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TOEIC Link Listening Part 1 — The "Is Being Done" vs "Has Been Done" Passive Trap

In TOEIC Link Part 1, the most reliable distractor is a grammatically perfect sentence that describes an action nobody is performing. "The documents are being copied" needs a visible person copying; "The documents have been copied" describes a finished state you can see. This guide shows how the present-progressive passive and present-perfect passive differ in what they require from the photo, why the ongoing-action trap catches strong listeners, and a one-question filter that eliminates it instantly.

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TOEIC Link Listening Part 1 — The "Is Being Done" vs "Has Been Done" Passive Trap

Part 1 shows you a photograph and reads four sentences; you pick the one that matches. The choices are short, the vocabulary is usually easy, and yet a specific grammatical pattern trips up even advanced listeners over and over: the passive voice. Two passive forms sound almost identical at speed but demand completely different things from the picture, and the test uses that gap deliberately. Learn to hear the difference between "is being done" and "has been done," and one whole category of distractor stops working on you.

The two passives and what each one requires

The trap lives in the contrast between the present-progressive passive and the present-perfect passive:

Present progressive passive — "The shelves are being stocked." → requires a person visibly performing the action right now.

Present perfect passive — "The shelves have been stocked." → requires only the finished result; no person needed.

"Is/are being + past participle" describes an action in progress. For it to be correct, someone in the photo must actually be doing it — a hand on the item, a body mid-motion. "Has/have been + past participle" describes a completed state. It is correct if the result is visible, whether or not anyone is present. The stocked shelves can be correct in an empty aisle; the shelves being stocked cannot.

Why this is the perfect distractor

The test writer's favorite move is to describe an object that is clearly in the photo, using the progressive passive, when no person is performing the action. The photo shows a table set with plates — no one at it. The distractor says, "The dishes are being arranged." Every word matches something you can see: dishes, arranging, a table. The only problem is the tense claims an action in progress that the photo doesn't show. Because your ear latches onto the correct nouns, the grammatical mismatch slides past — this is the same attention leak that makes pre-reading and anchoring your listening on the right cue so important: matching vocabulary is not the same as matching meaning.

The reverse trap exists too but is rarer: a photo of a worker actively painting a wall, with a distractor saying "The wall has been painted" — describing a finished state when the action is visibly still underway.

The one-question filter

When you hear any "being + past participle" sentence, ask a single question:

Is there a person in the photo actually doing that action right now?

  • Yes, a person is visibly performing it → the progressive passive can be correct. Confirm the action matches.
  • No — the object is just sitting there in its finished state → the progressive passive is wrong, no matter how well the noun matches. If anything, the perfect passive ("has been done") would fit.

This filter is fast enough to run in real time because Part 1 sentences are short. Train it until "are being..." automatically triggers a scan for a human hand in motion.

The subtler version: state verbs that only look progressive

A few sentences use "is being" with an adjective, not an action — "The room is being renovated" can be acceptable even without a person mid-swing if the photo shows an unmistakable renovation in progress (scaffolding, exposed walls, tools laid out). Here the ongoing action is evidenced by the scene, not a single actor. Distinguish this from pure action verbs (arrange, stock, pour, lift) where a live performer is mandatory. When in doubt, default to the strict rule: action verb in the progressive passive needs a visible performer.

Building the habit

Two drills make this automatic:

  1. Passive sort. Take any Part 1 photo and describe it twice — once with "is being + participle" and once with "has been + participle." Decide which one the photo actually supports. Doing this out loud teaches your ear to feel the difference between action and state.
  2. Empty-scene check. Whenever a photo has no people, pre-commit: any "are being done" choice is almost certainly a trap here. This pairs with the broader Part 1 photograph description strategy of reading the scene before the audio starts, so you already know whether a live actor is present.

The vocabulary in Part 1 is rarely what beats you. It is the two-word tense signal buried in a passive verb — being versus been — that decides whether a true-sounding sentence actually matches the picture. Hear that signal, run the person-in-motion check, and the ongoing-action distractor becomes one of the easiest eliminations on the test instead of one of the costliest.