Receptive skills - listening comprehension of authentic spoken texts
Listening is the first half of Paper 2 (about one hour at HL, 25% of the final grade). You hear several authentic recordings - interviews, phone calls, announcements, debates, radio features - each played twice, with questions following the order of the audio. Register and accent vary deliberately: you may hear Peninsular Spanish, Rioplatense voseo, Caribbean or Andean speech. The paper tests gist, specific detail (numbers, times, places), speaker attitude, agreement and disagreement, and implied meaning.
A three-pass routine
- Before the audio: read the questions, underline the key noun or question word, and predict the type of answer the gap needs (a figure, a reason, a place, a name).
- First playing: answer in order, leave gaps you miss, keep moving.
- Between playings: check that each answer fits the grammar of the gap - singular/plural, masculine/feminine, verb form.
- Second playing: confirm and catch the corrections speakers make mid-sentence.
Worked example
Audio: «En principio la reunión era el jueves, pero como la sala estaba ocupada la hemos pasado al viernes a las seis y media.» Question: Day and time of the meeting? Reasoning: «en principio» and «pero» are correction markers, so the first item is a decoy. The answer is viernes, 18:30 - convert to 24-hour format only if the question asks for it.
Traps that cost marks
- Writing down the first number or date you hear; speakers frequently revise it.
- Missing meaning reversers: no… sino, en vez de, salvo, a no ser que, aunque.
- Panicking at elision or dropped /s/ ("lojóvenes"); meaning usually survives.
- Over-writing: an answer that does not fit the gap grammatically loses the mark.
- Switching language: answer in the language of the question paper.
- Ignoring speaker attitude words (la verdad es que, me temo que, desde luego).