In TOEFL Oral English task 3, 4, 5 and 6 candidates are required to listen to conversations, lectures etc .Hence, listening is a skill that should be learned before they take the test and it is something that needs to be practiced a lot. Excellent listening ability is a skill that can be acquired with extensive practice and diligence. Below are some essential methods that candidates can do before start doing TOEFL exercises.

    要學(xué)會精聽

    Intensive listening involves listening to more detailed analysis of the language used, listening for specific information and finding the answers to specific questions.  For example, after listening to a lecture about a person’s favorite place, students should acquire the answer to this question “Where is the speaker’s favourite place?” Students should listen for the particular response of this question. On the other hand, the students should also hear if the speaker generally has a positive or negative opinion of his/her favorite place? This would practice a skill that is listening for gist, getting a general feel for the text.

    Intensive listening is also used to do detailed study of a language point; an example is “What adjectives does the speaker use to describe his/her favorite place?”  Students should listen to how the speaker describe his favorite place . And also, listen and follow the transcript in order to identify a certain grammar or vocabulary point is a further example of intensive listening.

    要練聽寫

    Note taking is a practice of recording information that can be captured from an oral discussion at a meeting, or a lecture. One common format that should be learned for note taking is shorthand or abbreviation which can allow large amounts of information to be put on paper without using a huge amount of time such as “etc.” for etcetera, “no.” for numbers. This method will allow students to write more information without writing the whole word thus can help them save some time. Using symbols such as ( > ) for more than, greater than, or ( < ) for less than are also very useful in writing notes. Information from the notes are necessary for students to reflect the ideas and information about the things they had heard.

    必須要概述，大意Summarize

    After listening intensively and taking notes , students should learn to summarize all the things that he/she had heard. In order to effectively summarize, students need to decide what information needs to be deleted or substituted and what information to keep. To do this they need to choose which parts of what they heard are important, trivial and repetitive.  Students need to be able to synthesize material, prioritize pieces of information, and organize some concepts, topics and details to be able to summarize everything they have heard. Excellent summary will let the student organize all the information he/she had heard.