1. Gist-Content 2. Gist-Purpose 3. Detail
Pragmatic Understanding Questions
4. Understanding the Function of What Is Said 5. Understanding the Speaker’s Attitude Connecting Information Questions 6. Understanding Organization 7. Connecting Content
8. Making Inferences
The following sections will explain each of these question types. You’ll find out how to recognize each type, and you’ll see examples of each type with explana-tions. You’ll also find tips that can help you answer each TOEFL Listening ques-tion type.
Basic Comprehension Questions
Basic comprehension of the listening passage is tested in three ways: with Gist-Content, Gist-Purpose, and Detail questions.
Type 1: Gist-Content Questions
Understanding the gist of a lecture or conversation means understanding the gen-eral 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.
How to Recognize Gist-Content Questions
Gist-Content questions are typically phrased as follows:
b What problem does the man have?
b What are the speakers mainly discussing?
b What is the main topic of the lecture?
b What is the lecture mainly about?
b What aspect of X does the professor mainly discuss?
Tips for Gist-Content Questions
b Gist-Content questions ask about the overall content of the listening pas-sage. Eliminate choices that refer to only small portions of the listening passage.
b 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.
Examples Excerpt from a longer listening passage:
Professor
. . . So the Earth’s surface is made up of these huge segments, these tectonic plates.
And these plates move, right? But how can, uh, motion of plates, do you think, influ-ence climate on the Earth? Again, all of you probably read this section in the book, I hope, but, uh, uh, how—how can just motion of the plates impact the climate?
. . . when a plate moves, if there’s landmass on the plate, then the landmass moves too, okay? That’s why continents shift their positions, because the plates they’re on move. So as a landmass moves away from the equator, its climate would get colder. So, right now we have a continent—the landmass Antarctica—that’s on a pole.
So that’s dramatically influencing the climate in Antarctica. Um, there was a time when most of the landmasses were closer to a pole; they weren’t so close to the Equa-tor. Uh, maybe 200 million years ago Antarctica was attached to the South American continent, oh and Africa was attached too and the three of them began moving away from the equator together.
. . . in the Himalayas. That was where two continental plates collided. Two conti-nents on separate plates. Um, when this, uh, Indian, uh, uh, plate collided with the Asian plate, it wasn’t until then that we created the Himalayas. When we did that, then we started creating the type of cold climate that we see there now. Wasn’t there until this area was uplifted.
So again, that’s something else that plate tectonics plays a critical role in. Now these processes are relatively slow; the, uh, Himalayas are still rising, but on the order of millimeters per year. So they’re not dramatically influencing climate on your—the time scale of your lifetime. But over the last few thousands of—tens of thousands of years, uh—hundreds of thousands of years—yes, they’ve dramatically influenced it.
Uh, another important thing—number three—on how plate tectonics have influ-enced climate is how they’ve influinflu-enced—we talked about how changing landmasses can affect atmospheric circulation patterns, but if you alter where the landmasses are connected, it can impact oceanic, uh, uh, uh, circulation patterns.
. . . Um, so, uh, these other processes, if—if we were to disconnect North and South America right through the middle, say, through Panama that would dramati-cally influence climate in North and South America—probably the whole globe. So suddenly now as the two continents gradually move apart, you can have different cir-culation patterns in the ocean between the two. So, uh, that might cause a dramatic
change in climate if that were to happen, just as we’ve had happen here in Antarctica to separate, uh, from South America.
What is the main topic of the talk?
The differences in climate that occur in different countries
How movement of the earth’s plates can affect climate
Why the ocean has less affect on climate than previously thought
The history of the climate of the region where the college is located Explanation
Choice 2 is the answer that best represents the main topic of the passage. The professor uses Antarctica and the Himalayas as examples to make his general point that climate is affected by plate tectonics, the movement of Earth’s plates.
Note that for Gist-Content questions the correct answer and the incorrect choices can sometimes be worded more abstractly.
Example The following Gist-Content question refers to the same lecture:
What is the main topic of the talk?
A climate experiment and its results
A geologic process and its effect
How a theory was disproved
How land movement is measured Explanation
Once again, the correct answer is choice 2. Even though the wording is very dif-ferent, it basically says the same thing as choice 2 in the previous example: A geo-logic process (movement of the earth’s plates) has an effect (changes in climate).
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.
How to Recognize Gist-Purpose Questions
Gist-Purpose questions are typically phrased as follows:
b Why does the student visit the professor?
b Why does the student visit the registrar’s office?
b Why did the professor ask to see the student?
b Why does the professor explain X?
Tips for Gist-Purpose Questions
b 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 uni-fying 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.
b 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.
Example Narrator
Listen to a conversation between a professor and a student.
Student
I was hoping you could look over my notecards for my presentation . . . just to see what you think of it.
Professor
Okay, so refresh my memory: what’s your presentation about?
Student
Two models of decision making . . . Professor
Oh, yes—the classical and the administrative model.
Student Yeah, that’s it.
Professor
And what’s the point of your talk?
Student
I’m gonna talk about the advantages and disadvantages of both models.
Professor
But what’s the point of your talk? Are you going to say that one’s better than the other?
Student
Well I think the administrative model’s definitely more realistic. But I don’t think it’s complete. It’s kind of a tool . . . a tool to see what can go wrong.
Professor
Okay, so what’s the point of your talk? What are you trying to convince me to believe?
Student
Well, uh, the classical model—you shouldn’t use it by itself. A lot of companies just try to follow the classical model, but they should really use both models together.
Professor
Okay, good. So let me take a look at your notes here. . . . Oh typed notes. . . . Wow you’ve got a lot packed in here. Are you sure you’re going to be able to follow this during your talk?
Student
Oh, sure that’s why I typed them, because otherwise . . . well my handwriting’s not very clear.
Why does the student visit the professor?
To get some notecards for his presentation
To show her some examples of common errors in research
To review the notes for his presentation with her
To ask for help in finding a topic for his presentation Explanation
While much of the conversation is concerned with the content of the man’s pres-entation, the best answer to the question “Why does the man visit the professor?”
is choice 3: To review the notes for his presentation with her.
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 indi-rectly, 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.
How to Recognize Detail Questions
Detail questions are typically phrased as follows:
b According to the professor, what is one way that X can affect Y?
b What is X?
b What resulted from the invention of the X?
b According to the professor, what is the main problem with the X theory?
Tips for Detail Questions
b 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.
b 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.
b 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.
Examples Professor
Uh, other things that glaciers can do is, uh, as they retreat, instead of depositing some till, uh, scraped up soil, in the area, they might leave a big ice block and it breaks off and as the ice block melts it leaves a depression which can become a lake. These are called kettle lakes. These are very critical ecosystems in this region, um because uh uh they support some unique biological diversity, these kettle lakes do.
The Great Lakes are like this, they were left over from the Pleist—from the Pleis-tocene glaciers, uh, the Great Lakes used to be a lot bigger as the glaciers were re-treating, some of the lakes were as much as a hundred feet higher in elevation. The beach of a former higher stage of Lake Erie was about fifty miles away from where the beach—the current beach of Lake Erie is right now. So I just wanted to tell you a little bit more about glaciers and some positive things uh that we get from climate change, like the ecosystems that develop in these kettle lakes, and how we can look at them in an environmental perspective . . .
What are kettle lakes?
Lakes that form in the center of a volcano
Lakes that have been damaged by the greenhouse effect
Lakes formed by unusually large amounts of precipitation
Lakes formed when pieces of glaciers melt How did the glaciers affect the Great Lakes?
They made the Great lakes smaller.
They made the Great Lakes deeper.
They reduced the biodiversity of the Great Lakes.
They widened the beaches around the Great Lakes.
Explanation
The answer to the first question is found in the beginning of the lecture when the pro-fessor explains what a kettle lake is. Remember that new terminology is often tested in Detail questions. The answer to the second question is found later in the lecture where the professor says, “. . . the Great Lakes used to be a lot bigger as the glaciers were retreating . . .“