TOEFL iBT Listening Section

  • Academic Listening Skills

    • The Listening section measures your ability to understand spoken English.
    • In academic settings, students must be able to listen to lectures and conversations.
    • Academic listening is typically done for one of the 3 following purposes:
  • Listening for basic comprehension

    • comprehend the main idea, major points, and important details related to the main idea (Note: comprehension of all details is not necessary.)
  • Listening for pragmatic understanding

    • recognize a speaker´s attitude and degree of certainty
    • recognize a speaker´s function or purpose
  • Connecting and synthesizing information

    • recognize the organization of information presented
    • understand the relationships between ideas presented (for example, compare/ contrast, cause/effect, or steps in a process)
    • make inferences and draw conclusions based on what is implied in the material
    • make connections among pieces of information in a conversation or lecture
    • recognize topic changes (for example, digressions and aside statements) in lectures and conversations, and recognize introductions and conclusions in lectures
  • Description

    • Listening material in the test includes academic lectures and long conversations in which the speech sounds very natural.
    • You can take notes on any listening material throughout the entire test.
  • Format

    • Lectures
      • 4–6 lectures
      • 3–5 minutes long each
      • about 500–800 words
      • 6 questions per lecture
    • Conversations
      • 2–3 lectures
      • about 3 minutes long each
      • about 12–25 exchanges
      • 5 questions per conversation
    • 60–90 minutes
  • Academic Lectures

    The lectures in the TOEFL iBT reflect the kind of listening and speaking that occurs in the classroom.

    The pictures that accompany the lecture help you know whether one or several people will be speaking.

    • In some of the lectures, the professor does all or almost all of the talking, with an occasional comment by a student.
    • In other lectures, the professor may engage the students in discussion by asking questions that are answered by the students.
  • Conversations in an Academic Setting

    Pictures on the computer screen help you imagine the setting and the roles of the speakers.The conversations on the TOEFL iBT may take place

    • during an office meeting with a professor or teaching assistant generally academic in nature or related to course requirements
    • during a service encounter with university staff about a housing payment, registering for a class, or requesting information at the library
  • Listening Question Formats

    After the listening material is played, you both see and hear each question before you see the answer choices.

    This encourages you to listen for main ideas.

    There are 4 question formats in the Listening section:

    • traditional multiple-choice questions with 4 answer choices and a single correct answer
    • multiple-choice questions with more than 1 answer (e.g., 2 answers out of four or more choices)
    • questions that require you to order events or steps in a process
    • questions that require you to match objects or text to categories in a chart
  • Features

    • Note taking is allowed.
    • A multiple-choice question measures understanding of a speaker’s attitude, degree of certainty, or purpose.

      These questions require you to listen for voice tones and other cues and determine how speakers feel about the topic they are discussing.

    • In some questions, a portion of the lecture or conversation is replayed so you do not need to rely on memory of what was said.

      In the replay format, you listen to part of the conversation or lecture again and then answer a question.

      Sometimes the question repeats a portion of the listening material again, as indicated by the headphones icon.