Unit 1: Active listening toolkit
Predict before you listen
Use the setting line and your own knowledge to guess what you will hear.
About 25 minLevel B1-B2
This is the free version of the lesson. Learners with a TOEFL iBT® course also get its video parts and their questions.
Good listeners do not start from zero. Before a recording begins, they already have a picture of what they will hear. On the TOEFL, each conversation, announcement and talk usually starts with a short setting line, such as "Listen to a talk in a geology class." Those few seconds are your chance to predict.
Ask yourself three questions: - Who is speaking, and to whom? (A professor to a class? Two students?) - What is the likely topic or problem? - What words might come up? (For geology: rock, layer, pressure, million years.)
Try it: what might you hear?
- Setting: Listen to a conversation between a student and a librarian.
- Prediction: A problem with a book, a room booking, a late return, a printer, research help.
- Setting: Listen to an announcement in a chemistry class.
- Prediction: A change to the lab time, safety rules, an assignment, a test date.
Write a setting line for a lecture in a subject you like. What five words would you expect to hear?