TOEIC Part 1 Photographs: Tips, Traps and the “Is Being” Rule
TOEIC Part 1 gives you 6 photographs and, for each one, 4 spoken statements that are not printed and are played only once. Most wrong statements fail in predictable ways. In eng-test.com’s 180 Part 1 practice questions, a sound-alike word or a wrong action explains two thirds of the 540 wrong statements, and “is being” was the right answer only 4 times out of 64. Here is how to use that, with four worked examples.
What is TOEIC Part 1, and how does it work?
TOEIC Part 1 is the first of the four Listening parts: 6 questions, each built on one photograph in your test book. You hear four statements, (A) to (D), and choose the one that best describes the photo. According to ETS’s official sample test, the statements are not printed and are spoken only one time.
| Part 1 at a glance | Detail |
|---|---|
| Questions | 6 (of the 100 Listening questions) |
| What you see | One photograph per question; nothing else is printed |
| What you hear | 4 statements, (A)–(D), spoken once |
| Time to answer | 5 seconds after the fourth statement (ETS sample test script) |
| Speakers | American, British, Canadian and Australian voices |
| Older format | 10 questions, before ETS updated the test |
The details above come from the ETS sample test and its audio script and the IIBC format page, published by ETS’s partner in Japan. The older-format row comes from ETS’s 2017 document describing the updated test, which cut Part 1 from 10 questions to 6, so a book or free PDF with 10 photographs follows the old layout. For the layout of the whole exam, see the TOEIC test guide.
Six questions is not many, but each one counts toward your Listening raw score exactly as a Part 3 question does. If you are working toward a target, the TOEIC score guide explains what different Listening scores mean.
What traps do the wrong statements use?
Mostly two: a word that sounds like something in the photo, and an action nobody is doing. eng-test.com labelled every one of the 540 wrong statements in its 180 Part 1 practice questions. Sound-alikes account for 181 and wrong actions for 176, so together they explain 357 of the 540, about two thirds.
| Trap (eng-test label) | Wrong statements | Share | What it sounds like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sound-alike word | 181 | 33.5% | The photo has a cart; the statement says “card” |
| Wrong action | 176 | 32.6% | Right person, right objects, wrong verb: “putting on” a helmet she is already wearing |
| Being/been mix-up | 61 | 11.3% | “Chairs are being stacked” when the chairs are stacked and no one is there |
| Wrong location | 48 | 8.9% | A real object in the wrong place: a lamp “on the floor” that stands on a desk |
| Not in the photo | 45 | 8.3% | Names a person or object you cannot see |
| Wrong subject | 26 | 4.8% | The action is happening, but someone else is doing it |
| Wrong object | 3 | 0.6% | Right action, wrong thing |
These are labels eng-test.com wrote while building its own practice bank to the TOEIC format, not ETS statistics. They still describe the habit that matters: a wrong statement usually borrows something real from the photo, such as a sound, a person or an object, and attaches one false detail. Listen for the false detail rather than for familiar words.
Sound-alike pairs that appear in the bank include:
- mouse / mouth
- pitcher / picture
- cart / card
- deck / desk
- washing / watching
- sitting / knitting
- pavement / payment
- plant / plane
- rack / rock
- suitcase / staircase
A quick test: if a statement contains a word for something you can see in the photo, check the verb and the place before you accept it. Familiar nouns are exactly what sound-alike and wrong-action traps are built from.
Is “is being” ever the right answer in Part 1?
Rarely. It needs an action happening at that moment, which almost always means a person in the photo doing it. In eng-test.com’s 180 Part 1 questions, “is/are being” plus a past participle appears in 64 of the 720 statements and is correct only 4 times, all in photos where people are visibly handling the object.
The other 60 are wrong, and 57 of them describe photos with no people in them at all.
The reason is grammatical, not a quirk of the test. “The chairs are being stacked” is the passive form of the present continuous: it says someone is stacking them at this moment. A photo of neatly stacked chairs in an empty hall shows a result, and the form that describes a visible result is “have been stacked”. For the full grammar, see the TOEIC passive voice guide.
| Statement | What it claims | Right when… |
|---|---|---|
| The chairs are being stacked. | Someone is stacking them now | A person in the photo is stacking them |
| The chairs have been stacked. | The stacking is finished and you can see the result | The chairs are stacked, with or without people |
| Someone is stacking the chairs. | Active: a person is doing it now | A person in the photo is stacking them |
| The chairs are stacked. | Describes their state | The chairs are stacked |
Quick rule: no person, no “being”. If the photo has no people and a statement uses “is being” or “are being”, eliminate it; in eng-test.com’s bank that rule was right 57 times out of 57. One wording to judge on meaning: “display” can describe an ongoing arrangement, so “Some goods are being displayed” can fit a shop window with no one in it.
What do you hear when the photo has no people?
Usually a finished state. Of the 58 photos with no people in eng-test.com’s Part 1 bank, 38 have a “has/have been + past participle” statement as the answer, such as “Some boxes have been stacked by a door”. Another 13 use a simple-present position verb such as runs, leads or overlooks.
The remaining 7 describe a state or scene without a person: water flowing, something hanging, a vehicle parked. Photos with people work the other way: 117 of the 122 answers are a plain present continuous such as “She’s pointing at a screen”.
| Photo shows | Answers in eng-test’s bank | Typical correct form |
|---|---|---|
| No people (58 photos) | 38 “has/have been + past participle”, 13 position verbs, 7 other states | Some cups have been arranged on a tray. / A path leads to a gate. |
| One person (61 photos) | 61 present continuous | She’s reading a menu. |
| Two people or a group (61 photos) | 56 present continuous, 4 “is being”, 1 state | They’re shaking hands. |
Do not treat “has been” as a safe answer, though. The same bank contains 133 “has/have been” statements, and only 38 are correct. The wrong ones mostly use a sound-alike noun (39), put a real object in the wrong place (30) or name something that is not there (23). Grammar narrows the field; the noun and the location decide it.
If “has been placed” still feels odd as a description of a photo, present perfect vs past simple explains why English uses the present perfect for a result you can see now.
How should you use the seconds around each photo?
Use the directions to preview, and use the 5 seconds to decide, not to reconsider. In ETS’s sample test script, the narrator reads the Part 1 directions and a worked example before question 1, then allows 5 seconds after the fourth statement of each question. After that pause the next photo starts.
- While the directions play, look at the photos, not at the instructions. The directions are standard; read them once in ETS’s sample test before test day.
- For each photo, name four things in your head: who is in it (or that nobody is), the action, the main objects and the place. If there are no people, switch your ear to state forms such as has been, is parked and leads to.
- Keep your pencil moving down (A) to (D) and judge each statement as it ends: right, wrong or maybe. Do not wait for all four before judging the first.
- If two statements seem possible, look for the one false detail: a verb, a place or a sound-alike noun. The statement that has one is out.
- Mark your choice inside the 5 seconds and move to the next photo. If you missed a statement, guess and move on; a blank earns nothing, and a wrong answer costs nothing.
After question 6, the Part 2 directions play and Part 2 begins, with no pictures at all and only three spoken responses per question. The habit of looking at the page has to stop there.
What do TOEIC Part 1 sample questions look like?
One photo and four short spoken statements, of which only one matches the photo exactly. Below are 4 new practice questions written for this article in that format. On the real test you see only the photo and hear the statements once; here each photo is described in words. Choose (A) to (D), then check the explanation.
Question 1: a building site
Photo: A woman wearing a hard hat stands at a table on a building site, studying a large set of plans spread flat in front of her.
- (A) She’s folding up some plans.
- (B) She’s examining a drawing.
- (C) She’s putting on a hard hat.
- (D) A table is being carried across the site.
Answer: (B). (A) repeats “plans” but is a wrong action: the plans are spread out flat, not being folded. (C) is the classic Part 1 trap: she is already wearing the hat, and “putting on” describes the act of getting it on, which she is not doing. (D) uses “is being” when nobody is carrying anything.
Question 2: an empty meeting room
Photo: An empty meeting room. Chairs are pushed in around a long table, a row of water bottles stands in the middle of the table, and the projector screen at the far end is down.
- (A) Some chairs are being pushed under the table.
- (B) Some bottles have been knocked over.
- (C) A screen has been lowered at the end of the room.
- (D) Some people are attending a meeting.
Answer: (C). (A) uses “are being” in a room with no people, so it fails at once. (B) has the right grammar but the wrong detail: the bottles are standing upright in a row. (D) names people who are not in the photo. (C) describes a visible result with “has been”, the form most no-people answers take in eng-test.com’s bank.
Question 3: a hallway notice board
Photo: In a school hallway, a woman holds a printed sheet flat against a cork board while a man pushes thumbtacks into its corners.
- (A) They’re boarding a bus.
- (B) Some flyers are being thrown away.
- (C) A notice is being put up.
- (D) The man is erasing a message.
Answer: (C). This is the rare case where “is being” is right, because the two people in the photo are putting the sheet up at that moment. (A) borrows “board” from the cork board, but there is no bus. (B) uses “being” for an action nobody is doing. (D) is a wrong action: the man is pressing in thumbtacks, not erasing anything.
Question 4: a lake
Photo: A narrow wooden pier stretches out into a calm lake. A small rowing boat is tied to the end of the pier. There is nobody in the picture.
- (A) A boat is being rowed across the lake.
- (B) A pier extends out over the water.
- (C) Some boats have been pulled onto a beach.
- (D) A rake is leaning against a fence.
Answer: (B). Position verbs such as extends, leads, runs along and overlooks are a common way to describe a scene with no people; 13 of the 58 no-people answers in eng-test.com’s bank use one. (A) uses “being” when no one is rowing. (C) has the right grammar but the wrong place: the boat is tied to the pier. (D) swaps “lake” for the sound-alike “rake” and names something that is not there.
Which words and phrases come up most in Part 1?
Handling and looking verbs for people, finished-state passives for objects, and a small set of position phrases for scenes. Among the 122 present-continuous answers in eng-test.com’s Part 1 bank, the most common verb is “holding”, used 9 times; most of the rest are everyday actions such as putting, looking, using and pointing.
| What the photo shows | Phrases to know | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Someone handling something | holding, carrying, reaching for, handing, placing, lifting | “putting on” (an action) vs “wearing” (a state) |
| Someone looking or using | looking at, examining, pointing at, typing on, using, reading | a sound-alike object: desk / deck, cart / card |
| Objects, no people | have been stacked / arranged / placed / lined up / left; is parked | “are being stacked” with nobody stacking |
| A scene or landscape | runs along, leads to, overlooks, stands beside, hangs from | a real object in the wrong place |
| Where things are | next to, beside, in front of, behind, across from, along, above | in vs on, in front of vs behind |
Part 1 rewards everyday physical verbs more than business vocabulary, so if your word study has been all invoices and contracts, add these. The TOEIC vocabulary list covers the workplace words that dominate the rest of the test, and the guide to the 12 English tenses explains the present continuous behind most Part 1 answers.
How should you practise TOEIC Part 1?
In sets of 6, the same size as the real Part 1, and with the review taking longer than the listening. eng-test.com has 180 Part 1 practice questions in 30 sets of 6, each with recorded audio and an explanation in English and Thai. Review is where the traps above turn into habits.
- Do one set of 6 without pausing, the way the test plays it. eng-test allows 2 plays per question, but play each recording once first, as on the real test, and keep the second play for checking what you missed.
- Before checking answers, write down which word or detail made you choose each answer.
- For every wrong statement you nearly picked, name the trap: sound-alike, wrong action, “being” for a finished state, wrong place or not in the photo.
- Say the correct statement aloud while looking at the photo. Part 1 answers are short, and repeating them builds the verb-plus-object chunks you need to catch at speed.
- Keep a list of your own sound-alike pairs. The pairs that catch you are personal, and they come back.
Practice is free with an eng-test.com account; start from the home page. The site covers Listening Parts 1 to 3, plus the Reading section with more than 20,000 questions. After Part 1, move on to Part 2, where nothing is printed at all, and then to Part 3 conversations, which add printed questions and graphics.
Frequently asked questions
How many questions are in TOEIC Part 1?
- Six. Each one shows a photograph and plays four statements, (A) to (D), once. ETS cut Part 1 from 10 questions to 6 when it updated the test format, so older materials with 10 photos follow the old layout.
Are the Part 1 statements printed in the test book?
- No. Only the photograph is printed. ETS’s sample test says the statements will not be printed and will be spoken only one time, so you have to judge each statement from memory as soon as it ends.
Can “is being” be the correct answer in TOEIC Part 1?
- Usually only when a person in the photo is doing the action, as in “A notice is being put up.” In eng-test.com’s 180 practice questions it was correct 4 times out of 64. One wording to judge on meaning: “display” can describe an ongoing arrangement, so “Some goods are being displayed” can fit a shop window with no one in it.
How long do you have to answer each Part 1 question?
- About 5 seconds after the fourth statement. That is the pause ETS’s sample test script shows after each Part 1 question before the narrator moves to the next picture. Mark an answer inside the pause, even if it is a guess.
What should I do if I miss one of the four statements in Part 1?
- Decide between the statements you did hear. If the three you heard are all clearly wrong, the one you missed must be the answer, so choose that letter. Never leave it blank, and never let it eat into the preview time for the next photo.