5 TOEFL Listening Mistakes Every Student Makes

[Applause] all right what's going on guys so we're here to talk about mistakes and how to avoid doing them so I've taught a lot of TOEFL students over the years and I've seen these five common mistakes in the listening section so it's really valuable for you to know this stuff so you don't have to make the same mistakes as most other students it's very important that you pay close attention to this video watch it again if you don't understand everything I say this a lot when I teach TOEFL online because there's a lot of noise online there's a lot of YouTube channels there's a lot of things for you to consume for free I just really want you to know that this is very valuable people pay me a lot of money to give them this advice okay so pay attention stay to the end and make sure that you understand all of these mistakes and why it's important to not do them for the TOEFL listening okay all right so 5 mistakes 5 mistakes that you need to avoid let me stand this way this time so the first thing the first thing you want to avoid is you try to understand everything yeah you don't want to understand everything well you do but that's not the most important thing the most important thing is for you to understand the most important pieces of information and you do that by knowing the structure if you want to know more about that I made a video about TOEFL listening improve your score by 3 points where I talk about that more but your goal is not really to understand everything even though that's great if you do it's more to be able to understand what's most important and to anticipate the questions you want to make sure that you know the question types that you're gonna get asked because that's what you get scored on you get score delete your answers to the questions you don't get scored on how well you listened really I mean the questions are supposed to be a reflection of that but really what your score is is like can you answer these questions so get very good at answering TOEFL questions get really good at knowing the types of questions that you can expect after the listening just to give you a quick example every listening passage is followed by a main idea question also known as a gist question so you know that you have to listen for the main idea when you're listening okay so this piece of advice you don't want to try to understand everything I mean that's great but really what you want to get good at is being able to anticipate the types of questions you'll get and when you can anticipate those questions you know what you need to listen for when you take the exam okay first advice the second advice it is first mistake the second mistake that a lot of students make is you open your eyes close your eyes close them now no I'm just gonna I idea is that listening is a difficult skill because you can't rely on your eyes usually in everyday conversations when we're talking to people we focus on hand gestures like this stuff I'm doing now we focus on my facial expression you focus on the context the situation you focus on a lot of different things besides just the sounds coming out of my mouth but when you get on the phone it's a very different story most people don't like talking on the phone in another language because it's very hard because you only have the voice for another example really quickly is blind people people who can't see anything they have a heightened sense of listening because they have to rely on their ears it's okay you have to be honest on the top well you have to open your eyes you can't close your eyes because you have to look at the screen you have to look at the pictures you have to write down a couple notes but you don't want to look around the room when you take the test you'll be in a room with a bunch of other people taking the test at the same time you don't want to look at them when I took the test once while I took it a couple times but one time when I took it another student had a problem with their computer they raised their hand the person came and I was in a listening section I was looking at this person and then I realized oh I haven't been listening for like a minute because my eyes distracted me your eyes distract you from the listening make your computer make your desk your world okay don't close your eyes but make sure that you focus just on your on your notes in front of you and the computer all right mistake number three you take bad notes okay so what do I mean by bad notes well it goes back to number one where you don't know what's most important where you try to write down everything you don't you don't write down everything okay just write down a couple things that are important that you think might be detail questions later you want to take notes and you also want to take notes on very specific words and phrases a kind of general rule is that I may make a video about this in the future but basically for note-taking you should only write down verbs and nouns maybe some adjectives for the most part verbs and nouns particularly nouns you want to skip prepositions articles personal pronouns and so on you want to skip those things so for example if I wrote the sentence I went to the store you definitely don't want to write all that down in your notes I write WNC Str so all I use is the verb and the important noun store you want to write down verbs and nouns in your notes when you take notes so you can take them down quickly also you'll notice that I didn't spell them correctly when you write down notes only write down continents do not write down at vowels vowels is a e i o you don't write them down because I can know what this means went store without needing the vows now you might say like you have no idea what it means you as the viewer have no idea what it means or you'll forget what it's talking about later you won't okay because you're listening to something and then you're gonna answer questions right after it's very fresh in your memory okay so you'll know what this means 95% of the time and if you don't know what it means it's okay I know what it means that's what's most important the TOEFL graders did not check your notes okay all right so you take bad notes mistake number three mistake number four you write down the main idea this is a very famous piece of advice that a lot of TOEFL teachers give is to identify the main idea write down the main idea you don't have to do that it's very important to identify the main idea but you don't have to write it down why because sometimes you don't really know what the main idea is until it finishes until the end of the listening you're gonna have to listen to the whole thing and so you realize okay this was pretty much about blank whatever it was about when you are trying to listen for the main idea I have to find the main idea it's so important they're gonna ask me I have to find the main idea you're focusing on trying to listen to a sentence or listening to a word and being like oh that's the main idea but that's not really how we get main ideas I get the main idea of something after I read everything after I listen to everything I mean I have some ideas about what it might be while I'm listening but really I get a very clear picture when it's finished okay so think about that think about when you're listening I'm gonna have to answer a main idea question I need to figure out what the main idea is here what this is mostly about think about it while you're listening don't write it down you don't have to you'll know what it is when it finishes right make sense maybe hopefully okay that's a really huge secret advice I've never heard anybody else say that anywhere else okay this is valuable I know what I'm doing you're gonna so make sure you take notes on this stuff the last thing is you think like a student yeah again in this in another video we're improve your score by three points for the listening section I talked about the importance of thinking like a teacher when you're thinking like a student you think like I have to answer these questions correctly I have to find this information I have to do this know instead think like a teacher what does this person in the listening want me to know what are they trying to teach me why are they telling me this information why are they telling me this information but not telling me another piece of information what makes this so special when you start thinking like the teacher you start asking the right questions very important that you start asking the right questions the right questions are why do they put this here what do they want me to know why is this detail here why did they say that number when you ask these kind of why questions you're thinking like a teacher because the teacher is doing it for a certain reason right when you're thinking like a student you're thinking like what's the answer what's the answer what's the answer that's not going to help you in fact it's going to frustrate you instead what you want to do is you want to think about the structure think about the way the information is being presented to you think about the way that the teacher says something think about the way it's being I think I said it's already presented to you just think about the way that things are done and follow the structure and then you'll be thinking like a teacher okay not like a student alright I hope you found that helpful if you need some more help WWE TOEFL speaking teacher comm that's our website and we have a TOEFL emergency course wait before you go how would you like to know everything you need to know about the TOEFL in three days three days I developed this TOEFL emergency course that gives all of these kind of tips tricks and strategies and I give you a schedule to follow step by step and you can finish it in three days pretty awesome you can go there and check out more thank you guys for listening to the ends if you're here that means you're motivated stay motivated stay positive and [Music]

Channel: TST Prep TOEFL

Views: 572,985

Keywords: TOEFL Listening mistakes, TOEFL listening help, TOEFL Listening tips, TOEFL listening tricks, TOEFL listening, TOEFL speaking teacher, Josh MacPherson, Vocabulary Ninja

Id: hsUiKyrDJhs

Length: 10min 52sec (652 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 13 2017