I've just taken the 241st TOEIC. So I make a personal memo here. This is a personal reflection on the test.

Personally, I'm bad at the listening section. This time, the impression was that I couldn't discern at least about the half of what the speaker says. That is, I judge I couldn't identify at least about the half of words being spoken.

The words spoken in the test were, for the greater part, indiscerninble blah-blah-blah for me. It was quite painful to endure listening to it for 45 minutes.

What is it that I need in order to gain a good score in the listening section? First, I have to discern each word spoken. If I fail in doing it, it means that I fail to gain necessary information to mentally construct a sentence to understand.

I think the vocabulary in the TOEIC listening section is basically limited to the comparatively basic. I think in the script of the test there would scarcely be words I don't know.

Therefore, what I need to be able to do is, first, to be able to discern each word spoken. Then, what practice do I need?

Probably YouTube videos are useful materials. With mechanically constructed subtitle displayed, played a bit slowly, a video whose language is English can be a nice source of spoken text for me. By looking at it, I can immediately check what word was uttered. (Of course, the technology does not always present correct words. But the precision is quite great.) And stopping the video with the space key, checking an unidentified word, then pushing the left key, I rewind the video by a few seconds, in order to listen again to the word.

I intend to continue this practice for the time being, unless I find any other better way.