TOEFL Practice › Listen and Repeat
TOEFL Speaking
Listen and Repeat Task
Seven sentences, one hearing each. Learn what TOEFL Listen and Repeat asks you to do, how your repetition is scored, and how to practice keeping the wording clear and complete.
What the task asks
You see a scenario image and hear seven sentences connected to that setting. Each sentence plays once. After the prompt, repeat what you heard into the microphone. There is no preparation time, and an on-screen clock shows how long you have to respond.
The sentences become more demanding across the set, asking you to hold and reproduce longer or more complex messages. Your job is to repeat the original words intelligibly. You do not answer the sentence, explain it, or add your own ideas.
Format follows the official ETS Speaking lesson plan and official practice instructions.
Listen, then repeat
Listen once
Hear the complete sentence.
Repeat aloud
Reproduce its words after the speaking cue.
Continue
Follow the same sequence for all seven sentences.
The picture supplies context; the audio supplies the words you need to repeat.
How each response is scored
Each repetition receives one overall score from 0 to 5. The rubric considers how accurately you preserve the sentence and how intelligible your speech is. Both matter: clear speech cannot replace missing content, and remembered words need to be understandable.
Score 0: No answer, speech that cannot be understood at all, no English, or content unrelated to the sentence—including only a phrase such as “I don’t know.”
Condensed from the official ETS Listen and Repeat scoring guide. These are response scores, not the reported Speaking section score. Since January 21, 2026, each section and the overall result are reported on a 1–6 scale in half-point steps.
What accurate repetition requires
Remembering the general idea helps, but the highest score requires the original wording. Small words, negatives, quantities, and endings can change who does something, when it happens, or what is allowed. Keep these details along with the main content words.
The score depends on accurate wording and intelligible speech, so use clear pronunciation, natural stress, and intonation to make the whole sentence easy to follow. You do not need to imitate the speaker’s accent or exact pitch pattern.
A simple way to approach each sentence
- Listen for connected groups of words. Follow the whole message while noticing how its parts fit together.
- Keep the wording and order. Repeat the groups as you heard them, including the small words and endings.
- Continue through a hesitation. If a word does not return immediately, resume with the next words you remember and finish. Exact repetition remains the goal; repeated restarts can cost you the rest of the sentence.
Chunking: Holding a sentence in meaning groups
Sentence: Before returning the equipment, leave both keys in the box beside reception.
Meaning groups: Before returning the equipment / leave both keys / in the box beside reception.
The groups hold the timing, the action, and the location together. Keep the exact words within each group: changing before to after reverses the instruction, while dropping both loses a detail. The slashes show how to organize what you remember; they do not require a pause after every group.
Record your first attempt before checking the transcript. Then compare the words and their order, listen for unclear speech, and choose one specific point to improve in a new sentence.
What you’ll learn across the lessons
The lessons combine vocabulary, useful language patterns, and focused repetition skills with original seven-sentence practice sets. You’ll work on one aspect of the task at a time while continuing to practice the complete listen-and-repeat sequence.
Listening and speaking skills
Hold the whole message
You’ll begin with meaning groups, word order, and familiar word combinations to help you retain complete sentences.
Preserve the details
You’ll work on small words, endings, negatives, quantities, alternatives, and conditions that are easy to lose or change.
Make the sentence clear
You’ll practice connected speech, word stress, rhythm, and intonation so that the words and their relationships remain understandable.
Recover and finish
You’ll learn to continue after a hesitation and review what was lost without turning every attempt into repeated restarting.
Settings and vocabulary
You’ll practice language used in campus facilities, everyday services, travel, and visitor settings. The vocabulary will help you recognize the places, objects, actions, and rules that give each sentence its meaning.
Campus and study
Libraries, university bookstores, admissions offices, laboratories, dining halls, dormitory reception, mailrooms, and career services.
Services and recreation
Community centers, equipment rental desks, safety training, and student recreation centers.
Travel and visitor services
Airport gates, transit information desks, hotel reception, and visitor information counters.
Arts and outdoors
Museums, art galleries, botanical gardens, and nature trails.
Page groupings for the lessons. They are not tracker categories or official exam categories.
Language you’ll recognize and use
You’ll explore language for permission, requirements, availability, directions, sequences, conditions, and limits. Recognizing these patterns will help you hold the relationship between the words as you repeat them. Lesson examples and activities will also help you use the language beyond the test.
Continue your Listen and Repeat practice
Put these TOEFL Listen and Repeat skills into practice with an original seven-sentence set, then explore the wider lesson collection.
Start with Campus Library → Practice holding a sentence in meaning groups while retaining its complete wording.
Browse all TOEFL lessons → Find lessons grouped by task and subject or everyday context.
Explore the lesson decks
The slide decks expand the lessons through vocabulary activities, Grammar Focus and Test Tip practice, worked answers, and discussion connection.
Explore the lesson decks →