TOEFL Practice › Conversations and Announcements
TOEFL Listening
Conversation and Announcement Tasks
Follow an everyday exchange or a campus notice, then answer questions about what you heard. These lessons bring together two official TOEFL Listening tasks: Listen to a Conversation and Listen to an Announcement.
Two tasks, shared listening skills
You hear each conversation or announcement once, then answer two multiple-choice questions. Each question has four options. You can take notes while listening.
Listen to a Conversation
What you hear
A short exchange between two people in an everyday situation.
What to follow
Each speaker’s meaning, their reasons and reactions, and how a plan or problem develops.
Listen to an Announcement
What you hear
A short message in a campus or academic setting.
What to follow
Why the message is being given, who it concerns, and the relevant details or actions.
These are separate tasks on the exam. They are taught together because both ask you to connect details, understand meaning in context, and recognize the same idea in different words. Each lesson tells you whether you’ll practice conversations, announcements, or a mixture of both.
Each recording stays within one coherent situation, but the subject changes between recordings on the official TOEFL exam. The subject-based lessons build vocabulary within related situations, while mixed practice sets reproduce those changes.
What the questions ask
Read the question carefully. It may concern the whole message, one detail, or something you need to work out from the context.
Purpose or topic
The main reason for the exchange or announcement.
Details and reasons
What happened, who is involved, or why something happens.
Actions and next steps
What someone requests, suggests, agrees to do, or is likely to do next.
Meaning in context
What a speaker implies or what an expression means in that situation.
Function of a detail
Why a speaker mentions something or uses a particular expression.
Illustrative example
Keep the deadline separate from the event
“The student photography workshop takes place on Friday afternoon. If you’d like to borrow a camera, please request one by Wednesday. You can attend with your own camera without making a request.”
Question: What should students who need a camera do?
What the details tell you
They should request a camera by Wednesday. Friday is the workshop date, and the request applies only to students who want to borrow equipment. Keeping the date and condition together helps you avoid a close but incorrect answer.
How the Listening section is scored
Listen to a Conversation and Listen to an Announcement are two of the four tasks in the Listening section, alongside Listen and Choose a Response and Listen to an Academic Talk. Neither has a score of its own: their questions count toward a single Listening score together with the questions from the other two tasks.
Each scored question in the section is worth one point, and answers are machine-scored — there is no rubric and no partial credit. The whole Listening section carries 35 raw points.
Your raw points are not what gets reported. Each section is reported on a 1–6 scale in half-point steps, and your overall score is the average of the four sections, rounded to the nearest half band. ETS does not publish a conversion from raw points to that scale, so a score on a practice set here cannot be turned into a predicted band.
The Listening section is also adaptive. The first module sets the difficulty of the second, so the early questions do more than add points — they decide which version of the section you go on to see.
A simple listening approach
Understand the situation
Identify what the speakers are discussing or why the announcement is being made.
Follow the connections
Keep actions attached to the right person or group. Notice corrections, conditions, and the difference between a suggestion and an agreement.
Choose from the evidence
Answer the question asked. Compare complete meanings and avoid adding a detail simply because it sounds likely.
What you’ll learn across the lessons
The lessons combine vocabulary, Grammar Focus teaching, a focused Test Tip, and original listening practice. You’ll begin with lessons devoted to each task and later apply the same skills across both.
Listening skills
Understand the message
Identify the central purpose and the information that supports it.
Keep details connected
Follow who did what, which plan changed, and which conditions still apply.
Recognize implied meaning
Understand indirect offers, reactions, and expressions in context.
Compare close answers
Preserve the speaker’s meaning when the options use different words.
Conversation subjects
Conversations can range across everyday life, work, study, and community activities.
Shopping, repairs, meals, travel, and housing
Shared projects, presentations, assignments, and practical help
Meetings, events, requests, and changing arrangements
Announcement subjects
Announcements have a narrower setting: campus and academic life. Listen for who the notice concerns and what action, if any, is needed.
Libraries, facilities, appointments, and service changes
Workshops, clubs, performances, and registration
Schedules, access, community initiatives, and wellness activities
Grammar Focus
You’ll practice language for intentions, schedules, requests, conditions, and changing plans. Each Grammar Focus connects a useful form to a meaning you can recognize and use in conversation.
Continue your TOEFL conversation and announcement practice
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Practice the tasks
Work through conversation and announcement lessons with audio, transcripts, and worked answers.
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