Listening · ⁨การฟัง⁩

About 29 minutes, about 47 items. Four kinds of task: Listen and Choose a Response, Listen to a Conversation, Listen to an Announcement and Listen to an Academic Talk.

• Every recording is played once. There is no second chance, and there is no pause button.
• You may take notes 笔记 while you listen, on the paper the test centre gives you.
• The section is adaptive, so what you hear depends on how the earlier items went.

⚠ The single biggest cause of lost marks here is dwelling 纠结: a student misses one detail, keeps thinking about it, and misses the next thirty seconds as well. One missed item is one mark. Thirty seconds of not listening is five. Let it go and stay with the speaker.

You hear one short turn of speech and choose what would naturally come next.

• This is a test of everyday conversation, not of academic English. The right answer is the reply a real person would give.
• Listen to the function 功能 of what was said, not only the words: was it a request, an offer, a complaint, an apology, a suggestion? The reply has to match the function.
• Intonation 语调 carries meaning here. "You're coming to the meeting?" with a rising tune is a question; the same words falling are a statement.
• ⚠ An answer that repeats words from the prompt is usually wrong. Natural replies use different words.

• A conversation is two speakers, often a student and someone at a university — a tutor, a librarian, an office. Track who wants what: one speaker has a problem and the other offers a solution, and most questions sit on that line.
• An announcement is one speaker giving practical information: a change of room, a deadline, a procedure. Listen for what has changed and what the listener must do.
• In both, a change of direction is signalled before it happens. Actually, but, the thing is, having said that, on second thoughts — a signpost 路标词 tells you the next sentence matters.
• Numbers, dates, room names and prices are exactly the details these tasks ask about. Write them down as you hear them; do not trust your memory for a number.

• Practise taking notes with your hand while your ears keep working. Most students can do either but not both, and that is a skill you build in about two weeks.
• Use abbreviations you already know: arrows for cause and result, + and -, initials for long names. Inventing a system on test day costs you the first recording.
• If you miss an answer, mark the item, choose the best guess now, and move on. There is no penalty 扣分 for a wrong answer and a blank scores the same as a wrong one.
• ⚠ Watch the everyday tasks. Chinese candidates often score well on the academic talk and lose marks on the short conversation, because school listening practice is almost entirely academic.
• Format facts in this section were checked on the ETS website on 13 September 2026: TOEFL iBT content and structure.