Day 15 — Listen & Choose + Conversation + Announcement
Phase II · Targeted Drills · Listening · Day 15 of 30 · ⏱ ~2 hours
📍 You are here: Day 14 · Reading Simulation → Day 15 · Social listening drills → Day 16 · Academic Talk + Listening Simulation
Today drills the three interactional listening tasks — the ones that reward catching a speaker's intent, not just their words.
🎯 Today's goal: Hit target accuracy on Listen & Choose, and reliably catch the problem and next step in conversations.
✅ You're done when: you've drilled all three task types and completed 2 dictations.
⏰ Step 1 — Warm-Up: Problem & Next Step
Trains the two questions conversations almost always ask.
👉 Open the Warm-Up Exercise
1 dialogue · 3 questions · auto-graded.
📖 Step 2 —Understand the tasks — Strategies & Sample Tasks
Watch these before you drill (PDF versions available too):
🎥 Listen & Choose a Response — Strategies & Sample Tasks
📄 Listen & Choose a Response — Strategies & Sample Tasks
🎥 Listen to a Conversation — Strategies & Sample Tasks
📄 Listen to a Conversation — Strategies & Sample Tasks
🎥 Listen to an Announcement — Strategies & Sample Tasks
📄 Listen to an Announcement — Strategies & Sample Tasks
💡 Task reminder (if not done yet):
🎥 Mastering Long Sentences (decoding long sentences in conversations & announcements)
🎯 Step 3 — Drill the three social tasks
Listen & Choose: 13/15 · Conversation: 3 items · Announcement: 3 items
Use fresh sets from the "Websites for TOEFL Practice" section (FluentPrep, mytoefl.io).
🟢 Band 4→5 In Listen & Choose, pick the socially natural reply, not the literal one. In Conversations, name the roles fast (student–staff? student–professor?).
🔵 Band 5→6 Catch the attitude/tone and the pivot signal words ("Actually…", "The thing is…") that flip the direction.
🎧 Step 4 — Dictation for the ear
Dictation trains you to hear every word precisely — the foundation of listening accuracy. Do 2 today:
- 🎧 TOEFL Dictation 1 — Campus Life
- 🎧 TOEFL Dictation 2 — Sociology (Dictations 1–16 available; work through them across the marathon)
Registration Required | Free
💡 Pro Tips
- Reply to the meaning, not the words. Options that reuse the audio's exact words are usually traps.
- Note the problem in the first 20 seconds of a conversation, and the next step at the end — both are common questions.
- Pragmatic exposure beats drills for Listen & Choose — 10 minutes of an English sitcom daily.
- Role dictates tone. A student talking to a professor sounds different from two classmates — expect it.
📁 Portfolio Entry — log Day 15
- 📅 Date · ✅ Steps completed (Y/N) · ⏱️ Time spent
- 📊 Warm-up score: ___ / 3
- 🎯 Listen & Choose: ___ / 15 · Conversations: ___ / 3 · Announcements: ___ / 3
- 🎯 Dictations completed: ___ / 2
- 🎯 Confidence today (1.0–6.0) · 🏆 One Win + 🤔 One Challenge
📞 Your 2 one-on-one meetings with Hasmik are included — if you haven't booked yet, message us to set the dates.