TOEFL Listen and Repeat practice (2026 format)
Hear a sentence once, repeat it back, and get a score on what you actually said. Below the drill: fifteen sample sentences with their transcripts, the table your recording is scored against, and the mistakes that cost the most marks.
251
Speaking prompts
Counted in our own database, servable items only. How each figure is counted
Practise it now
The drill plays a sentence, records your repeat, and scores it against the sentence it played. Nothing starts until you press the button — and you need a working microphone.
Listen and Repeat has its own daily allowance rather than sharing the credit the longer tasks use: a free account gets 3 scored responses a day. A paid plan is not metered here.
Sample sentence sets, with transcripts
These are real sentences from the practice bank, printed in full so you can rehearse them without an account, on a phone, or on paper. Read one aloud, cover it, then say it from memory — that is the same demand the task makes.
Short sentences
One clause, everyday campus vocabulary. Start here if you lose whole words when you repeat.
Please submit the lab form today.
6 wordslr-easy-01
The library opens earlier during finals.
6 wordslr-easy-02
Our study group meets after class.
6 wordslr-easy-03
She borrowed my notes for chemistry.
6 wordslr-easy-04
The campus shuttle stops near science.
6 wordslr-easy-05
Longer sentences
One clause carrying more detail. This is where dropped endings and swapped function words start to cost marks.
Please leave your completed attendance sheet outside the office.
9 wordslr-medium-01
The professor asked us to review chapter three before Thursday.
10 wordslr-medium-02
Our team reserved a quiet table in the science library.
10 wordslr-medium-03
She wants to switch lab partners after the first experiment.
10 wordslr-medium-04
Please upload the practice recording before your advising meeting tomorrow.
10 wordslr-medium-05
Two-clause sentences
A subordinate clause plus a main clause. Holding the whole structure in memory is the skill being tested.
Before the workshop starts, please test your microphone and close every extra browser tab.
14 wordslr-hard-01
The department chair said late internship forms need signatures from both supervisors this week.
14 wordslr-hard-02
If the bus arrives early, we can stop for coffee before the review session.
14 wordslr-hard-03
Her advisor suggested joining the research seminar because it connects theory with real cases.
14 wordslr-hard-04
Please repeat the sentence exactly, even when the speaker uses unfamiliar academic vocabulary.
13 wordslr-hard-05
These sentences are Reach120 practice material written to the published 2026 task description. They are not real TOEFL test items, and nothing here is published, licensed or endorsed by ETS.
What the Listen and Repeat task is
Listen and Repeat is one of the two Speaking task types in the TOEFL test that took effect on January 21, 2026. You hear a sentence, you do not see it written down, and you say it back. There is no question to answer and no opinion to give — the task measures how much of a spoken sentence you can hold and reproduce.
What ETS states
The 2026 specification lists the Speaking section at 11 items and 55 raw points, with task types Listen and Repeat (7 items) and Take an Interview (4 items).
The same specification table gives the maximum points for each Listen and Repeat and Take an Interview item as 5, which is how 11 items reconcile to 55 raw points. The specification states that its published blueprint is subject to minor revisions until the official launch.
Reading and Listening items are machine-scored selected responses; the Write an Email, Write for an Academic Discussion, and all Speaking tasks are AI-scored constructed responses, per the specification’s item-type notes.
Build a Sentence is also machine-scored in the same table, so machine-scored is not exclusive to Reading and Listening. This describes how ETS states the test is scored, and says nothing about how Reach120 scores your practice.
Sourced from the ETS 2026 test specifications, read 2026-07-27. Everything outside this box is Reach120’s own reading of it.
What the specification does not publish is a per-item time limit, a required sentence length, or a list of the sentences used. Anywhere you see those stated as rules, you are reading somebody’s guess. The tiers, timings and sentence sets on this page are Reach120 practice settings, chosen to build the skill — they are not ETS rules.
How a repeat is scored
Your recording is transcribed, and the transcript is compared with the sentence that was played. Because the correct answer is stored in advance, there is no model deciding what you should have said — it checks what you did say against a known target. Two things are scored:
| What is scored | What it measures | What a strong response shows | What pulls it down |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accuracy | How completely the repeated sentence matches the target words, order, and grammatical endings. | Nearly every target word is reproduced in the original order, with little or no added language. | Missing content words, substituted function words, reordered phrases, and dropped endings lower the score quickly. |
| Intelligibility | How clearly the repeat comes out — clear enough that what you said can be recognised word for word. | The transcript is easy to recover because the speech is clear, stable, and natural enough for reliable recognition. | Mumbled segments, clipped words, and long breakdowns reduce intelligibility even when the speaker remembers the right content. |
Each item comes back on a 0 to 5 scale, with these descriptions:
| Score | Label | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 5 / 5 | Outstanding control | Complete, clear, and easy to follow with only trivial slips that do not reduce meaning. |
| 4 / 5 | Good control | Mostly complete and understandable, with minor omissions, hesitations, or language slips. |
| 3 / 5 | Developing control | Core meaning is present, but noticeable gaps in detail, delivery, or control reduce precision. |
| 2 / 5 | Limited control | Only part of the message lands clearly; frequent breakdowns force the listener to infer missing meaning. |
| 1 / 5 | Minimal control | Barely understandable or barely responsive, with severe limits in content or delivery. |
| 0 / 5 | No scorable response | Blank, off-task, copied, non-English, or too limited to score meaningfully. |
What ETS states
For TOEFL tests taken on or after January 21, 2026, official score reports use a 1–6 scale in half-band increments.
Sourced from the ETS 2026 test specifications, read 2026-07-27. Everything outside this box is Reach120’s own reading of it.
How to practise it so the score moves
Listen and Repeat rewards a specific, trainable habit: holding a whole sentence before you start speaking. Most low scores are not pronunciation problems — they are people who began repeating after the fourth word and lost the rest.
- 1Listen to the whole sentence before you open your mouth. Starting early is the single most expensive mistake in this task.
- 2Repeat the structure, not just the words. Two-clause sentences survive in memory as one shape, not as a list of nine items.
- 3Say the small words. Articles, prepositions and verb endings carry marks, and they are the first things a rushed repeat drops.
- 4Finish the sentence even if you lost the middle. A partial repeat that ends cleanly scores above one that stops dead.
- 5Record in a quiet place and speak at your normal volume. If the transcript cannot recover your words, clarity is what the score reflects.
The mistakes that cost the most marks, in the order they show up in practice attempts:
- Starting to speak before the audio ends, then running out of sentence.
- Substituting a synonym — "began" for "started" — which is a change, not a repeat.
- Dropping the ending: "the professor upload the slides" for "uploaded".
- Reordering clauses so the sentence means something slightly different.
- Trailing off in volume at the end of a longer sentence, which costs clarity exactly where the detail sits.
Listen and Repeat: common questions
- How many Listen and Repeat items are on the 2026 TOEFL test?
- The 2026 test specification lists the Speaking section at 11 items — 7 Listen and Repeat items and 4 Take an Interview items — for 55 raw points, read 2026-07-27. The specification states the published blueprint is subject to minor revisions until the official launch.
- Do I get to see the sentence while I repeat it?
- No. The task is delivered as audio, which is why holding the sentence in memory is the skill it measures. The Reach120 drill works the same way: the transcript appears with your score afterwards, not during the recording.
- How long is the sentence?
- ETS does not publish a sentence length for this task. The Reach120 bank practises three lengths — short one-clause sentences, longer one-clause sentences, and two-clause sentences — because the jump in difficulty comes from structure rather than from word count alone. Those tiers are our practice design, not an ETS rule.
- Is Listen and Repeat practice free?
- Yes, with a daily allowance. Listen and Repeat costs far less to run than the tasks that need a full grading model, so it sits on its own allowance rather than sharing the shared daily credit: a free account gets 3 scored responses a day, and a paid plan is not metered here. The sample sentences and transcripts on this page need no account at all.
- What equipment do I need?
- A microphone and a browser that can use it. Headphones help, because they stop the played sentence from being picked up in your own recording. Nothing is installed and no recording starts until you press the start button.
- Does it score my accent?
- No. It scores whether the words you said match the sentence that was played, and whether your speech was clear enough to be transcribed reliably. An accent that stays understandable does not cost marks.
- How is this different from repeating sentences on my own?
- The score. Repeating alone tells you nothing about the words you dropped, because you remember the sentence you meant to say. The drill compares your transcript with the target sentence and shows you what actually came out.
- Can I practise without an account?
- Every sample sentence and transcript on this page is readable with no account and no email. The scored drill signs you in for a one-off sample attempt if you are signed out, so the recording has somewhere to be scored.