TOEFL Listening announcements
The Announcement is one of the four named task types in the 2026 TOEFL Listening section, and the one most practice material has not caught up with. It is short — 20 to 40 seconds — spoken by one person, and followed by two or three questions.
The content is campus logistics: a library changing its hours, a hall closing for repairs, a deadline moving, a service starting. The language is easy. What is being tested is whether you can hold several small changes at once and work out their consequence, which is why an Announcement's questions so often include one about what the listener should now do.
Because it is short, there is no room to recover. A Talk gives you ninety seconds and several chances; an Announcement may name the only date it will ever name in its second sentence.
What it looks like on the paper
One speaker, 20–40 seconds, two to three four-option questions. The ETS purposes behind them are the speaker's purpose, key details, implied meaning, and the listener's likely next action.
Where it appears
Either stage of the adaptive test. With two or three questions on well under a minute of audio, the question-per-second density is the highest on the section.
Try one
Try one — no sign-up
What is true about the new library?
Where the marks actually go
Half right, half wrong
Two changes are announced and an option keeps one and invents the other — right month, wrong improvement.
What to do: Note each change as a pair: the thing, and what happens to it. Then check options one pair at a time.
A change that is explicitly not happening
Announcements often say what stays the same — "though the number of study rooms stays the same" — and that becomes a confident wrong option.
What to do: Write the unchanged things down too. They are stated for exactly this reason.
An absolute version of a modest change
Longer opening hours becomes open twenty-four hours a day.
What to do: Keep the speaker's scale. Longer is not always, and more is not unlimited.
The method, in order
- 1Catch the subject in the first sentence — what is this notice about?
- 2List the changes as pairs: thing, and what happens to it.
- 3Write down anything stated as unchanged.
- 4Note any date or deadline the moment it is said; it will not come twice.
- 5For a next-action question, ask what someone affected by this would have to do.
How to practise this one on purpose
Practise with very short clips and a hard rule: one listen, then write every change the announcement makes — what was true before, what is true now, and from when. The before-and-after pairing is what the half-right options are built to break.
Common questions
Is the Announcement task new?
It is new as a named task. The 2026 redesign reorganised Listening into four tasks — Listen and Choose a Response, Listen to a Conversation, Listen to an Announcement, and Listen to an Academic Talk — in place of the older lecture-and-conversation split.
How many questions follow an announcement?
Two or three, each with four options and one correct answer.
Will I be asked what to do next?
Often. An Announcement's questions frequently include one about the listener's likely next action — who needs to do something, by when, or where to go. It is an inference dressed as a practical question, and the answer follows from the changes announced rather than from anything stated as an instruction.
Is this the type costing you marks?
The free listening check is six short clips and three minutes. It gives you an indicative band and, more usefully, which listening skills the misses cluster in — so the next month of practice goes somewhere.
Take the free listening test →The other question types
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