Wanted: Feedback on TOEIC® Listening Exercises

[Torsten]

Hello everyone,

Could you please give us your feedback on our new TOEIC/business English listening comprehension exercises? It's the beta version and we are going to add a number of features to make the system more effective and easy to use.

So, could you please try out the exercises, answers the questions and let us know what you think about the quality, the usefulness and value of them?

Here they are: TOEIC Test Listening Comprehension Exercises

Many thanks,
Torsten
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Gray]

Hi Torsten,

The first problem I faced while listening is that it takes much time to buffer even with a moderate network speed. As this is a spoken audio, can't we reduce the sampling rate to get better response time?

One more question, is this series available as a podcast? That will be very convenient way to listen.

~Gray.
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First lesson - English, not english. I, not i. ~A student of English

[Torsten]

Hi Gray,

Many thanks for your feedback. Can you please tell me more about your network speed? Are you on a dial-up or broadband connection? I'm asking because even on my UTMS connection I have no problem listening to the files whatsoever. As for podcasts, you probably mean a downloadable file? We could do that but the exercises don't make much sense without the interactive multiple-choice questions.
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Gray]

Hi Torsten,

I am using broadband connection with 384 kbps speed, may be I will try at other times to see if the day time usage makes any difference.

I was thinking of podcast because I could listen it whenever needed without bothering about connectivity or connection speed. And this will also save the collective bandwidth usage at the site.

Apart from technical issues, I find this exercise intuitive to learn and engaging. I would visit it regularly now.

~Gray.
_________________
First lesson - English, not english. I, not i. ~A student of English

[Torsten]

Gray,

Thanks for your quick response. Can you please tell me what exactly happens (or doesn't happen) when you click on the play button?
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Gray]

Torsten,

When I click the play button it starts buffering and plays it with intermittent glitches due to the low bandwidth of my internet connection.

Coming back to the content, there should be an option to hide or show the questions...some students like me may want to concentrate on audio first and then go through the questions - the standard practice for exams like TOEFL. If questions are displayed simultaneously, listeners tend to focus on finding answers which I guess results in less improvement in listening skills.

~Gray.

PS:

(I would also like to suggest a small user interface improvement here - the slider to seek backward or forward is not intuitive. For seeking back, I was trying to click on the green line (buffering progress bar) that grows and not the gray coloured play progress bar. The gray bar should have a distinct slider as we see in standard audio players like Windows Media Player. Also, merging the buffer and play progress bar into a single progress bar (like the one we see on YouTube's player) would be a good option.)
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First lesson - English, not english. I, not i. ~A student of English

[Torsten]

Hi Gray,

Thank you for your suggestions regarding the progress bar and slider. As for hiding the questions, since these are TOEIC listening exercises, we'd rather display the questions since that's exactly what happens in the real TOEIC test: The test candidate hears the recording while they read the questions in their test book. As a matter of fact, TOEIC test candidates should develop the habit of scanning the question in advance, that is, reading the questions before they hear the actual recording. Through this technique you can improve your listening comprehension skills because in business situations you usually listen for a specific purpose rather than just listening for fun. So, in order to answer the questions you not only need to understand the audio recording. You also need to understand the information. In other words, you need to memorize facts.

If a user wants to listen to the recordings without reading the questions they, of course, can do so. Simply don't look at the questions.
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Nutan.bomburey]

Hi Torstan,

I am not able to access the listening comphrehension tests. whenever i try to play,it starts buffering and finally shows me a error that 'FILE NOT FOUND'.

Please help me with this.

[Torsten]

What operating system and browser do you use?
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Serafima]

Hello Torstan,

I have the same problem as Nutan.bomburey described. The signature "File not found" appeares several seconds after I press the play buttom but last week I could listen the first text.

[Lalneagra]

I could listen the audio sample without problems, but I had to listen it twice in order to understand what it's telling about. :) anywhy this ideea is great and I wonder...can we also have some speaking exercises (not only listening)? After grammar, speaking is my major problem and I really want to know how to improve it.
Thank you, looking forward for your feedback

[Ghiyoung]

Hi Mr. Torsten,

I have same problem same as above.
I mean I cannot access the audio samples too.

I use Windows Vista on the Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo chip system.

Could you help me?

yours truely,
GY.

[Torsten]

Hi GY,

How fast is your Internet connection? Do you actually get the error message 'file not found'? If so, please try again as we already have fixed this problem.
Thanks,
Torsten
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Ghiyoung]

Hi Mr. Torsten,

I tried it again today.
It worked without any problem.
Several days ago, it had not worked and the message of 'File not found' had showed.

Thank you.

yours truly,
GY

[Esl_Expert]

Janelle ("she") sounds disconcertingly like a "he" in this recording:
http://www.english-test.net/toeic/listening/voice_mail_for_bank_client_about_special_interest_rate_offer_on_cd_purchase.html

:wink: