Listening 13–16 Choosing What Matches What You Heard

Listening · Medium

A must-secure target. Reading the options ahead of time boosts your accuracy sharply.

In items 13–16 you listen once to a somewhat longer piece of discourse — an announcement or a two-person dialogue — and choose from four options the sentence that matches its content. As with earlier types, catching just one key word won't solve it; here you need to remember precise details like numbers, times, reasons, and conditions. As the discourse grows longer, the amount of information you need to remember grows too, so the felt difficulty steps up a notch from here. The decisive moment in this type comes before the audio even starts. Since the four options are already printed on the test paper, scanning them beforehand tells you exactly what to listen for. If the numbers or days of the week differ across the options, that's exactly where the trap lies; if the expressions of reason differ across the options, that's a signal you need to listen closely for the cause-and-effect relationship. Wrong answers are mostly not made up out of thin air — they take what was actually said and slightly alter a number, an order, or a reason. For example, the actual content might be '행사가 이번 주까지' (the event runs through this week), while the option changes it to '다음 주까지' (through next week). Wrong answers that blend the two speakers' lines so one person seems to have said what the other did, or that flip '연기' (postponed) into '취소' (canceled), or '무료' (free) into '유료' (paid), also come up often. So don't just remember the overall mood or topic — build the habit of checking, one by one, whether the numbers, times, and reasons written in the options exactly match the actual audio. In particular, expressions with opposite meanings like '그대로' (unchanged) and '바뀌었다' (changed) often appear together, so sorting out item by item what changed and what stayed the same is the surest way to cut down on mistakes.

Choosing What Matches What You Heard

• 수치·날짜 바꿔치기 — Wrong answers are made by slightly altering a number, day of the week, or time from the actual content. You need to check each figure you heard against the options one by one.
• 정반대로 뒤집기 — Wrong answers are made by flipping the meaning to its opposite — free ↔ paid, prohibited ↔ allowed, increase ↔ decrease.
• 화자 뒤바꾸기 — In a two-person dialogue, something one person said is made to look like the other person said it. You need to check who actually said it.
• 유사 어휘로 슬쩍 교체 — Confuses you by swapping in a similar-sounding word with a different meaning, like 연기 (postponed) for 취소 (canceled), or 인상 (raised) for 유지 (kept the same).
• 조건 누락·왜곡 — Something that actually applies only under a specific condition (a time slot, a particular group) is rewritten as if it applied to everyone, unconditionally.
• 순서 뒤바꾸기 — Wrong answers are made by swapping the order of what happened first and what happened later.
• 이유 바꿔치기 — Wrong answers attach a plausible-sounding reason that differs from the actual one. You need to check exactly what comes before and after '그래서/때문에' (so / because).
• 부분만 언급하고 전체인 것처럼 서술 — Wrong answers are made by expanding something that applies only to part of a group as if it applied to everyone.
• 정도를 과장·축소 — Distorts the degree — turning '50% off' into 'completely free', or 'decreased a little' into 'decreased a lot'.
• 시점 착오(이미 일어난 일 ↔ 예정된 일) — Wrong answers are made by turning something scheduled but not yet happened into something already finished, or the reverse.

• Numbers, days of the week, or time expressions that differ across the options
• Expressions that link cause and effect ('그래서', '때문에')
• Points where the two speakers' lines seem to blend together

• Before the audio starts, read the four options first and identify what to check for (numbers, reasons, conditions).
• As you listen, mark right away any point (number, order, reason) that differs from an option.
• Check the speaker too — who actually said it.
• Narrow down to the one option among the four whose details match completely.

• Mistaking an option that changes just one number or date from the actual content for the answer
• Picking an option that mixes up one speaker's line as if the other speaker said it

From here, checking fine detail against the options is required, so the difficulty rises. Build the habit of reading the options beforehand, and this is a stretch you can still secure.