Paying Attention for Tone and Attitude on Listening Section

An understanding of the speakers’ tone or attitude will help you in many type of questions in the listening section. What is important in this is that speakers on the TOEFL often use phrases than can have more than one interpretation, and sure it can confuse the test takers. If you are aware of the speakers’ tone and attitude, you will be in the safe way, means that you will not misinterpret what the speakers’ say.

For example, you may listen to something like this on the TOELF,

“…after the war, the country experienced a long period of economic crisis, right?”

You can see that the speaker looks like asking a question, but he actually is emphasizing his point. Being aware of the tone will help you interpret the statements such as this tone.

There are three types of tones that are usually used by the speakers on the lectures:
1. Objective
The speaker is simply listing facts or providing information.
2. Subjective
The speaker is presenting an opinion or making an argument, and he will try to convince the listeners about a certain view.
3. Inquisitive
This tone is usually there if you got classroom discussion in listening. During the discussion, the professor leads the class trough a number of questions.

For conversation, you can consider the following tones:
1. Excited
The speaker is interested in an event and maybe trying to influence the others.
2. Disappointed/ upset
The speaker is expressing his dissatisfaction with things or event.
3. Uncertain/ confused
The speaker will be unsure of what action to take and or how to proceed

Sure you do not have to spend your valuable time during your test trying to figure out what is the speaker’s tone. However having a basic idea of the tone and also the purpose of the lecture or conversation will aid you when eliminating answer.

Paying Attention to Transitions.
There are two types of transitions that you need to take care of in listening.
1. Reversal Transitions
Sometimes the speakers will reverse the direction of logic in the lecture or conversation. If you are not listening carefully, you may misunderstand what he said because sometimes the speaker abruptly changes the topic. See below,

“First, let’s take a look at single cell organism reproduction..um..actually let’s come back to that in a moment. We need to talk about….”

In the situation above, the speaker suddenly changes the topic and this kind of transition is one of the transitions that you should aware.

2. Negation Transitions
Speakers sometimes use positive words to express a negative statement. See the example below,

“I don’t have to explain that, right?”
“You guys are okay with this, corrects?”
“We don’t need to go into that now, okay?”

Reversals and negation transition sure are tricky, the key to handle this is by practicing regularly. Listen to more podcast, audio selections and others will help you to get to know more type of “tricky” part in listening. Here in TEST English School, we provide you with gigantic number of podcast that will satisfy you while learn for listening TOEFL. So come and join us okay?