Listening tips

TOEFL iBT Listening tips

The best way to improve listening skills is to listen frequently to many different types of material in various subject areas (sciences, social sciences, arts, business and so on). Of course, watching movies and TV and listening to radio is an excellent way to practice listening. Audio tapes and CDs of talks are available at libraries and bookstores; those with transcripts are particularly helpful. The Internet is also a great resource for listening material (e.g., www.npr.org or www.bbc.co.uk/radio or www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish).

Here are a few suggestions for ways to build your listening skills:

Stay active by asking yourself questions (e.g., What main idea is the professor communicating?).

Listen to a portion of a lecture or talk and create an outline of important points and use the outline to write a brief summary.

Think about what each speaker hopes to accomplish: that is, what is the purpose of the speech or conversation? Is the speaker apologizing, complaining, making suggestions?

Identify the relationships between ideas in the information being discussed.

Possible relationships include: cause-and-effect, compare-and-contrast, and steps in a process.

When you listen to recorded material, stop the recording at various points and try to predict what information or idea will be expressed next.
Practice your listening skills on TOEFL Practice Online at www.ets.org/toeflpractice81.html and receive instant scores to help prepare you for test day.