What Part 1 actually is
Part 1 is not one conversation — it is three sections of audio with questions in between.
Officially it is called Listening to Problem Solving. Two speakers, eight questions, and the audio comes to you in three chunks, each about a minute to a minute and a half. Between the chunks, you answer. Then the next chunk starts.
Almost everyone prepares for it as though it were a single continuous clip. They brace for four minutes of unbroken speech, try to hold the whole story in their head at once, and lose the detail from the opening because they are still guarding it when the third section arrives.
The structure is a gift, not a threat. Each chunk only has to survive until the questions that follow it. After that, you can let it go — the next section will re-establish whatever still matters.
One thing does not change: the clip plays once. Official wording, and worth reading twice:
All audio clips are played one time only.
The failure: carrying the whole conversation
Call it carrying. It is the habit of treating every detail as something you might be asked about at the end, so you hold all of it, all the way through.
Carrying costs you twice. While you are holding section one, you have less attention for section two — so you hear the words but not the reasoning. And you write too much, because when everything might matter, nothing gets cut. Then the questions arrive a few sentences after the line that answers them, and the person who wrote four words beats the person who wrote forty.
Official guidance for Parts 1 to 3 gives 30 seconds to hear and answer each question — that does not extend to the later parts, but it does mean the first eight questions come at you briskly, while your ear is still warming up. And you are reading, not just listening: the answer choices are not spoken to you.
Test takers will be required to read answer choices in the Listening Test.
That reading happens inside the same half-minute. Notes you have to decode are notes you cannot use.
Worked example (original AlmiWorld practice item)
A problem-solving exchange is almost always the same machine: one person has a problem, the other proposes options, and the options get killed one by one until something survives.
Nadia: Omar, I'm in trouble. My laptop died last night — it won't turn on at all. My stats assignment is due Thursday.
Omar: Nothing backed up?
Nadia: No, the file itself is fine — it syncs to my email account. It's the machine I don't have.
Omar: Okay, so that's a hardware problem, not a lost-work problem. The repair place on Wilson is good, but they quote a week. That's no use to you for Thursday.
Nadia: I could use the computers in the library.
Omar: They close at six, don't they? And you're at work until seven Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Don't count on the library. The Student Union lends laptops out for seventy-two hours — you'd have it overnight, which is what you actually need. The catch is you have to book in person, and the desk only hands them out between ten and two.
Nadia: I'm free tomorrow morning.
Omar: Then go tomorrow. Book the loaner first. If they've run out, that's when I'd start phoning around for a rush repair.
Question: What does Omar advise Nadia to do first?
- A. Take her laptop to the repair shop on Wilson.
- B. Work on the assignment on the library computers after her shift.
- C. Go to the Student Union in the morning to book a loaner laptop.
- D. Get her assignment file from her email account.
Answer: C. Omar names the action, the place and the timing — "go tomorrow", "book the loaner first" — and Nadia's morning is free, which clears the ten-to-two window.
Why D is wrong, and why it is the dangerous one. D is true. The file really does sync to her email; Nadia says so. But the question asks what Omar advises her to do first, and the file is the one thing nobody has to fix. A wrong option in Part 1 is very often an accurate statement that simply does not answer the question that was asked. If you are matching your notes to words you remember hearing, D looks like a match. If you are matching to the question, it collapses.
Why A is wrong. The repair shop is real and Omar rates it — "they're good" — but he rules it out on timing: a week, against a Thursday deadline. A rush repair appears only as the fallback if the loaners are gone. Praise for an option is not selection of it.
Why B is wrong. The library is Nadia's own suggestion, not Omar's advice, and Omar kills it with two facts: closes at six, she works until seven. This is the standard trap of crediting a proposal to the wrong speaker.
The shape that works
- Decide who has the problem in the first ten seconds. One speaker owns it; the other supplies options. Everything after that sorts itself into "problem" or "option".
- Write options as a list, not as sentences. One line each, left margin, room to the right.
- Mark the verdict, don't rewrite it. A tick, a cross, a question mark at the end of the line. Most of Part 1's content is options being eliminated, so the crosses are the plot.
- Catch the reversal. "That's no use", "don't count on", "the catch is", "actually" — these flip an option that was alive a second ago. A flipped option that you noted while it was still alive is a wrong answer waiting to happen.
- Answer, then dump. When the questions for a section are done, that section is finished. Start a clean block for the next chunk instead of adding to the old one.
- Read every option before choosing. The trap is usually the one that sounds most familiar, and familiarity is exactly what you cannot use here.
A ninety-second note page
This is all the transcript above needed. Nothing that took longer to write than to think.
NADIA - laptop dead, assign THU
file ok (email)
repair Wilson 1wk x - too slow
library x - closes 6 / works til 7
SU loaner 72h ✓ book IN PERSON 10-2
-> tmrw am (she's free)
if none -> rush repair
Seven lines, one arrow, two crosses. Notice what is not there: the deadline is "THU", not "Thursday"; nobody wrote "he thinks the repair shop is good"; nobody wrote a single full sentence. Paper and pen are provided at the test centre, so the page is not the constraint — your hand is.
Signal phrases worth training your ear on, sorted by what they do:
- Proposing: what about, have you tried, you could always, why don't you, they do X for
- Killing: that's no use, don't count on, they're booked, that won't work for, too late for
- Conditioning: the catch is, as long as, provided you, only if, they only do that between
- Choosing: I'd start with, do that first, go tomorrow, that's your best bet, in that case
The choosing phrases are the ones the answer usually sits on. The conditioning phrases are where the detail questions live — times, windows, deposits, who has to be present.
What actually costs you the mark
- Choosing an option because you heard it, not because it answers the question asked.
- Crediting a suggestion to the wrong speaker in a two-voice conversation.
- Locking in an option before the reversal that kills it.
- Writing sentences instead of lines, then spending your 30 seconds re-reading your own handwriting.
- Still thinking about section one while section two is playing.
- Forgetting the audio is single-play and waiting for a repeat that is not coming. The test also moves on by itself — "the test will automatically move forward to the next screen" — and you cannot return to a previous part.
Try one
[Try Listening Part 1 →] — one full task, marked, no card required.