Introduction to Listening

What Is In the Listening Section?

The TOEFL iBT® Listening section is designed to measure your ability to understand conversations and lectures in English. It includes listening for:

• basic comprehension
• pragmatic understanding (speaker’s attitude and degree of certainty) and connecting and synthesizing information

There are 2 types of listening items in the Speaking section — lectures and conversations. Both use campus-based language.

• 3 lectures, each 3–5 minutes long, with 6 questions per lecture
• 2 conversations with 2 speakers, each 3 minutes long, with 5 questions per conversation

You can take notes on any audio item throughout the test to help you answer questions. You have 36 minutes to complete the section.

Listening 

There are 7 types of listening questions. You can listen to the official explanation for each question type below.

LISTENING QUESTIONS EXPLAINED

The complete explanation to the listening section.

Official TOEFL Explanation

Practice 1: Complete TOEFL iBT Listening Test. TOEFL Listening Practice Set

Practice 2: TOEFL lectures. Listen to the following TOEFL lectures. Complete the questions at the end of each lecture.