2020-02-20 TOEFL: listening signal words

Greg Malivuk
gmalivuk@staffordhouse.com
http://www.pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk - notes from all classes
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Homework: finish the handout (passages 4 and 5) and p. 352-355 - Test questions about the passage
passage 4
1 clipper ships were fast
2 tea and gold rush created demand
3 previous ships were big and slow, clippers were fast more than anything else
4 sails and construction
5 set many speed records
6 British built wood over steel frame, unlike US
7 less important after 1855 (Suez, steam power, etc.)
Intro statement - summarizes 1 and 2
A - This is the most general statement about the speed and construction of clippers (paragraphs 3 and 4)
D - This summarizes paragraph 7.
F - This summarizes paragraph 5, which is more important to the passage than paragraph 6.
passage 5 - B C E
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Listening Question Types
- detail
- main idea (content or purpose)
- inference
- attitude
- function/replay
- prediction
- purpose/method
- complete a chart or table
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Being able to predict content and organizational structure is important especially for lectures (conversations usually aren’t organized the same way).
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p. 25 exercise 1L1 - What is the purpose of each statement, and what signal words tell you that?
a - introducing main points - “Why? Number one”
b - introducing the topic and organization - “today we’ll be examining”
c - introducing support (for the flexibility of family-owned businesses) - “For instance”
d - introducing a(nother) main point - “So let’s move on to”
e - introducing a topic (a TOEFL listening only includes one topic on the agenda) - “our next topic”
f - introducing a main point - “The major difference between”
g - introducing a topic - “This afternoon, we’re going to be looking at”
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p. 26 exercise 1L2 - What content will we hear after each of these signal sentences?
b) description of the mechanism of pheromones
c) examples of different types of messages
d) yes/no answer, explanation of how it works (if yes) / explanation of how we know (research for yes or no answer)
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Listen to the lecture and take notes.
Compare your notes to the sample notes on p. 26-27. Did you organize yours similarly? Did you catch the same information? (Adding things like “how it works” and “humans?” as headings in your notes can be very helpful to find that information later)
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BREAK
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Listen again and answer the questions on p. 27
1 d
2 d - The comparison to love letters is to give the students an understandable analogy, not to emphasize that they’re chemicals.
3 b
4 a d
5 d
6 d
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p. 30 exercise 1L7 - Predict the content that will follow these sentences.
Listen and take notes.
Now answer the questions on p. 31 (1L8)
1 c - This topic is introduces with a reference to the movie, but the main topic isn’t the movie.
2 a
3 a
4 c d - They’re all exhausted, and the females even moreso, so that’s not the reason some live and some die.
5 b d - He focuses more on the difficulty they face than on their working together.
6 - 2 1 1 2 1 2
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p. 32-33 exercise 1L10 - Listen and take notes, then answer the questions.
1 c - They discuss disadvantages at the end, but it’s mainly about advantages.
2 c d e
3 c - “The major difference between working in a family business versus working for a company seems to be a sense of belonging.”
4 b
5 c - If “competence of the employees” is a disadvantage, it must be that some of them are incompetent. (They are therefore freeloaders because they’re getting paid without doing good work.)
6 - 1 2 2 1 1 2 (The student cites “lack of consultation”, meaning discussions may not happen.)
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https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-to-make-your-writing-suspenseful-victoria-smith
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If you miss a point from the listening, you can still sometimes infer what it was based on knowing the other points. (If you get a question that’s not about one of the ones you understand clearly, it must be about this other one.)