Tips for the Listening Part 2

Hello again!

How is your TOEIC preparation going? In our last post titled 6 Tips to help you in the Listening Part 1, we had a look at some very useful tips for Listening Part 1 and I hope that you enjoyed and found it helpful. Today, we’ll continue with Part 2: Questions – Responses.

We are still in the Listening section, and this part is testing your pure listening skill. Why do I say “pure”? In Part 1, you have pictures as hints to help you guess the words that make the correct statements, and in the next two parts (Listening Parts 3 and 4) you have questions and answers printed in the test booklets for you to read. However, in this part, you have to listen to both questions and answers and decide on what you hear without reading or seeing anything.

Let’s look at an example first. You will hear the question:

Q: How long do you think it will take us to get there?

Then you will hear three responses:

a) About ten miles.

b) We will arrive on time.

c) About half an hour if the traffic isn’t too bad.

Which one do you think is the correct answer?

If you guessed c), you are right! Response c) is the correct answer. As the question asked about a period of time using “How long”, the answer should be “an hour”, which is a period or amount of time.

It’s going to be easier to guess the answers if you know the first word of each question, and that’s the one crucial technique for this part.

1. Remember that the objective of this part is to find the “best” answer to the question. This means you have to understand the question in order to choose the most concordant answer to it.

2. Choose informative answers to Wh-questions.

Note that there are two types of questions in English: questions requiring informative answers and questions requiring acceptance or refusal. In other words, we are talking about wh- questions and yes/no questions.

Wh-questions are used to solicit information, so the correct answers should be informative statements.

If you hear the questions starting with “what”, “when”, “where”, “why”, “how”, and “who”, the answers shouldn’t be “yes” or “no”.

·      “Who” is used to ask about people.

·      “What” is used to ask about things, animals, ideas, or actions as in “What is he doing?”

·      “When” is used to ask about a point of time.

·      “Where” is used to ask about locations or directions.

·      “Why” is used to ask about the reasons.

·      “How” is used to ask about methods or quality.

·      “Whose” is used to ask about the owner of something.

3. Choose the answers expressing “acceptance” or “refusal” to Yes/No questions.

Usually, Yes/No questions start with auxiliary verbs, which are

·      “Be” – is, am, are, was were

o   For example, “Are you hungry?” or “Were you here yesterday?”

·      “Do” – do, does, did

o   For example, “Do you like spicy food?”  or “Did you enjoy the party?”

·      “Have” – have, has, had

o   For example, “Have we met before?”

·      Modals – can, could, will, would, shall, should, may

o   For example, “Can you swim?” or “May I ask you a question?”

These questions require you to “accept” or “refuse”, not to give information.

4. Choose the answers expressing “acceptance” or “refusal” to the statements ending with question tags.

Apart from the questions started with auxiliary verbs, you might hear another type of Yes/No questions in the test, which use “question tags”. Let’s look at these examples:

Q: You will go to the party, won’t you?

A: Of course, I will. I’ve been looking forward to it.

And

Q: Allen isn’t here today, is she?

A: No, she’s on vacation in Hawaii.

The question tags at the end of the previous two questions are “won’t you?” and “is she?”, which make the preceding statements become sort of Yes/No questions. The responses are either acceptance or refusal.

Sometimes you might hear an affirmative statement instead of a question. Anyway, what you have to do is the same. Choose the proper response to the preceding statement. For instance:

S: Take an umbrella with you.

R1: Is it raining?

R2: I have one in my bag.

You can see that possible responses in the example can be a question in R1 or an affirmative statement in R2, both of which respond to the statement “Take an umbrella with you.”

5. Beware of similar or identical sounding words (just like what you will find in Part 1). Identical sounding words are commonly used in this part to trick you as you might think that the statement with the identical (sounding) word you have heard in the question is the answer to it. For example:

Q: When shall we meet?

(A) Any time after 6.

(B) Meet me in my office.

(C) We don’t eat meat.              

The correct answer is obviously “(A) Any time after 6”. Imagine if you just hear them without reading, you might find it a bit hard not to link “meet” in the question, with “meet” in Statement (B), and “meat” in Statement (C). However, the question is “when”, so the corresponding answer should be “Any time after 6”.

Not too difficult, isn’t it? (I’m using a question tag here J). See you next time with more useful tips for the next part. Make sure to read my 6 Tips to help you in the Listening Part 1 (if you haven’t done so already). Bye for now!