The Ministry of Higher and secondary education of the Republic of Uzbekistan pedagogical institute of karshi state university

TOEFL Listening

In the Listening section of the IBT test, you will hear dialogues and academic talks, and you will be tested on your ability to understand them. You will hear each passage only once, and then answer questions after each is finished. The listening questions ask about the main idea, supporting details, and the way the speakers use language. You need to answer each listening question based on what is stated or implied by the speakers. Keep your headphones on for the entire Listening section because there is audio for the questions too, they are not just seen on your screen.
Usually you will have 5 listening passages. There will be more academic talks than there are dialogues. Each academic talk will have 6 listening questions. Each dialogue will have 5 listening questions. The timer only counts down as you answer the questions. If you get 5 passages, the total time allowed is 41 minutes. The listening section can have up to 7 passages with a total time of 57 minutes.
You don't just hear the academic talks and dialogues. Each passage is a 3 – 6 minute long video. It's not quite like a movie though as there are only still images that change. The images are to help you imagine the situation and the roles of the people talking. Some of the images you might see are vocabulary terms written on a blackboard.
There's 4 main categories – Social science, Physical Science, Life Science and the Arts – from which a wide range of topics are used in the academic talks. The topic could be anything from architecture to medical techniques to oceanography to modern history. The listening passages are meant to represent what you would hear in a lecture at university. You might hear only the professor speaking, which can include an accent or stuttering or miscues. In other words, it's just like a professor would talk in a real class. Some of them will have 1-2 students asking the professor questions, or the professor might call on 1-2 students to answer something.
For the dialogues, they are meant to represent a real conversation that can happen somewhere on a university campus between a student and a professor, a counsellor or someone who works on campus. Some will have a student going to see a professor about an assignment or a course requirement. Others have a student interacting with someone who works in the library, a restaurant, the bookstore, or the admissions office for example.
There are 9 types of listening questions and 4 different kinds of formats used. All but one type is worth one point, with the other being worth 2 points. Although you'll do 28-39 questions, the scaled score for the listening section has a maximum value of 30. No, we're not sure how ETS reduces the score down to 30.
Even if you are not familiar with the topic, if your English is good enough, you will be able to answer all the questions based on the information in the listening passage. One of the best things to do to help you answer the questions is to take notes. It's unlikely you'll be able to remember all the details, especially if it's a completely unfamiliar topic.
Unlike the Reading section, you must answer each question one after another. If you don't know or are unsure about the answer, try to eliminate options that are clearly wrong and then pick one from the ones that remain. You don't want to run out of time!
So what are the listening questions like? We'll go over the 4 formats and 9 types. You will never get all of them with a single passage.