Listening Section


Nobody said that studying English was going to be an easy task and this is usually reflected every time I face listening activities. I am not bad at listening at all, but I know this is about practicing and spending time on it, and I am totally sure that in this way our effort and sacrifice will be rewarded.
International exam is such helpful tool to improve this skill, which I consider is the most difficult one to acquire, since it provides us with some tips to better understand what is going on in different situations. I dare to say that if I had been taught these listening tips before, my performance concerning the skill would certainly have been better.
Throughout this cohort, we worked on the three different parts involved in the listening section when taking the TOEFL ITP exam. This part of the exam is conformed by fifty questions from the easiest to the most difficult ones. They are described as follows:

PART A

I found this section the most understandable of all them. At first everything was confusing, but once we started working on the tips it became easier to understand what the two speakers were talking about. In this part, there are some questions that I think they are obvious because of the context and the topic while there are others that I do not even understand a single sentence. These ones become the process really frustrating.
The use of idiomatic expressions can sometimes play a bad turn. For example, I am able to understand what the speakers talked about but if one of these idioms is mentioned in the conversation and I do not know what its meaning in context, I will probably fail that question.
Since we took a quiz regarding this part, I thought my score was going to be high but in fact, it was not. About this, I have to say that I should not give up but keep on practicing. The more I practice by myself, the better the results I will get.

PART B

Speaking of part B, it becomes necessary to express that this section was a little bit more difficult than the previous one. It asks us to pay close attention to every single detail mentioned because most of the time all the answers are mentioned. The strategy that really works for me is to take notes while listening.
Something that happened to me while taking the quiz was that I wrote most of the information related to the speaker 1 (a woman), and at the end the question was about specific information of speaker 2 (a man). I felt like I did not do anything, it was so disappointing. Although I was sure with my answers in the majority of the questions, I am afraid I fail that quiz. I just hope to have had a good performance or at least not to fail. J

PART C


I consider that this part requires the most possible attention. It is just one person giving a talk or a speech that seems to take forever, and the topics may be or may not be familiar to us. There is too much information given that most of the time we do not even have time to write it down. And what is worst, the questions sometimes focus on something really odd that I do not understand why.
Up to this point, I have found this section of the listening the most difficult one. I try but sometimes my efforts are not enough to make the best of it. What is left to say then is that I certainly should keep on practicing so as to get a good score in the TOEFL exam, and in this way prove myself that I am able to do so and I can do it!



Comentarios

Publicar un comentario

Entradas más populares de este blog

Reading Comprehension

This cohort comprised some missing aspects of Part B related to grammar structures, and Part C focused on reading comprehension strategies and tips. Since it was the end of the semester, it was the time in which the real TOEFL exam took place. All previously mentioned is described in detail as follows: Partners’ presentations: At the beginning of the term my partners and I got the chance to be the main teachers in the classroom and to either present or clarify a certain grammatical structure that most of us were familiar with. The point is that there is something new to learn, although we may have learned these topics before, we did not know some of the rules and exceptions when it came to specific words or phrases. I think it was quite helpful to have taken a look to these structures. It somehow made our English improve. Besides, the fact of putting into practice what was said through exercises became the acquisition of the language in use more understandable and the got th...
Leer más

Structure and Written Expression

Structure and Written Expression Throughout my career, I have always spent more time on studying these grammatical structures which I consider are quite necessary for us to better perform in a written or spoken way. Structure and written expression is the part of the exam with I feel more comfortable. I would add that I enjoy doing this part, especially the one concerning the 25 items in which we have to look for the wrong option; it lets us know if we are actually able to identify common mistakes (that many times we have made). All the strategies studied during this cohort helped me to ease the process of choosing the appropriate answer for the items. Once I studied and learned the distinctions between some specific words, I was able to identify quickly and easily either the correct option or the mistake in the two parts of this section.   Although I’m still making some bad inferences, I feel I have improved my performance concerning the grammatical structures to be tested...
Leer más