he’s wrapping up the first part of the discussion and moving on to the second.

2) Listen to the following section of the passage again:

STUDENT 2: And, that you’re going to give parents a choice, so it’s like, um, if the regular schools have some competition they’ll have to get better to compete with the charter schools. So, in the end, everyone has to improve.

STUDENT 3: Right, and so because of that, it’ll help reduce inequality.

Student 3 is identifying:

a) A problem with charter schools

b) A cause-and-effect relationship

c) A difference between charter schools and regular public schools

d) A flaw in Student 2’s reasoning

The answer’s coming up, so pause the video if you need time to think about it. The correct answer is b. Student 3 is adding to Student 2’s argument by explaining the way that school choice is a cause reducing inequality (or, in other words, why reduction in inequality is an effect of school choice).

3) In this passage, the students are primarily:

a) Identifying arguments in support of two different positions

b) Comparing two different theories of education

c) Discussing two articles on a given topic

d) Debating the history of an institution

The answer’s coming up, so pause the video if you need time to think about it. The correct answer is a. The students are examining two different positions on charter schools: that they reduce inequality and that they increase inequality.

In this lesson, you got some practice with Connecting and Synthesizing Information questions. These questions aren’t easy - in fact, they can be very tricky. When you’re working on Connecting and Synthesizing Information questions, remember to focus on the big picture. Listen for transition words, like ‘in conclusion’ or ‘also’ to help you navigate the passage. Take notes that will help you remember the organization of ideas and the logical relationships in the passage - for example, you could star shifts in the conversation or mark cause-and-effect relationships with arrows. Most of all, though, make sure to get plenty of practice: the more of these questions you do, the better you’ll get at them.