TOEFL · Guides · October 25, 2026 · 9 min read

TOEFL Listen and Repeat: practice, scoring and tips, plus Take an Interview (2026)

Listen and Repeat opens the TOEFL iBT Speaking section since the 2026 update. You are placed in a short campus scene, such as a tour or an orientation, and hear 7 sentences, one at a time. After each one you repeat it exactly as you heard it. The sentences start short and get longer and more complex, so the last ones test how much spoken English you can hold in memory at once. Each response is scored 0–5 on how accurately you repeat it and how intelligible your speech is. The skill that makes the difference is chunking: hearing a sentence as three or four meaningful groups instead of fifteen separate words. The second Speaking task, Take an Interview, is covered at the end of this guide.

How the task works

ETS’s test blueprint describes the progression: early sentences have a single clause, later ones add compound verbs, dependent and relative clauses, and longer noun phrases. Scenes come with a picture or a simple visual to set the context, and the speakers may have North American, British, Australian or New Zealand accents.

What is scored

Two things matter: accuracy (did you say the same words, in the same order?) and intelligibility (can a listener understand you without effort?). In our own words, the levels look roughly like this:

Note what is not in the table: your accent. A clear accent is fine. What lowers intelligibility is mumbling, swallowed word endings, unclear stress or speaking so fast that words blur.

Example sentences

These seven sentences were written for this guide. They follow the same shape as the task: one scene, rising length.

Scene: you are at the orientation for the campus bike-share program.

1. Welcome to the bike center.
2. Helmets are on the left shelf.
3. Every bike has a number on the frame.
4. You can return a bike at any station on campus.
5. Please check the brakes before you ride out of the parking area.
6. Riders who keep a bike longer than two hours pay a small extra fee.
7. If a tire goes flat while you’re riding, lock the bike and report the station number through the app.

Sentences 1–3 are easy to hold as a whole. From sentence 4 on, word-by-word memory runs out, and you need chunks.

Chunking: how to hold a long sentence

Split what you hear into groups that carry one idea each. These are usually phrases: a subject, a verb with its object, a time or place phrase, a clause.

Riders who keep a bike / longer than two hours / pay / a small extra fee.

If a tire goes flat / while you’re riding, / lock the bike / and report the station number / through the app.

Sentence 7 has 19 words but only five chunks, and each chunk is a picture: a flat tire, riding, locking, reporting, the app. When you repeat, say each chunk as one unit with the speaker’s rhythm. If a small word slips (the or a), keep going; stopping to fix it costs more than the slip.

Some practical rules:

• Listen for meaning first. If you know what happens in the sentence, the grammar words come back on their own.
• Copy the melody. Stress and pauses in the original mark the chunk boundaries. Repeating them helps memory and intelligibility at once.
• Start right away. Waiting lets the sentence fade.
• Keep function words. Who, while, before, through, small prepositions and articles: these are what usually go missing and turn a 5 into a 4.
• Do not paraphrase. Riders who have a bike for more than two hours means the same thing, but it is not the same words, and accuracy is what is scored.

How to train your memory span

Memory span for spoken English grows with practice, and the gains are fast in the first few weeks.

1. Ladder drill. Take a sentence and say it in growing pieces: a small extra fee → pay a small extra fee → longer than two hours pay a small extra fee… until you can say the whole thing. Then do it with your eyes closed from audio.
2. Shadowing. Play a short recording (a podcast, a campus video, a lecture) and speak along about half a second behind the speaker. This trains rhythm and chunking without any pause to think.
3. Pause-and-repeat. Play one sentence of audio, pause, repeat it, then check against the transcript. Start with 8–10 word sentences and work up to 18–20.
4. Record yourself. Compare your recording with the original. Mark every missing word: most people find they drop the same kinds of words (articles, prepositions, auxiliaries) again and again.
5. Ten minutes a day beats an hour once a week. Memory span responds to frequent short practice.

Common mistakes

• Starting with the first word only once the whole sentence is assembled in your head: by then the end has gone.
• Translating in your head. It slows you down and changes word order.
• Changing grammar to sound “correct”, for example turning you’re riding into you ride.
• Fading out on the last chunk. The end of the sentence is scored as much as the beginning.
• Repeating a phrase to fix a slip, which makes the response harder to follow.

Take an Interview: the second Speaking task

After Listen and Repeat comes Take an Interview. An interviewer in a short scenario, such as a university survey or a research study, asks you 4 questions, one after another. You have 45 seconds for each answer, with no preparation time. The questions move from your own facts and experience to opinions and predictions on a broader issue, so the last one is the hardest.

Each answer is scored 0–5. In our own words, the score looks at four things:

• Relevance and development: does the answer address the question, with reasons, details or an example?
• Pace and fluency: a natural speaking speed without long pauses or many fillers.
• Intelligibility: clear pronunciation, stress and intonation.
• Grammar and vocabulary: a range of accurate language that expresses precise meanings.

A full 45-second answer from a strong speaker is usually around 90–130 words. Very short answers rarely reach 4–5, because there is no room for development.

A simple answer frame

1. Direct answer (one sentence).
2. Reason or explanation (one or two sentences).
3. Example or detail (two or three sentences).
4. Short wrap-up (one sentence), if time allows.

Example interview

This interview was written for this guide. Scenario: a university survey about where students study.

1. Where do you usually study, and why do you choose that place?
2. Tell me about a time when a study space helped you or made it harder to focus.
3. Some students want the library to stay open 24 hours a day. Do you think that’s a good idea?
4. How do you think study spaces at universities will change in the next ten years?

A sample answer to question 3 (about 100 words):

I think it’s a good idea, but mainly during exam periods. Students have very different schedules. Some work part-time in the evening, so the only time they can study quietly is late at night, and a dorm room isn’t always quiet. For example, last semester my roommate had a night shift at a restaurant, and he often came back at eleven wanting to study. If the library had been open, he wouldn’t have had to work at the kitchen table. On the other hand, keeping it open all year might be expensive, so opening it around the clock just before exams seems like a fair compromise.

It answers at once, gives a reason, adds a concrete example, considers the cost and ends with a clear position.

Interview tips

• Answer the question you were asked in the first sentence; do not warm up with general talk.
• Use the full 45 seconds. A real example fills time naturally.
• Fillers are better replaced with short phrases: That’s a good question…, Let me think, … used once, not three times.
• For the prediction question, use will, might, I expect…, probably and give one reason.

Practise Listen and Repeat in the Nomto room

The Listen and Repeat practice in the Nomto TOEFL room plays a scene of seven sentences with the test timing, each one only once. Every response is scored 0–5 on the official rubric by AI, marked as an estimate. For the interview, use the Take an Interview practice: four questions, 45 seconds each, scored the same way. Feedback is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Vietnamese, Turkish or Indonesian. Three spoken answers are scored free with an account; a pass opens all Nomto courses. When you are ready, take the Speaking section or a full mock test for a band on the 1–6 scale and the comparable 0–120 total.

The listening memory you build here helps in the Listening section too, and the clear, connected sentences of the interview are the spoken version of a good Academic Discussion post. If you are still getting to know the 2026 test, start with the TOEFL iBT format, see how the 0–5 speaking scores turn into a section band in TOEFL scores, and explore the Writing tasks in Build a Sentence, Write an Email and Complete the Words for Reading.

Common questions

How many Listen and Repeat sentences are there? Seven, in one scene, getting longer and more complex.

Can I hear the sentence again? No. Each sentence plays once.

Does my accent lower my score? No, as long as you are easy to understand. Intelligibility is what is scored, not a particular accent.

What if I forget part of a long sentence? Say what you remember, smoothly, in the original order. Partial accuracy still earns points; silence earns none.

How long are Take an Interview answers? 45 seconds each, for four questions, with no preparation time.

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