What I Discovered After Taking the TOEIC Again for the First Time in 15 Years - My English Was Not as Rusty as I Had Thought - July 7, 2026 (Tue) Reiwa8

Today, I worked on Part 4 of the TOEIC Listening section for the first time in a long while.

Part 4 consists of short talks given by a single speaker, such as announcements, telephone messages, or explanations. After listening to each talk only once, you answer three questions about what you heard. Unlike Part 3, there is no conversation. Instead, one person speaks continuously.

The talk I studied today was a telephone message from a pharmacy.

The message explained that the customer's prescription was ready, that a larger quantity of medicine had been prepared because of an upcoming business trip, that the medicine should be kept in the refrigerator, and that identification would be needed when picking it up. Once I understood the overall situation, answering the questions became much easier.

What I realized once again was that Part 4 is not simply a test of translating words one by one. It is a test of understanding the situation and following the flow of the speaker's message.

For that reason, previewing the questions before listening is very helpful. It allows you to know what information you should listen for. I also found that imagining the situation in my mind was much more effective than translating every sentence into Japanese.

This lesson also included many practical words that are commonly used in everyday life and business, such as order, prescription, business trip, identification, and pharmacist. Learning not only their meanings but also the situations in which they are used makes them much easier to remember.

The happiest discovery today, however, was something else.

It had probably been about fifteen years since I had last solved TOEIC questions that I had never seen before.

Before starting, I thought I had forgotten most of my English. But after working through the questions, my honest impression was, "It wasn't as difficult as I expected, but it certainly wasn't easy either." It felt like just the right level of challenge.

When I was teaching English, I spent most of my time thinking about how to teach effectively and how to help my students improve their scores.

Now my perspective is different.

I am learning simply as a student again. Realizing that I could still understand much of the English, and feeling that a little more study might bring those skills back, made me genuinely happy.

Perhaps English never completely disappears, even after fifteen years.

The knowledge and experience we have built over many years seem to remain quietly within us. Once we begin learning again, they gradually wake up.

Just before my sixty-eighth birthday, I was grateful to make this small but meaningful discovery.

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