Guide to Part 3: Conversations

The Format

In this part, you'll hear thirteen short conversations between two or three speakers. For each conversation, you answer three questions, and each question comes with four printed answer choices in your test booklet. That gives you 39 questions total.

Some of these conversations are paired with a graphic, like a schedule, a receipt, a map, or a chart. When a graphic shows up, at least one of the three questions will require you to connect what you hear with what you see on the page.

What You're Being Tested On

• Your ability to follow who says what across a multi-turn exchange
• Whether you can identify the conversation's purpose: is it a complaint, a request, a scheduling issue, or a status update?
• How well you can pull out specific details like names, numbers, times, and locations
• Whether you can read between the lines when a speaker implies something without stating it directly
• Your skill at combining spoken information with printed graphics

Question Patterns

Each conversation typically gets one question from each of these categories:

1. Main idea or purpose. Questions like "What are the speakers mainly discussing?" or "Why is the man calling?"
2. Specific detail. Questions like "What does the woman ask the man to do?" or "What time will the delivery arrive?"
3. Inference or next step. Questions like "What will the man probably do next?" or "What does the woman imply about the schedule?"

When there's a graphic involved, it usually replaces one of these three with something like "Look at the graphic. Which item does the woman want to return?"

How the Test Tricks You

Distractor details. The conversations often mention multiple names, numbers, or facts, but only one of them actually matters for the question being asked. If three different meeting times come up during a conversation, the question is going to target the final agreed-upon time, not the first two that were mentioned.

Mid-conversation topic shifts. A conversation might start with one subject and then pivot to something completely different halfway through. The opening topic could be about scheduling, but then the second half turns into a request for a document. The tricky part is that questions can target either half.

Implied meaning. When someone says "I guess I'll have to reschedule the client meeting," that's not just stating an action. It's implying frustration or an unwanted change. The question is testing whether you caught that implication, not just the surface-level statement.

Graphic mismatch. For graphic-based questions, the correct answer depends on matching a spoken detail (like a name, a product, or a quantity) to a specific cell in the graphic. People who ignore the audio and just try to read the graphic on its own almost always get these wrong.

How to Approach Each Question

1. Preview the questions before the audio starts. If you have time, quickly read the three question stems (you don't necessarily need to read all four answer choices) so you know what to listen for. This is the single most impactful habit you can build for Part 3.
2. Keep track of who is who. Pay attention to which speaker is asking and which one is answering. This matters a lot for questions like "What does the man suggest?" or "What does the woman offer to do?"
3. If there's a graphic, glance at it before the audio begins. Try to figure out what kind of data it contains (prices, times, names) so you're ready to connect it to what you hear.
4. Answer as you go. Don't wait until the entire conversation is over to answer all three questions. Try to select each answer as soon as you hear the relevant piece of information.
5. Let go of missed details. If you miss a specific fact, use the overall direction of the conversation to make an educated guess rather than getting stuck on what you didn't catch.