Prepositions and TOEFL Speaking 2026 Listen & Repeat Task

The new TOEFL Speaking 2026 format introduces a challenge many test-takers underestimate: the Listen & Repeat task.

On the surface, it feels simple. You hear a short announcement, instruction, or public notice. You repeat it. No opinions. No structure. No templates.

But under the hood, this task is ruthless.

Small pronunciation errors now matter more than ever, especially on prepositions.

Short words like for, from, at, and with carry almost no stress, yet they hold the structure of the sentence together. When they disappear, merge, or lose final consonants, SpeechRater struggles to align your speech with the reference audio. That is where scores quietly leak.

This post breaks down:

Which prepositions appear most often in Listen & Repeat tasks
Why they are high-risk for intelligibility
How SpeechRater evaluates them
What you should practice if you want clean, reliable scores

The Nature of the Listen & Repeat Task (ETS Perspective)

According to ETS, the Listen & Repeat task measures:

Speech clarity
Pronunciation accuracy
Prosodic control (timing, rhythm, stress)
Ability to reproduce spoken English in real-world contexts

The input texts are not academic lectures. They are:

Airport announcements
Campus instructions
Security notices
Public service messages

These contexts are dense with prepositions.

If your vowels are decent but your prepositions collapse, your response sounds incomplete to the scoring engine, even if a human listener can guess your meaning.

High-Frequency Prepositions in Listen & Repeat Tasks

Below is a clean, practical list of prepositions that repeatedly appear in ETS-style Listen & Repeat prompts, especially in announcements and instructions.

Core Location and Direction

Preposition	Typical Context	Common Pronunciation Risk
to	Directions, destinations	Over-reduction, vowel deletion
from	Origins, departures	Dropped final /m/
in	Locations, containers	Nasal deletion
on	Surfaces, schedules	Weak vowel
at	Specific points	Dropped /t/
into	Movement	Boundary collapse
onto	Movement	Stress misplacement
near	Proximity	Vowel distortion
inside	Enclosed spaces	Stress flattening
outside	External areas	Reduced second syllable
around	General area	Diphthong reduction
between	Two reference points	Missing medial /t/

Process and Instruction Language

Preposition	Instructional Use	Common Risk
for	Purpose	Dropped final /r/
with	Accompaniment	Missing /θ/
without	Exclusion	Cluster simplification
before	Sequence	Weak initial stress
after	Sequence	Flap confusion
during	Time span	Reduced second syllable
until	End point	Final /l/ deletion

Institutional and Public-Use Language

Preposition	Example Context	Risk
by	By security, by the desk	Diphthong flattening
through	Through security	Dental fricative loss
across	Across the street	Final /s/ deletion
along	Along the hallway	Velar nasal loss

Compound Prepositions (Highest Risk)

These are high-risk for intelligibility because they combine multiple unstressed words and rely on clean word boundaries.

Compound	Why It’s Dangerous
out of	Often collapses into a single vowel sound
next to	Consonant clusters blur
in front of	Multiple weak syllables
instead of	Stress misplacement
because of	Function word overload
according to	Reduced internal clarity

Why These Matter for SpeechRater

SpeechRater aligns your audio against a reference using timing, phonetic likelihoods, and word boundaries.

Prepositions create problems because they are:

Short
Unstressed (usually)
Structurally critical

When final consonants disappear in for, with, from, or at, three things happen:

Word boundary collapse
SpeechRater struggles to detect where one word ends and the next begins.
Transcript–reference mismatch
Missing or merged words reduce alignment confidence.
Intelligibility penalties
Even with good fluency, clarity scores fall.

This is why Listen & Repeat is not a memory task. It is a precision task.

How to Practice Prepositions for Listen & Repeat

Effective practice looks boring and technical, because it is.

You should:

Isolate prepositions from full prompts
Over-articulate final consonants during practice
Record and replay short segments
Check whether each preposition is audible without context

A useful rule:
If someone reading your transcript would miss the preposition, SpeechRater already did.

FAQ: Listen & Repeat, Prepositions, and TOEFL Speaking 2026

Are prepositions really that important for TOEFL Speaking 2026?

Yes. In the Listen & Repeat task, missing a preposition often causes a larger scoring penalty than mispronouncing a content word.

Does SpeechRater penalize reduced speech?

No. Natural reduction is expected. The problem is deletion, not reduction. Final consonants must still be detectable.

Is this task testing grammar?

Indirectly. It tests structural intelligibility, not grammatical knowledge.

Will native speakers score perfectly on this task?

Not necessarily. Native speakers often reduce too aggressively, which can hurt alignment.

Should I slow down to pronounce prepositions?

Slightly, during practice. On test day, aim for clarity, not speed.

Final Takeaway

The Listen & Repeat task in TOEFL Speaking 2026 rewards speakers who control small details.

Prepositions are invisible when done well and disastrous when ignored.

If you want reliable scores from SpeechRater, train the words that carry structure, not meaning.

That is where most points are quietly won or lost.

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