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Listening Guidance - IELTS

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 IELTS Listening Guidance – DM Consultants

1. All students take the same test. Both academic and GT students take the same
listening test. It is marked in the same way
2. There are 40 questions
3. There are 4 sections
1. Section 1 = two speakers. This is often a telephone conversation between
two people, for example organizing a place on a course, booking a table at
a restaurant or renting an apartment. You must listen for specific
information, such as names (tips on listening for names), dates, times (tips
on listening for time), places and numbers.
2. Section 2 = one speaker. This is often a talk from a guide. You might hear
information about a building, a resort, a company, a charity etc
3. Section 3 = three or four speakers. This is an academic discussion. It
could either be two students talking with a professor or a student
presenting their resource to their colleagues
4. Section 4 = one speaker. This is an academic lecture.
4. The sections get more difficult as the test progresses. This means section 1 is
the easiest and section 4 is the most difficult.
5. The listening test is 40 minutes
6. 30 minutes to listen to the recording and write down your answer on the
question paper
7. 10 minutes to transfer your answers from the question paper to the answer
sheet.
8. IELTS is an international test. There will be a range of accents but the main
accents will probably be British and Australian
9. IELTS accept either British English or American English spelling

Types of Questions that you will be asked

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

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 Section 1

This IS THE EASIEST of all the sections – information will not only be provided, but
will also be very clear and will also be repeated . In this section, generally you need
to record information in terms of Time, place, figures, names or Spellings.

In this part it is best to see the questions first.

Make notes – Make notes as per your understanding. The first word that may seem
like the answer may not be the answer . Listen carefully – Though in this section
generally the information is fairly obvious.

Section 2

Section 2- is obviously a little tougher than section 1 here information might be given
indirectly , or sometimes deliberately with reversals and twists and turns.

The first word heard is not the answer always. Listen to the entire information. The
actual information lies in the later part of the conversation.

Words / Expressions to mislead become:

 Well….Not exactly …. In fact …. Actually …

 Sometimes double negations are used for positive statements
 Numbers / number of words
 Segregating the word which is the answer from the phrase

Section 3

Section 3 – It is definitely more difficult than the other two sections. This is the
section for you to interpret the information. Make notes, interpret information and
carefully note down.

Listening carefully – Do not be in a hurry, listen to the entire conversation. Listen

carefully, for the key words . This section and section four is about vocabulary and
Phrases.

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Section 4

Section 4 the final section is also the most difficult section for listening . Section 4 –
Vocabulary and discussion is terse , advanced in level . These discussions are
generally academic in nature .

Help- listening to documentaries / talks / lectures / Speeches / News

It also helps to read and enhance awareness

Listening Section 4 specially requires the help of a a teacher to listen and

focus on key words.

With a teacher it helps to listen to the teacher talk at length and then interpret.

How to practice

Be an Active listener and not a a passive listener.

Practice for listening always has to be practical.
The Guides and books help and also practice tests available over the Internet help
you.

Challenges for listening:

 Missing out on information

 Misinterpretation
 Not listening to the entire information
 Phrases and expressions
 Number of words
 Key word
 Grammatically correct expression
 Hand writing – Since hand writing poses such issues it is often advised to
write in Capitals
 Confusing words- Vocabulary
 Spellings

Note Making – Taking notes while listening is the key to listening test . Make notes
while listening in accordance with the questions

Grammar Notes

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Grammar matters and yes it matters in listening as much as in any other
section. It matters when we are interpreting information and it also matters
when we are putting down our answers.

The areas of special emphasis become:

 Tenses
 Plurals
 Prefixes and suffixes
 Homophones and antonyms
 Adjectives and Adverbs
 Prepositions
 Phrases
 Idioms
 Phrasal verbs
 Phrasal expressions

Spellings

Spellings is a major concern and major reason for lowered band scores . Improving
spellings is not just by practice but also knowing

Spelling rules
Homophones
Prefixes and suffixes
Phonetic structure of English Language

*Both American and British spellings are accepted in IELTS

ADVICE

There is so much that can be said about practice ; about scoring and about
interpreting and recording answers . Yet some relevant advice is given.

1. You will have to practice listening to both one person speaking (a monologue)
and more than one person speaking at the same time. Listening to
monologues is challenging because the person doesn’t often stop speaking
for very long so students can feel like they are being overwhelmed. Listening
to more than one person can be difficult because there may be different
accents or styles of speaking and it is tricky to ‘tune-in’ to what is being said.
For lots of free practice activities for both monologues and more than one
person talking,

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 2. Be careful with your spelling. Lots of easy marks are thrown away because of
poor spelling. My 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. 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. You should NOT use this time
to check your answers from the previous section. You should look at the
questions in the next section and try to understand the questions and predict
the answers 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
 It also helps to have instructors who can help you with Accents . Interacting
with people of different nationalities helps as well.

8. It is important to familiarize 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

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 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. I did just say that you should practice past papers, however 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 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. 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. 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 analyzing your mistakes, but when practicing the
exam you should do it under exam conditions and that means listening just
once.

13. 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. 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. 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.

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 16. Write your answers on the question paper as you do the test. I know lots of
students who don’t do this and 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. Practice your own short note making methods .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 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. 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. 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 content

Final Advice

As you listen, write your answers on the question paper. At the end of the test, you
will have 10 minutes to transfer your answers to the Answer Sheet in pencil. You
may write your answers in lower case or capital letters.
It is essential that you transfer your answers to the answer sheet. Nothing you write
on the question paper will be marked.

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Make the most of your Listening test:

 if you cannot hear the audio clearly, let a member of staff know straightaway
 follow the instructions carefully; they may be different to practice or previous
tests
 listen for the specific information you want
 try and anticipate what the speaker will say; this will require concentration
 do not worry if there is a word you do not understand; you may not need to
use it

 if you do not know the answer to a question, attempt it but do not waste time;
move quickly onto the next one
 be careful with your spelling and grammar
 do not panic if you think the topic is too difficult or the speaker is too fast; relax
and tune in
 read, write and listen at the same time
 focus precisely on what you are asked to do in completion type questions
 pay attention to the word limit; for example, if you are asked to complete a
sentence using no more than two words, if the correct answer is ‘leather coat’,
the answer ‘coat made of leather’ would be incorrect
 if the question asks you to complete the note ‘in the…’ and the correct answer
is ‘morning’, note that ‘in the morning’ would be incorrect; the correct answer
is 'morning'
 attempt all questions; there are no penalties for incorrect answers
 check your answers

Sample Sheet

Familiarize yourself with the type of answer sheet used in the IELTS Listening test so
that you know what to expect.

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 Example Listening test answer sheet

Practice TEST

** In the Classroom

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