Toefl

Type 1: Gist-Content Questions

Understanding the gist of a lecture or conversation means understanding the general topic or main idea.

The gist of the lecture or conversation may be expressed explicitly or implicitly.

Questions that test understanding the gist may require you to generalize or synthesize information from what you hear

Tips for Gist-Content Questions

• Gist-Content questions ask about the overall content of the listening passage.
  Eliminate choices that refer to only small portions of the listening passage.
• Use your notes. Decide what overall theme ties the details in your notes together.
  Choose the answer that comes closest to describing this overall theme.
•  
• Note that for Gist-Content questions the correct answer and the incorrect choices can sometimes be worded more abstractly.

Type 2: Gist-Purpose Questions

Some gist questions focus on the purpose of the conversation rather than on the content.

This type of question will more likely occur with conversations, but Gist-Purpose questions may also occasionally be asked about lectures.

Tips for Gist-Purpose Questions

• Listen for the unifying theme of the conversation.
  For example, during a professor’s office hours, a student asks the professor for help with a paper on glaciers.
  Their conversation includes facts about glaciers, but the unifying theme of the conversation is that the student needs help writing his paper.
  In this conversation the speakers are not attempting to convey a main idea about glaciers.
• In Service Encounter conversations, the student is often trying to solve a problem.
  Understanding what the student’s problem is and how it will be solved will help you answer the Gist-Purpose question.

·         Type 3: Detail Questions

·         Detail questions require you to understand and remember explicit details or facts from a lecture or conversation.
These details are typically related, directly or indirectly, to the gist of the text, by providing elaboration, examples, or other support.
In some cases where there is a long digression that is not clearly related to the main idea, you may be asked about some details of the digression.

Tips for Detail Questions

• Refer to your notes as you answer. Remember, you will not be asked about minor points.
  Your notes should contain the major details from the conversation or lecture.
• Do not choose an answer only because it contains some of the words that were used in the conversation or lecture.
  Incorrect responses will often contain words and phrases from the listening passage.
• If you are unsure of the correct response, decide which one of the choices is most consistent with the main idea of the conversation or lecture.
• Remember that new terminology is often tested in Detail questions.

Type 4: Understanding the Function of What Is Said Questions

The first type of Pragmatic Understanding question tests whether you can understand the function of what is said.

This question type often involves replaying a portion of the listening passage.

How to Recognize Understanding the Function of What Is Said Questions

• What does the professor imply when he says this: (replay)
• What can be inferred from the professor’s response to the student? (replay)
• What is the purpose of the woman’s response? (replay)
• Why does the student say this: (replay)

Tip for Understanding the Function of What Is Said Questions

• Remember that the function of what is said may not match what the speaker directly states.

·         Type 5: Understanding the Speaker’s Attitude Questions

·         The second type of Pragmatic Understanding question tests whether you understand a speaker’s attitude or opinion.

·         You may be asked a question about the speaker’s feelings, likes and dislikes, or reason for anxiety or amusement.

·         Also included in this category are questions about a speaker’s degree of certainty:

·         Is the speaker referencing a source or giving a personal opinion?

·         Are the facts presented generally accepted or are they disputed?

Tip for Understanding the Speaker’s Attitude Questions

• Learn to pay attention to the speaker’s tone of voice.
  Does the speaker sound apologetic? Confused? Enthusiastic?
  The speaker’s tone can help you answer this kind of question.

Type 6: Understanding Organization Questions

In Understanding Organization questions you may be asked about the overall organization of the listening passage,

or you may be asked about the relationship between two portions of the listening passage. Here are 2 examples:

• How does the professor organize the information that she presents to the class? 
• In the order in which the events occurred
• How does the professor clarify the points he makes about Mexico?
• By comparing Mexico to a neighboring country

The first of these questions asks about the overall organization of information, testing understanding of connections throughout the whole listening passage.

The second asks about a portion of the passage, testing understanding of the relationship between two different ideas.

Some Understanding Organization questions may ask you to identify or recognize how one statement functions with respect to surrounding text.

Functions may include indicating or signaling a topic shift, connecting a main topic to a subtopic, providing an introduction or a conclusion,

giving an example, starting a digression, or even making a joke.

Tips for Understanding Organization Questions

• Questions that ask about the overall organization of the passage are more likely to be found after lectures than after conversations.
  Refer to your notes to answer these questions.
  It may not have been apparent from the start that the professor organized the information (for example) chronologically, or from least to most complex, or in some other way.
• Pay attention to the comparisons made by the professor.
  When the professor mentions something that is off-topic, you should ask yourself what point the professor is making.

·         Type 7: Connecting Content Questions

·         Connecting Content questions measure your understanding of the relationships among ideas in a text.
These relationships may be explicitly stated, or you may have to infer them from the words you hear.

·         The questions may ask you to organize information in a different way from the way it was presented in the listening passage.

·         You might be asked to identify comparisons, cause and effect, or contradiction and agreement.

·         You may also be asked to classify items in categories, identify a sequence of events or steps in a process, or specify relationships among objects along some dimension.

·         You may have to predict an outcome, draw a logical conclusion, extrapolate some additional information,

·         infer a cause-and-effect relationship, or specify some particular sequence of events.