Get a High Score in TOEFL Listening!

imagine you're sitting the toefl and the listening test starts the voices start coming at you and you can't hear all of the words and you start to panic a little today we're going to look at how we can get better at hearing what's happening in the listening test listening is a huge part of the toefl exam in fact the reading test is the only part of the test with no listening and it can be pretty daunting a lot of words are coming at you and it can be difficult to understand every single little word today we're going to look at how the speakers in the listening test speak and how we can understand them better and the first thing we need to look at is connected speech connected speech is all about how people speak when they're speaking in english particularly in natural or unpredictable situations and this can be a little bit confusing because it's very different from how you might have learned english at school take a look at this sentence yesterday i walked to the end of the street simple sentence but maybe it's not exactly how you learned english at school let's take a closer look yesterday i walked to the end of the street in this sentence you can see that the words stuck together a little bit more some of the sounds disappeared and we got these mystery sounds coming in to the end of the street that sounds very different from how we hear these words in isolation or in a dictionary weird right but it's totally normal this is what happens with connected speech the words get stuck together really closely some of the sounds seem to disappear and other sounds seem to appear out of nowhere let's take a closer look at how this works linked sounds often if you have one word that ends with a consonant and the next word starts with a vowel the words link together let's look at an example there are don't worry too much about those funny-looking characters above the words really just focus on the words there are and we often link those two words together like this there are there are feel free to pause the video or just repeat after me there are so what would that maybe look like in the toefl listening there are a number of problems attributed to social media design in this sentence you can see there are a is all linked together and so is number of so we get this one sound that sounds like this there are a number of problems attributed to social media design i think that makes sense to you but don't worry about trying to memorize all of this information i would just recommend that you keep this information in mind the next time you're listening to english by the way pro tip i know a lot of people like to use videos and movies to practice their listening but also try to find just listening activities you can do build your pure listening habits listening to the radio or listening to an audio book or podcast without video will provide you with a pure and pretty intense listening experience give it a try add sounds you might remember from earlier we talked about how some sounds kind of magically appear when we're speaking let's take a look at that sometimes we get a w sound which appears between two vowel sounds for example blue eyes can often become blue eyes blue eyes wise blue eyes this next sound is a bit more common in the british or australian english so you might not need it for toefl let's take a quick look at it are asia and a girand asia and europe are continents okay this next one is definitely more common in american or canadian english in the end in the end yend in the end so we get that uh sound appearing between vowels sometimes let's take a look at what that might look like in the listening test in the end they'll all have to come to an agreement in the end they'll all have to come to an agreement great let's look at the next one deleted sounds this one is pretty interesting a lot of times the t and d sound at the end of a word might disappear entirely let's take a look at some examples it must be it must be you and me you and me now you'll need to be careful with this one and you may want to practice it yourself listen to this it it that sound that t is my tongue coming off my teeth so my tongue is coming back from my teeth and that sound comes out often when we're speaking we just say it our tongue stays there or the tongue comes off it but i don't make the sound you need to be careful with this one it's not e where my tongue is not touching my teeth i'm going or an an again my teeth touch my tongue but i don't make the sound after does that make sense i'd recommend a little bit of practice with that one let's look at another example of that disappearing t and d sound it must be made clear it must be made clear changed sounds now the next one is also probably not going to appear that much in your listening test but it gets a lot of attention in english books about conversation or pronunciation let's take a quick look at it words ending with tu and starting with ya often get combined watcha watcha have you decided what you want or words ending with duh and starting with ja did you did you did you know there's a sale on again it's very common in spoken english but you might not see it in your toefl listening test but if you're going to be building your strong listening habits you're going to want to be familiar with this one combined sounds hard decision hard decision hard decision difficult decision difficult decision difficult decision it was a hard decision it was a difficult decision so sometimes that final d or t sound at the end of a word will disappear if the next word starts with a similar sound okay now this is all good we've had a little practice of these sounds in isolation let's take a look at what this might sound like in the toefl listening test in the toefl listening test okay let's take a look at a listening activity from the toefl test and let's see if we can identify some examples of linking let's have a listen extinction in biology the dying out or termination of a species extinction occurs when species are diminished because of environmental forces habitat fragmentation global change over expectation of species for human use or because of evolutionary changes in their members genetic inbreeding poor reproduction decline in population numbers firstly many species have become extinct because of hunting and over-harvesting the conversion of wetlands and forests to croplands and urban areas pollution the introduction of invasive species and other forms of human-caused destruction of their natural environments indeed current rates of human-induced extinctions are estimated to be about 1 000 times greater than the past natural rates of extinction leading some scientists to call modern times the sixth mass extinction this high extinction rate is largely due to the exponential growth in human numbers from about 1 billion in 1850 the world's population reached 2 billion in 1930 and more than 6 billion in 2000 and is expected to reach about 10 billion by 2050. additionally as a result of increasing human populations habitat loss is the greatest factor in current levels of extinction for example less than one-sixth of the land area of europe has remained unmodified by human activity and more than half of all wildlife habitat has been eliminated in more than four-fifths of countries in the paleo tropics africa asia and indonesia furthermore increased levels of greenhouse gases have begun to alter the world's climate with slowly increasing surface temperatures expected by the middle of the 21st century to force many species to migrate towards the poles and up mountain slopes in order to remain in habitats with the same climate conditions most ecologists conversation biologists and climate scientists worry that global warming will contribute greatly to species extinctions all these factors have increased the number of threatened species almost one in four mammal species including four of the six remaining species of great apes and one in eight bird species were considered at significant risk of extinction at the start of the 21st century in addition the world wildlife fund noted in a 2016 report that the vertebrate population overall declined by 58 percent between 1970 and 2010. let's take a look at that first one because of hunting because of hunting in this case you can hear the consonant linking with the vowel sound because of because of a little bit later we heard the introduction the introduction the introduction of invasive species and here we have the consonant consonant-to-vowel sound as well the introduction the introduction the introduction of invasive species next we have the disappearing t and does sound reach 2 billion reach 2 billion again it's not reach 2 billion i'm still making that reach reached but it becomes reached 2 billion careful with that one and climate scientists and climate scientists and finally increase the number increase the number and again my tongue is still hitting the back of my teeth in increase increase the number now you'll notice in that last one it was to alter to alter we didn't have that intruding w sound to alter that's the thing with connected speech is these are very common things that happen but there's no specific rules for it sometimes we'll say to alter sometimes people say to alter. it really depends you can't really predict it but it's something you'll get a better intuition for if you build strong listening habits all right thank you everyone that's it for today that's going to help you build up that listening test score be sure to practice be sure to hit like and subscribe and i'll see you next time remember if you need more practice check out e2 test prep if you want some more help with your pronunciation you can also check out e2 english the link's in the description and that's it that's connected speech to help you get the high score you want on your toefl listening test thank you very much we'll see you next time 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Channel: E2 TOEFL

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Id: wHLkxq0HL5E

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 29 2021