TOEFL Listening - A Comprehensive Guide to Mastering the Test

Author: Guan Weidong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: The key feature of this book is that TOEFL listening does not deserve a long preparation time. To save readers' time, the book abandons traditional writing styles, allowing readers to grasp the essence without getting lost in lengthy descriptions. The book adopts a concise, point-by-point format, so even a quick flip through will reveal its core content. Improving listening skills is a combination of ability and techniques. This book starts with building foundational skills, delving into American pronunciation features and linguistic habits that often puzzle learners. It then thoroughly summarizes techniques and analyzes them with real exam questions. For the first time, it summarizes the patterns of dropped sounds and connected speech, providing detailed examples. Even if spoken English is fast, you'll be able to understand it easily. Includes:
1. Four types of dropped sounds and three types of connected speech, explained concisely.
2. 424 connected speech exercises and 450 dropped sound exercises, covering all possible combinations.
3. Can be completed in just 30 minutes. With a few readings, you'll master the patterns of dropped sounds and connected speech.
4. Also includes explanations of American pronunciation features and analyses of homophones and homographs. TOEFL really isn't that hard.
For the first time, it focuses on analyzing English word order and employs creative training methods to transform your language patterns into English-style thinking, making English word order a natural reaction for listening and speaking. The Techniques section provides detailed scene analyses and real exam guidance. Personalized, categorizing techniques based on readers' needs, ensuring both time-constrained test-takers and those aiming for full marks can find what they need. Explanations are concise, summaries are detailed, and exercises are abundant.
Book Instructions:
1. TOEFL Listening Overview
Listening is a part of the TOEFL exam, consisting of 50 questions and lasting 35-40 minutes. The question distribution is as follows:
- Part A: 1-30 short conversations
- Part B: 31-38 two long conversations
- Part C: 39-50 three short passages
The difficulty of listening questions has significantly increased in recent years. It's already challenging to keep the total number of errors in these three sections under 5.
2. How to Use This Book
Beginners are advised to follow these steps:
Step 1: Take a full practice test from the TOEFL exam after 1995 to assess your current listening level and plan your review accordingly. Typically, 3/5 of the time between review and exam is dedicated to listening. Of that, 70% should be spent on the Ability section and 30% on the Techniques section.
Step 2: Study the Ability section (2-3 weeks). This focuses on dropped sounds and connected speech. Only by mastering these two aspects can your TOEFL listening score improve significantly. Pay attention: the dropped sound table and connected speech table are not just lists of phonetic symbols but tools to help you systematically grasp English pronunciation. Read them frequently—preferably aloud.
Step 3: Use the methods from the Ability section to listen to TOEFL practice tests while reviewing vocabulary with the techniques introduced in the back. Simultaneously, study the Practical Application section (about one month).
Step 4: Study the Techniques section. Since techniques have accounted for a lower proportion in recent TOEFL exams, students are advised not to spend too much time on them. The later chapters of the Techniques section are briefly covered (about one week).
Step 5: Intensive review before the exam—read the dropped sound table and connected speech table daily and do new practice tests (about two weeks).
Those already familiar with TOEFL should follow steps 2, 3, and 5. However, read the dropped sound and connected speech table every two or three days and complete a practice test.
3. Supplementary Audio
This book comes with audio tapes. For the Ability section, practicing with the audio can enhance your linguistic intuition, yielding better results.