Skill 20: DETERMINE THE TOPIC TOEFL COMPLETE COURSE (WHILE LISTENING)

TOEFL COMPLETE COURSE

(WHILE LISTENING)

Skill 20: DETERMINE THE TOPIC.

As you listen to each long conversation, you should be thinking about the topic (subject) or main idea for each conversation. Since the first one or two sentences generally give the topic, you should be asking yourself what the topic is while you are listening carefully to the first part of the conversation.

On the recording, you hear:

(man)                      You can’t believe what I just got!

(woman)               I bet you got that new car you’ve always wanted.

(man)                      Now, how in the world did you figure that out?

You think:

The topic of the conversation is the new car that the man just got

In this example, you can be quite certain that one of the questions will be about where the conversation takes place. Since you are sure that this is one of the questions, you can listen carefully for clues that will give you the answer. This example shows that a helpful strategy is therefore to look briefly at the answers in the test book, before you actually hear the conversations on the recording and try to determine the questions that you will be asked to answer.

EXERCISE 20: Listen to the first part of each of the conversation, and decide on the topic of the conversation.

1	What is the topic of Conversation 1?
2	What is the topic of Conversation 2?
3	What is the topic of Conversation 3?

ANSWER KEY

1	Conversation 1	Looking for a part-time job on campus
2	Conversation 2	a kayaking trip that the man took on the Klamath River
3	Conversation 3	one kind of pollution called acid rain

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