These are MUET listening skills that are tried, tested and used to ace the MUET Listening Paper. As a MUET teacher I always get my students to use these few listening skills.
These listening skills may sound unimportant at first but would certainly produce results. I could see this as students tend to improve their listening marks. Use them as they may help you to get better in your listening marks too.
The MUET Listening paper
One component of the Malaysian University English Test (MUET) is the Listening Paper (800/1). This is paper 1 of MUET and is made up of 30 multiple choice questions (MCQs).
These questions are divided into 5 parts. If you ask me, I would say that this is the paper that could help you score high marks for MUET.
The MUET Listening Test is like the golden ticket handed to you – for you to achieve higher marks in MUET.
That said, the paper is by no means that easy. You will face some questions that will certainly put your listening skills to the test.
Nevertheless, I do believe that you will be able to choose the correct answer from the selection of answers given.
You could achieve this by using these list of skills that I have listed here.
Use them to improve your understanding of the listening texts. From this you could hopefully be able to answer the listening questions correctly and increase your marks for the Listening Paper.
When listening to the recordings being played try doing these:
1. Listen for the gist of the texts
The listening paper is going to test you on your ability to listen to spoken communication.
You will experience this during bot the informal and formal situations.
The more informal situations are such as listening to your friend chatting and watching a movie. The formal situations are like listening to lectures and presentations.
When you listen to get the main idea, you are really trying to figure out the central focus of what you are listening to. In this case they are the listening texts that you will listen to.
This listening skill in which you listen for the gist is quite easy to do. You will be able to get the gist of the texts even before the recording is played.
This is because you will get some time for you to read through the questions before the listening text for each part unfolds.
The length of time for you to read is only 15 to 30 seconds. This time is for you to read the questions and answers before the recording is played the first time.
For each part of the listening paper, the listening texts will be played two times.
The allocation of reading time for each part of the paper are as seen here:
Allocation of Reading Time
Here is the list of the length of time for you to read all the questions before the recording is played the first time. The reading time allocated I agree is not that long for you to read all the questions and make sense of them.
However, you will find that the time is just right for you to do this one thing and that is to get the main idea of the text. Here is what you can do to make full use of the few seconds reading time given.
- Scan through (run your eyes over) all the questions in the section.
- Focus on the key words and key phrases found in the questions.
- Use a highlighter to highlight important words.
- You would have identified the main topic of the listening text you are about to listen to by now.
- Listen to the recording carefully.
You will find that the listening text will be a little bit easier to understand now that you know its main topic. You can read more about getting a clearer idea about the text in this next strategy.
2. Listening for inference
Listening for inference is a very important listening skill (if not the most important) that you can use during the listening test.
Making inference is when you get the answer or clues from what is being said based on two things.
They are firstly, what you hear and secondly is it will be based on your prior knowledge [prior knowledge: the information about something that you already know even before a person tells you about it] of the topic.
Understanding could be achieved by:
Process of Listening for Inference
The above diagram shows the process of the listening skill – listening for inference. Listening for inference happens when you use your prior knowledge to help you understand what you are listening to.
Using prior knowledge to understand the listening texts is done when you use your own previous understanding, then applying it to your listening.
Using this listening skill will help you understand the message you got from the words and phrases used directly by the speaker.
How to make inferences
Making inference as you listen firstly helps you to understand the relationship between the speakers.
As you understand the relationship between speakers, you will understand the point that they would like to make better.
In certain listening texts you will undetstand thaty they are two friends talking or a radio DJ discussing a topic with a guest in a radio station.
This will certainly help you understand the context of what is being said.
Understanding the context means that you will get more information about the situations and the reasons for the conversation to take place.
Focus on these items
As you listen to the listening texts, pay attention to the ideas and words used.
Look at the words used by the speakers. Also, how the speakers are talking.
Notice also how the speakers use the words to get ideas across. These words and ideas that the speakers are using will give you more information you need to fully understand the texts.
Types of listenig texts
You will see that the listening texts will range from familiar topics for the first part of the listening paper and will gradually move on to more unfamiliar topics.
What you need to do is to listen to the texts carefully and link all that you hear for each part to what you already know of the topic.
This increased understanding of the text will make you arrive at the correct answers to the questions found in the listening paper.
One other strategy that will help you understand the listening texts more is when you can identify the specific content of the texts.
3. Listening for specific detail
Another listening skill that you can use is to listen for specific details. In listening for specific details, you will need to try and get the exact piece of information given.
You would need to first ofa all know what the speakers are saying as the recording is being played.
Use this process
As the recording unfolds you will notice that there will be a lot of turn taking in the dialogues. (Turn taking is when you take turns to speak between two or more people).
These turn taking will take place in the dialogues in Part 1, Part 3 and Part 5 of the paper. Part 2 and Part 4 are monologues. A monologue is a long speech by one person. And so there are no turn taking in these two parts.
You will need to listen to the speakers talking. Listen carefully and get the whole idea of what is being said.
At the same time identify the specific information that the speakers are telling.
Example for this listening skill
In listening for specific details you will have to follow the idea as it is being introduced.
The speaker may be interrupted by the other speaker with questions and other points being made.
These questions and points may not be relevant to the specific details being put forward.
Nevertheless, follow through the idea by listening to the response given. This could be seen here in this example:
Tina: It’s getting harder and harder for me to see the screen during class.
Johan: Yes, the morning sun is causing such a glare on the screen. Maybe we should find a blind to go on the window.
Tina: The sun ray is fine. I quite like getting the sun in the morning.
Johan: Then why are you finding it hard to see the screen in class? Do you need a new pair of glasses?
Tina: No there is no need for a new pair of glasses or a blind for the window. You are blocking my view. I think we need to switch places.
Explanation of the example
Here you can see that Tina is first of all telling of her difficulty to see the screen in class. You will hear later that Johan tries to guess the reasons why it was hard for Tina to do so.
As you can see most parts of the conversation between Johan and Tina are all distractions.
Following through the idea, you will clearly see the real reason why Tina was unable to see the screen. It was because Johan was blocking her view of the screen. Also, that she wanted Johan to switch places with her in class.
You can clearly see that all these three listening skills of identifying the main ideas of the texts you are listening to, making inference as you listen and being certain of the specific details of what is being said really will help in making the listening paper become more manageable.
The process of listening while using all these 3 skills is as could be seen here:
Implementing the Top 3 strategies during listening
During the Listening Test, you will listen to the speaker or speakers speaking in the different parts of the listening paper. By the time the recording is played for the first time you would have already known the main topic as you have read through the questions during the reading time give.
As the text unfolds you will listen to what is directly being mentioned and make inference as you go along. Identify [identify: get to know the who or what] exactly what the speaker is saying and from there choose the best answer from the selection of answers given. Good luck!
