TOEFL Listening Tips 1: listening for the gist

Very important!!! Remember to ALWAYS take notes when you do TOEFL listening

Listening Tip 1: listening for the gist.
Some of the listening questions in the TOEFL listening section are concerned with the 'gist' of the coversation or talk. You must be able to recognize these questions and then answer them.

First of all, what is the 'gist'? The 'gist' is defined as 'the main or essential part of a matter'; 'the central idea'; 'the essence'; 'the central meaning or theme of a speech or literary work'.
Synonyms for 'gist' include essence, point, substance, burden, kernel, import (be careful as all of these synonyms have other meanings also).

In other words, the gist of a conversation is what the conversation is about. The gist is the big picture, it is not the little details.

Finding the 'gist'can sometimes be easy, but sometimes not. Often the main theme or idea of a conversation is directly stated at the beginning of the conversation. However, that is not always true and sometimes we need to listen to the whole conversation and put together all the information we hear before the 'gist' becomes clear.

Questions testing our understanding of the 'gist' include:

What is the subject of the conversation? What is the main idea of the conversation? What is the purpose of the conversation? Why does the student go to the office? Why does the student visit the professor? What is the conversation about?

Look at the opening to a conversation -

Man: I saw that new Jimmy Repp movie "The Caretaker" last night." Woman: Really, what did you think? Man: It was great, I really enjoyed it. The computer graphics were amazing. Have you seen it? Woman: Oh yeah, the CG stuff was really good, but it was the fight scenes that really impressed me. I couldn't believe some of the things they did. Man: I know, and the acting wasn't too bad either, better than Repp's usual performance.

Now obviously from this section we realise that the conversation is about the movie "The Caretaker" and how good it is. If the conversation continued in the same style we would be right in thinking this.

Look at a similar conversation -

Man: I saw that new Jimmy Repp movie "The Caretaker" last night." Woman: Really, what did you think? Man: It was OK, I quite enjoyed it. The computer graphics were amazing. Have you seen it? Woman: Yeah, the fight scenes were pretty well put together. Man: Even the acting wasn't too bad, better than Repp's usual performance. Woman: Not much better, he's got to be one of the worst actors ever. Man: I think I'd have to agree with you there. Woman: I don't think I've ever seen him give a performance that was even half-way convincing. Man: After being in the movie business for so long and churning out so many films, you'd think he'd have learned something by now. Woman: Well he hasn't. Don't think we'll ever see him getting an Oscar.

The beginning of this conversation is almost exactly the same as the prvious one. However, very quickly the focus of the conversation turns away from discussing the movie to talking about how bad an actor Jimmy Repp is. Jimmy Repp's lack of acting skill would be the 'gist' of this conversation.

We also need to be careful when the listening passage is a professor's lecture. The subject of the passage may be directly stated at the beginning of the beginning of the lecture, but it may not.
Look at the beginning of a lecture -

Professor: OK, everyone, we've already noted the difficulties that historians have faced in trying to establish where the Pictish people, who inhabited much of Scotland two thousand years ago, actually came from. It seems to be a problem that will never be definitively solved.

From this opening, you may think that the lecture is about the origins of the Pictish people and the dificulties historians have had in trying to discover where their roots were. Just from these two opening sentences that would seem to be correct.
However, the lecture continues -

Professor: OK, everyone, we've already noted the difficulties that historians have faced in trying to establish where the Pictish people, who inhabited much of Scotland  two thousand years ago, actually came from. It seems to be a problem that will never be definitively solved. Today, I want to look at the origins of the Scots, the second great people to come to Scotland, and indeed, the people who gave the country its name. The beginnings of the Scots are much clearer to historians and we can be sure that .........

It is now clear that the lecture is NOT about the origins of the Pictish people. That was just a recap of a previous lecture. Today's lecture is actually about the origins of the Scots: a completely different people.

Very important!!! Remember to ALWAYS take notes when you do TOEFL listening