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Hello, First question: I had doubts regarding the timings for Listening questions. I have been practicing from ETS official guide version 4. In this I have observed that, for Listening i have a total of 60 minutes and the time is running when the recording(either lecture or conversation) is being played. so, 60 minutes includes time for audio playing and answering questions, is this the same format for actual test? will the time be ticking when audio is being played? Second question: in the practice tests, I don't get any sets of 3, i just get one single section with 6 recordings, but in the forum i have read that we may get two or three sets? which is true, practice test pattern or what i see on the forums? the reason I am asking this question is, in practice tests, i always have enough time, but looking at other replies, it looks like i get limited 10 minutes per set(3 recordings). Third Question: When people say set of three recordings, will it always be combination of lecture and conversation or can set1 be all 3 lectures and set2 be 2 conversations and 1 lecture? Fourth question: I have seen mixed responses about "click to continue" after the recording is played, in the test will it automatically move to the questions page soon after the recording is played or i have to click to continue once the recording is played? this makes difference to me while practicing and taking real test. Please feel free to ask me if you need any clarifications regarding my questions posted above. Any reply/thoughts/feedback is help and much appreciated. Thank you, CJS

hi, Im taking the toefl this year and was wondering weather, in the listening section i get to read the questions before or during the actual listening of the lecture or conversation. thanks you:)

Just wondering if anyone found the listening part hard on the 4th of Dec? I always found it easy until now. Just want to know if you took the same test and found it unusually hard. Is ETS making it harder or am I imagining it? Thanks

I'm senior in physics. I have to pass toefl for graduate studies and study "400 word" and "essential words for the toefl" for vocab section. i have 5 month to be fluent in it. what do u suggest for other skills? I'm not good in listening section as most students and I ask you to introduce some sources !? If you give me a plan it becomes much better. :distracted:

FYI, just sharing my recent and very "fresh!" experience at the test center in New York. (Took a test 3 hours ago....) During the listening section, one of the staffs came to my test booth and interrupted me with some body language that I couldn't understand while listening to the test with the headphone on. I suddenly felt disturbed and lost focus as soon as her "improper and careless" manner approached me. It took me more than just a second to pull myself back together and indicated her with my hand waving sign that I was in the middle of something very important. She soon went away and left me with great angst. Due to a lack of listening comprehension in the lecture when she intervened, I had no context information and sadly was not able to answer some questions forth fully as I should. Later on, I was able to catch her message that she wanted me to lower the volume; a very absurd and undeserved reason to cut in when a test taker is taking a test. According to the test instruction, test takers are able to adjust the voice to whichever level of volume the computer allows them to. And to my understanding, my volume at the time the staff interrupted wasn't at the maximum capacity. After the test, I spoke to Test Center Manager and let her know the problem. She assured me that she would write a report on this which I felt skeptical. So, I wrote to ETS TOEFL Email as well in hope they could do something about this. I expect there will be some damage on my score due to this event and if my guts is right, I know my lost scores won't be returned. My malaise has now turned into exasperation at this point that I would like to request a proper action from ETS and TOEFL toward this misconduct. I hope and pray that my score on listening part, some of which that I missed because of this interruption, would be acceptable. I also hope and pray that I don't have to come back and retake the test again and if I have to, I truly hope and pray that I will not experience this unprofessional manner ever again. I would appreciate if they do a further investigation for a better improvement and for the sake of the future TOEFL test takers who invest their already frugal $170 on this test. Shame on you ETS.