IELTS Listening Tips
Hello again! Today in this post I am going to give you my top IELTS listening tips.
In the IELTS listening section you are going to hear 40 questions. You will have 30 minutes to listen and 10 minutes to write down your answers, so in total you have 40 minutes during the IELTS listening section.
If you follow my tips you will be better able to achieve the score you desire in this IELTS section
1. Follow the instructions carefully
One common mistake students make while taking the IELTS test is they don’t follow the instructions carefully. If the question asks you to write no more than three words, don’t write four words. You can write two or three words but no more than is instructed. Whatever the instructions say make sure you follow them exactly as stated.
2. Become accustomed to the British accent
The vast majority of the IELTS listening is with British accents. You will come across both Australian and Canadian accents, however the largest percentage will be British. I recommend that you visit the Breaking News English website. The reason I highly recommend this site is because there is a large range of listening tracks based on news events. You can listen to the news event in five different speeds. I always ask my students to do at least three listening comprehension exercises from this website every day.
3. Spelling is very important
The IELTS listening also includes other skills such as writing and reading. So you must practice spelling. One way to improve your spelling is to once again go to the breaking news English website and listen to the tracks while dictating.
4. Differentiate between plural and singular
One area students lose marks in is the ability to differentiate between a plural noun and a singular one. If the answer is “issues” and you write down “issue” then your answer will be wrong. Listen very carefully and differentiate between plural and singular nouns.
5. Take many practice tests
I know this is obvious, however I cannot stress enough that you must practice, practice and practice. While it may seem difficult at first, the more you practice the more familiar you will be with the British, Australian and Canadian accents. There are so many IELTS books that you can practice from. However if you are reading this and you don’t have enough IELTS material, send me a quick email matthew@english-today-jakarta.com and I will send you one free of charge.
6. Make predictions
Whenever you get the chance to read ahead in the IELTS listening section try to predict what the answer is going to be. To give you an example, if the question is “the man will talk about……….” You can prepare your focus to quickly identify the topic that the man is going to talk about. This gives you an advantage over not preparing for the next question in advance and to get a high score it is all about increasing your chances.
Another area where you can make predictions in is the fill in in blank questions. You can guess whether or not the answer will be a noun, an adjective, adverb or verb.
The question might say “He has four__________.
Now while you might not know the answer to this question you are going to know that the answer is a noun.
