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TOEFL Listening

Wondering what you’ll see on the TOEFL Listening section? Well, wonder no more - here’s all the information you need to make it work. The TOEFL Listening section tests how well you can understand spoken English and answer questions about it. It’s between 60 and 90 minutes long, with anywhere from 34 to 51 questions.

Listening can be hard because the passages go by pretty fast - it’s not like reading where you can go at your own pace. But, if you know in advance what kinds of passages you’ll get, it’s a lot easier to make it through the test without getting frazzled. In this lesson, first, we’ll cover the passages you’ll be listening to, then, we’ll move on to the types of questions you’ll be asked.

Listening Passages

Let’s start with passages. In the Listening section, you’ll get between six and nine total listening passages. The passages come in two types: lectures and conversations. Lectures are passages designed to imitate a classroom lecture. Sometimes, only the professor will speak; sometimes there will be a discussion between the professor and students. You’ll get anywhere from four to six lectures on the test. Each lecture will last three to five minutes and be followed by six questions.

Conversations are passages designed to imitate the kinds of conversations you might have at a school in an English-speaking country. For example, they might be about requesting books from the library. You’ll get two or three conversations on the test. Each conversation will last about three minutes and be followed by five questions.

Some of the passage narrators in the Listening section will have American accents; others might have British or Australian accents. While you listen to each passage, you’ll have scrap paper to take notes on if you like. You’ll be able to refer to your notes while you answer the questions. You don’t have to take notes, but it’s a good idea.

Question Types

Now you know what the passages will be like; it’s time to look at the questions. There are three types of questions on the TOEFL Listening section:

Listening for Basic Comprehension questions test whether you can understand basic information from the passage.

Listening for Pragmatic Understanding questions are more complicated. They test whether you can recognize a speaker’s attitude and purpose. On these questions, you don’t just have to understand what the speaker says; you have to understand how she feels about it and why she’s saying it.

Connecting and Synthesizing Information questions are the most complicated of all. They test how well you understand connections among different parts of the passage, and how well you can put different parts of the passage together to draw conclusions from them.

Some questions on the test will ask you to choose only one answer; other questions will ask you to pick two answers. All the questions will ask you only about information in the passage - you’ll never have to remember anything you learned somewhere else.

Lesson Summary

In this lesson, you learned about the Listening section on the TOEFL . In the Listening section, you’ll get two types of passages:

Lectures last three to five minutes and simulate the kinds of speech you’ll hear in an English-language classroom, either a professor speaking by himself or a professor and students having a discussion. You’ll get four to six lectures, each with six questions.

Conversations last about three minutes and simulate the kinds of conversations you might have at a school in an English-speaking country. You’ll get two to three conversations, each with five questions.

In total, that’s six to nine passages, with 34-51 questions in 60-90 minutes on the whole test. For the questions, you’ll get three different kinds:

Listening for Basic Comprehension questions ask about basic facts and information from the passage.

Listening for Pragmatic Understanding questions ask about the speaker’s attitude and purpose.

Connecting and Synthesizing Information questions ask you to put together information from different parts of the passage and draw conclusions from it.

That’s a lot of new names to learn, so don’t panic if you don’t remember them all right away. Try out some of the other lessons in the course and do some practice problems - you’ll get better at them by working on them.