Knowing about the MUET listening test structure and specification is going to help you a lot. This is because you will have a better chance of doing well in the paper as you would already know what to expect in the listening test.
Reason why your listening skill is tested
Like many other students you may also be wondering why you need to sit for the MUET listening test. Basically this is the reason why.
It is to measure your ability in understanding speech found in higher education. So this is the test that is going to see how well you can make sense of the listening that you would need to do when you enter university.
Types of listening done in university
What are the types of listening that you are going to do in university? One thing for sure is that you are going to be doing a lot of listening.
And the listening that you are going to do in university is going to be both in the formal and informal contexts.
In the formal context would be the instances such as when:
- you are listening to lectures
- listening to discussions
- attending tutorials
- listening to talks
- Listening in on briefings etc.
You will also do some listening in the informal context. The instances are such as when you are:
- having a chat with someone
- listening to podcasts
- having a telephone conversation with a friend, etc.
Types of listening texts found in the MUET listening paper
So now let’s find out what are the types of listening texts that you will get in the MUET listening test.
The types of listening texts in the test include both dialogues and monologues.
The dialogues will involve two people talking about a topic. These dialogues could be a discussion between a DJ and a personality on radio perhaps or even simply two friends talking.
Another type of recording would be the monologues. Monologues are the listening text when only one person is talking. These monologues are such as of a counsellor giving advice or a book writer talking about a new book.
The listening texts would be both in the formal and informal contexts, similar to what you would get later when you are in university.
MUET test specification
Let’s now move on to the MUET listening test specification.
MUET test overview
The MUET paper as you know is made up of 4 papers. They are the listening, speaking, reading and writing papers. And the MUET listening paper is paper 4 of the MUET test.
The duration of the MUET Listening paper is 50 minutes.
MUET listening test structure
Let’s now look at the structure of the MUET listening test paper.
The MUET listening paper is made up of 5 parts. They are part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 and part 5. And you will get seven listening texts for you to listen to.
That’s one text for each part from part 1 till part 4. However for part 5 you will get three different listening texts. They are going to be a little bit short, more complex and made up of three different topics.
Marks allocation
And these are the marks allocation for the paper.
The total marks for the listening paper is 90 marks and this will represent 25% of the MUET listening test. All 4 papers in MUET will have the same weighting which is 25% of the overall test.
This means that the MUET listening paper is as important as the rest of the paper that you will sit for in MUET.
