The Listening section of the Cambridge Proficiency Exam tests your ability to understand a variety of spoken subjects. You are tested with another person, who you may not know at all. There are two examiners, one will ask the questions and the other listens and takes notes. There are four parts of the exam.
The first part of the exam is short recordings about a minute long. You listen to it only once and answer two multiple choice questions. In order to succeed this part of the exam, you need to listen to English, and figure out the main topic, who the speaker is, what is the purpose of the speech, and other details. There are four recordings and a total of 8 questions.
The second part of the exam is sentence completion. You listen to a lecture, or an interview of about three to four minutes long, and you have to put in the missing word. In this section you need to pick out certain information, and figure out the opinion of the main speaker in the recording. There are 9 fill in the gap questions.
The third part of the exam is a recording of three to four minutes long, usually a dialog between two people. you need to answer five multiple choice questions about the recording. In order to do well on this part of the exam, you need to listen for details, find out the opinion of one of the speakers, what is the overall subject of the recording and be able to infer what a person would do based on the information that is given.
Part four has six multiple matching questions. You will hear a dialog of three to four minutes, and during which the speakers may agree with each other, or disagree. You will have to match statements to each speaker based on the opinion that is expressed during the recording. In order to do well on this part of the exam, you need to listen to recordings of debates and practice finding out the opinion of each speaker.
Good luck on this part of the exam!
