TOEIC Link Listening — Part 1 Present-Progressive-versus-Passive Description Strategy: Telling "is opening" from "is being opened" and "has been opened"

Part 1 gives you a photograph and four spoken descriptions, and the hardest items are not the ones with hard vocabulary — they are the ones where every choice uses a word you already know, and the only difference is the verb form. The door is opening. The door is being opened. The door has been opened. Three sentences about a door, three completely different pictures. If you listen only for the noun ("door — yes, there's a door") you will fall for the trap every time, because the test-writer put the right noun in the wrong grammar. The skill Part 1 is really measuring is whether you can map each verb form to the exact situation it describes.

The three forms and the three pictures

Lock these mappings in until they are automatic, because Part 1 rotates through them constantly:

• Present progressive, active — "is opening / is walking / is stacking" → an action happening right now, done by the subject. The picture must show someone or something in the middle of doing that action. A person mid-stride, a machine currently running, a hand reaching.
• Present progressive, passive — "is being opened / is being repaired / is being loaded" → an action happening right now, done to the subject by someone. The picture must show a person actively performing that action on the object at this moment. "The boxes are being loaded" is only correct if you can see someone loading them right now.
• Present perfect, passive — "has been opened / has been stacked / has been parked" → a finished action; you see the result, not the doing. "The car has been parked" fits a photo of a stationary car with no one touching it. Nobody needs to be in the frame.

The single most common Part 1 trap is offering the passive progressive ("is being ___") for a photo that actually shows a finished state with no person acting. If no human is performing the action in the image, "is being + past participle" is almost always wrong, and "has been + past participle" is your candidate instead. This is the same "action versus completed state" discipline covered from the verb-choice angle in TOEIC Link listening Part 1 photograph action-versus-state verb trap strategy — here we push it into the passive forms specifically.

The one question that decides it: is a person acting, right now?

When you hear a passive verb in Part 1, run a two-step check:

1. Is the action being performed at this instant? If yes, look for the person performing it. No visible agent → reject "is being done."
2. Is what you see the finished result? If yes, "has been done" is your grammar.

Consider a photo of a neatly set restaurant table, no staff visible. "The table is being set" is wrong — nobody is setting it in the image. "The table has been set" is right — you see the completed result. Swap the same photo for one where a server is placing the last fork, and now "The table is being set" becomes correct while "has been set" is premature. The picture, not the vocabulary, chooses the grammar.

Why "is being done" traps so many test-takers

Two reasons. First, the passive progressive is grammatically heavier ("is being loaded" has more words), and under time pressure a longer, more sophisticated-sounding option feels safer. Second, the past participle is identical to the one in "has been done," so if you only half-hear the auxiliary you cannot tell them apart. The fix is to train your ear on the auxiliary, not the participle: the moment you hear "is being," demand a live actor; the moment you hear "has been," expect an empty-of-action result shot.

Everyday-object items follow the same rule

Part 1 does not only test people. Many items describe a scene with no one in it at all — a parking lot, a warehouse aisle, a display shelf. For these, active present progressive with an inanimate subject is often the natural correct answer for machines or vehicles in motion ("A train is approaching the platform"), while stationary objects take the perfect passive ("Merchandise has been arranged on the shelves"). If you can build fast recognition of the workplace nouns in these scenes, you free up attention for the verb form — which is exactly why cluster vocabulary practice pays off; see TOEIC Link corporate travel and business trip vocabulary cluster for the travel-scene nouns that recur in Part 1 airport and hotel photos.

A three-second decision routine

For every Part 1 choice with a passive-looking verb, do this before the next option starts:

1. Catch the auxiliary — "is being" or "has been"? (Not the participle.)
2. Scan for a live agent — someone actively doing the action in the frame?
3. Match: live agent + "is being" = keep; no agent + result visible + "has been" = keep; mismatch = eliminate.

Run this on active-progressive items too: "is + verb-ing" needs the subject genuinely mid-action. A person standing next to a bicycle is not "riding" it; a person seated at a desk is not "entering" the room. The verb must match the instant the shutter captured.

Common trap pairs to drill

The takeaway

Part 1 rarely tests whether you know the word door, box, or table. It tests whether "is opening," "is being opened," and "has been opened" call up three different pictures in your mind instantly. Train the auxiliary-first habit — hear "is being" and hunt for a live actor, hear "has been" and expect a finished result — and the items that used to feel like coin-flips become the fastest points on the listening section. Grammar, not vocabulary, is the lock; the verb form is the key.