LISTENING TEST OVERVIEW

This material will help you prepare for the IELTS listening test by familiarising you with
summary completion questions, giving you some tips and a chance to practice.

The IELTS listening test is the same for both those taking the Academic and
General Training papers.

It consists of 40 questions (10 per section) and lasts around 30 minutes. You will
have 10 minutes at the end to transfer your answers from the question paper
to the answer sheet.

10 MINUTES

To TRANSFER

TEST BOOKLET ANSWER SHEET

IELTS LISTENING TEST SECTIONS

The IELTS listening test is divided into four sections and the sections get
increasingly difficult. In other words part one is the easiest and part four is the most
difficult. Each part has a different theme or focus. You only hear each section one
time

 In section 1 you will hear a conversation between two people and it is almost
always someone making an appointment or making a booking of some kind
(e.g. making a hotel reservation or hiring a car). The questions are normally
gap-fill questions in which you have to listen to the information and complete
a form or sentence.

EXAMPLE :

 In section 2 you will hear someone talking by themselves about a non-

academic subject (e.g. TV or radio presenter).

EXAMPLE:

 Section 3 switches to an academic context and it will always be more than

one person discussing something (e.g. an academic paper or assignment).

EXAMPLE:
 Section 4 is normally an academic lecture and you will hear one person
(normally the lecturer or professor) talking for an extended period of time.

You will be given a short amount of time (approximately 30 seconds) between

each section and you should use this time to look at the questions coming up.

There are several different types of question and each requires a different strategy
so you should familarise yourself with all of them. They include:

 Form/note/table completion
 Labeling a diagram or map
 Sentence Completion
 Short Answers
 Selection
 Multiple Choice
 Matching
LISTENING TIPS

1. NUMBER OF SPEAKERS.

You need to learn listening both to one person speaking ( a monologue) and more than
one person speaking at the same time. Listening to Monologues are considered
challenging as the person doesn’t often stop speaking for very long so you might get
overwhelmed with information. Listening to more than one person can be difficult
because there may be different styles of speaking or accent and it can be tricky to “tune-
in” to what is being said.

2. SPELLING.

Be very careful with your spelling. Lots of easy marks are thrown away because of poor
spelling. The advice is to keep a notebook of words you find difficult to spell. Even
native speakers have a hard time with some English words, so the only way is to record
and learn. Both US and UK spelling are allowed in the listening test.

3. SHORT BREAKS.

You will be given a short break (normally around 30-40 seconds) before each section
and in the middle of sections 1, 2 and 3.

DO NOT USE THIS BREAK to CHECK YOUR ANSWERS FROM THE PREVIOUS
SECTION.

USE THE SHORT BREAK TO LOOK AT THE QUESTIONS IN THE NEXT

SECTION AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND THE QUESTION AND PREDICT THE
ANSWER COMING NEXT. When you predict try to think about the context of the
question. Can you guess the answer? For example, if there is a ‘$’ in front of the answer,
you will probably be listening for an amount of money. Also, establish what type of word
(adjective, noun, verb etc.) the answer will be.

4. 10 MINUTES TO TRANSFER YOUR ANSWERS.

At the end you will be given 10 minutes to transfer your answers to the answer sheet.
When you are doing this make sure you are very careful with spelling and make sure
your answers are correct grammatically.

For example, if the question was ‘The man wanted to ______ a ______ car.’ the answers
are likely to be a verb and then an adjective. If your answers are not grammatically
correct or spelled incorrectly, then they will be marked as wrong.
5. CAPITAL LETTERS.

Be careful with capital letters. If your word is someone’s name or a place, then it must
have a capital letter to be correct.

6. WORD LIMIT.

Make sure you follow the instructions carefully especially when it comes to word limit.
If the question states ‘No more than three words’ you can’t write any more than this. If
your answer is four words for this answer it will be incorrect.

7. DIFFERENT ACCENTS.

A range of accents are used to reflect the international nature of English. These could be
from anywhere in the English-speaking world, including the US, Canada, South Africa,
New Zealand, Ireland or Australia. You could also hear one of many regional accents
from the UK. You should therefore try to get used to all of these different accents. Instead
of just listening to the BBC News, you could try listening to the news, or anything else
for that matter, from a range of different countries. A quick search on Google is all you
need to find these.

8. BE FAMILIARISED WITH DIFFERENT TYPES OF TEST QUESTIONS.

It is important to familiarise yourself with the different types of test questions and
practice IELTS past papers. When you practice these tests it should be under exam
conditions, but then it is important to find out why you got certain questions wrong.
Focusing on your mistakes is very important. You should listen again and again until
you find out why you got the question wrong, don’t just look at the answers and forget
about them. If you do this you will not improve very quickly. You can also look at the
transcripts and find out where you went wrong by reading.

9. WATCH/LISTEN TO ENGLISH NEWS EVERDAY.

You should also remember that this is a test of your general level of English , so you
should listen to not only IELTS, but everything you can in English. In general, those who
do the best on the listening test are those who have practiced listening in English the
most. The best candidates listen to English a little every day.
10. FOCUS and DO NOT WORRY.

Focus on getting the easy questions correct first before worrying about the more difficult
questions. Anyone hoping to do well on the IELTS listening test should be getting 10
out of 10 on the first part of the test. Make sure you can do this consistently in the first
part before worrying about the other parts, especially part four.

11. DO NOT GET TRICKED.

Make sure you don’t get tricked. IELTS listening tests will often try to fool you by giving
you something that seems like the correct answer first and then changing this to
something else later in the recording.

For example, your questions might be ‘The man would like a ______ car.’ At the start
of the recording the person might say they want a ‘big family car’, but then change their
minds and say they want a ‘small sports car’. If you wrote down the first option you
would be wrong.

12. GET USED TO LISTENING TO THINGS ONLY ONCE.

You have to get used to listening to things only once. Lots of teachers allow their students
to listen to a recording three or four times. You can of course listen again and again when
analysing your mistakes, but when practicing the exam you should do it under exam
conditions and that means listening just once.

13. WRITE LEGIBLY.

Do you have messy handwriting? Lots of people do, don’t worry. In the listening test
you should write your answers in all capital letters if your writing is messy.

14. DO NOT FORGET YOUR ERASER.

Remember to bring an eraser. You will have to write your answers in pencil, so make
sure you can change any notes or answers using an eraser.

15. MORE THAN JUST LISTENING

It’s not just a listening test; it’s an understanding, reading, writing, vocabulary and
spelling test. Make sure you practice all of these skills under exam conditions.
16. TAKE NOTE OF THE ANSWERS AS YOU GO. USE QUESTION PAPER as
your scratch pad.

Write your answers on the question paper as you do the test. A lot of students try to
remember all of the answers and then use their memory to fill out the answer sheet. You
are under enough pressure without making it a memory test on top of everything else.
Keep it simple and note down the answers as you go.

17. SHORT HAND.

Practice your short hand. Short hand is when you write a shortened version of a word.
For example, you might write aprox. for approximately or Ensh. for English. This will
help you save time in the exam. Often two answers will come in a very short space of
time, if you are busy writing a long word instead of listening, you might miss it.
Shorthand is a very personal thing, so do whatever suits you.

18. CONCENTRATION - VERY IMPORTANT.

Concentration is key in the listening test. It is totally normally to lose concentration and
most people find it difficult to concentrate for the complete 30 minutes. To improve your
concentration you need to practice active listening. Active listening involves setting
yourself small tasks when you are practicing and actually doing something when you are
listening, just like you will be in the IELTS listening exam.

19. AVOID LEAVING ANY BLANK SPACES.

Don’t leave any blank spaces. This might seem very obvious, but you wouldn’t believe
how many students do this. You are not penalized for wrong answers so you should
always have a guess.

20. CONTEXT CLUE

Before each section you will be given information about the speaker and what they will
be talking about. You won’t be tested on this, but it will help you answer the questions
that follow by understanding the context.