Listening is as simple as Reading. I used to think that it would be all right if I practiced to the past questions of the TOEFL Listening over and over. The learning method was correct. However, in my case, even though I spent 40 hours for practicing listening and almost understood the contents of listening and took the test, but I didn’t earn as much points in the listening section (I was able to understand the section of Speaking and Writing easily). Based on these failures, I would like to introduce Preparing for TOEFL Listening.
Preparing for TOEFL Listening
Know what TOEFL Listening requires
As mentioned in Preparing for TOEFL Reading, it is important to know about the TOEFL test itself if you want to increase your TOEFL score. There is a video explaining this accurately, so I will share.
This person is Josh MacPherson and is the head of instructor of an online TOEFL school called TST Prep. In TST Prep site, there is not only about Reading, but also about Listening, Speaking, and Writing, as well as a lot of useful free materials, so please use it for TOEFL study!
The summary of this video is as follows.
Tips for Listening
- Erase options that don’t fit the academic values of North America – TOEFL focuses on college life in the United States, so understand what American university employees do for their students.
Example : American university employees are ①responsible to their students if necessary ② they must help if they could ③ they value critical thinking ④ they are fair. - Focus on information explained in-depth – TOEFL requires greater understanding for contents than detail
- Be an active listener – listen only to what you really need with actual purpose
- Take notes like a college student – effective notes improve listening comprehension
- Focus on the enemy – ignore noise and others, focus only on listening
- Identify the question type – depending on the type of questions, the answers can be identified to some extent
- Time management for each question – to increase the efficiency of the answer to the questions
- Use additional materials – not only solve the TOEFL past, but also study through a variety of materials, sites, and other media.
- Track your progress – motivating you by visualizing what you have achieved and what you have learned
- Looking for a teacher who has good ability for English – Getting feedback facilitates learning English
If you want to understand this in more detail, I recommend that you watch the video above to learn.
Learning the background of the academias
TOEFL asks many questions related to education and knowledge that college students need to know.
For example, anthropology, archaeology, world civilization, American history and law, ecology, biology, botany, environmental issues, meteorology, astronomy, geology, human body, chemistry, art, economics, architecture, psychology, advanced technology, etc.
On the day of the exam, there will be questions such as the history, the technology, the research, etc. So, it’s a good idea to keep these simple knowledge in mind beforehand. This is because when you take a test, the speed of information processing in your head is completely different when you don’t know anything. If you want to have some spare time during the exam, I recommend you to learn these in advance.
Memorizing words + connecting the word with the sound
If you just memorize words and take the listening test on the day of TOEFL, you will get stuck 100%. Even if you can read or write words just by memorizing it, recognizing the sound of the word with your ears is a different story. English is a fluid language, and depending on the sound connection, the sound is often omitted or different from what you think.
Also, when memorizing words, keeping in mind this following:
- Using of five senses as much as possible
- Memorizing words through images and illustrations rather than characters
- Linking words with the sound
- Repeat the vocabulary book at least three to five times.
- To actively say the words you memorize or write an essay to make output
When I learned words, I used vocabulary books a lot. I used to use three vocabulary books before taking the TOEFL, and I did four times of all three books. A vocabulary book will have a tremendous effect only by repeating it.
I also learned words by listening and writing voices and essays, because I was able to combine words with the sounds and was able to get feedback from my native friends by using the words in my essay to output them.
Solving past questions
In the case of listening, you can solve all the questions from the past questions. However, please note the following:
- While listening, follow the manuscript with your eyes.
- Repeat the voices at least 4 times
- Understand what English words are being used rather than understanding the whole content
- concentrate completely during listening
It’s a complete superstition to be able to hear English if you’re just listening, because even if you’ve heard a sound you can’t think of it as a letter in your head, it means you don’t understand the meaning of the word.
As mentioned above, firstly, trying to connect words with sounds by reading the original while listening at the same time. At least four times, the reason for repeating the same sounds is…
1st – Listening + Draft
2nd – Listening
3rd – Listening + Draft
4th – Listening
by linking sounds and words over and over again so that you can understand the meaning automatically. On the exam day, you only need to understand the whole content, but if you are solving past questions with greed, you should study the English words and parts of speech as much as possible because you can find expressions and idioms that can be used in speaking and writing sections.
In the end
The above content can be applied not only to English study but also to other languages, so please make use of it! I would appreciate it if you could leave a comment if this article was helpful for TOEFL study or if you thought your language learning method was like this (о´∀`о)
References – YouTube.com
thumbnail – wiki-study.com
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