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Part 2 — Question-Response

What this part tests

Part 2 tests your ability to choose the most appropriate spoken response to a spoken question or statement. You hear one question or statement and three possible responses (A, B, C). There is no photograph and no written text for this part — it is entirely audio.

The test has 25 questions.

This part tests listening comprehension at the sentence level: understanding what is being asked, what kind of answer fits, and whether the logic holds.

What the questions look like

You hear: "Where did you put the quarterly report?"

You then hear:

(A) It's on the conference table. (B) I finished it last Tuesday. (C) About twenty pages long.

The correct answer is (A). The question asks for a location (Where). (B) addresses completion, not location. (C) answers an imaginary question about length.

Core strategies

1. Identify the question type in the first two words.

Most questions signal their expected answer type immediately:

  • Where → location
  • When → time or date
  • Who → person or role
  • Why → reason or cause
  • How long / How often / How much → duration, frequency, or amount
  • Which / What → open — listen carefully for the full question
  • Do / Did / Have / Is / Are / Will → yes/no or confirmation

The moment you classify the question type, you know which responses are structurally valid. You can often eliminate one or two answers before you finish hearing them.

2. Do not fall for repeated words.

The most common Part 2 trap is an answer that repeats a word from the question but answers a different question. If the question is "When is the meeting?" and a response contains "in the meeting room," it sounds related but answers where, not when. Repeated content is frequently a decoy.

3. Accept indirect or unexpected answers.

Part 2 tests whether you can handle natural conversational English, which often includes:

  • A question answered with a question: "Did you call the client?" / "Didn't Sarah say she would?"
  • An answer that is a soft negative: "I haven't checked yet."
  • An answer that redirects: "You'd have to ask Mark about that."

If an answer does not start with yes or no but still makes logical conversational sense, it may well be correct. Do not eliminate an answer just because it is indirect.

4. Eliminate non-answers first.

Ask yourself: does this response address what was asked? If someone asks "Would you like to reschedule the call?" and a response says "The call went very well," that response is in the wrong time frame and addresses a different topic entirely. Eliminate it.

5. Use process of elimination aggressively.

With only three choices, eliminating one wrong answer gives you a 50/50 shot. Eliminating two makes the answer obvious. If you are unsure, eliminate the most obviously wrong option and commit to one of the remaining two.

Most common traps

  • Indirect questions (embedded questions). Statements like "I was wondering if the project deadline had changed" are not questions by grammar, but they function as requests for information. Treat them like questions and apply the same matching logic.
  • Tag questions. "The printer is out of paper, isn't it?" confirms or denies the statement. The right answer agrees or disagrees with the statement's core claim.
  • Negative questions. "Haven't you submitted the form yet?" can be confusing because yes and no mean the opposite of what they seem. Yes means "Yes, I've submitted it." No means "No, I haven't." Take an extra beat to process these.
  • Time confusion in yes/no questions. "Did you already send the invoice?" — a response saying "I'll send it tomorrow" implies it has not been sent yet. That can be correct even though it doesn't say no directly.

Question types to drill

  • Wh- questions (who, what, where, when, why, which, how)
  • Yes/No questions
  • Negative yes/no questions ("Isn't it…?", "Didn't you…?")
  • Choice questions ("Would you prefer X or Y?")
  • Tag questions ("…, right?", "…, won't she?")
  • Suggestion questions ("Why don't we…?", "How about…?")
  • Indirect / embedded questions ("Could you tell me where…?")
  • Statements that function as requests or questions