How to improve TOEFL listening ?

"Listen to radio or watch movies" is what we called "extensive listening" by which you can improve your listening for sure, but it takes time. For those who are in school or are going to write an English test, you need to have "intensive listening" which is to have a listening practice. The problem for us when listening is "lost attention". Scientists have proved that we can only focus on listening about 23 minutes, after that time, our mind goes to something else ,not the content of the listening. So we need to have pratice to deal with the problem. but how ? The following method will give us a way to slove the problem.

When we pactise listening at the beginning, we practise just about half an hour. After half an hour, we have a break about 5 minutes and go on another half an hour.Keep this going for some days, when we can easily handle over in half an hour without "lost attention", we practise for example 45 minutes as a period. If 45 minutes is ok, goes to 60 minutes, 90 minutes, even two hours and so on.

Another problem for listening is "lost memory". We can't remember what we have listened. This can be sloved by two ways: first, you need to have more listening practice, and so you can have more "listening vocabulary" in your mind. Second, you need to pay attention to the "repeated words" in the passage which are the most important words for the main idea. Third, be more careful "fist two sentence" and "last two sentence" of the passage. They are main idea or test points.

However,the most important thing for listening is "be more patient and more pratice". Always remember the proverb "no pain, no gain".