How to Prepare for the IELTS Listening Test?
What is the IELTS listening module?
Well, IELTS is the test and one part of the test is listening. So, in the listening section, you are going to have 40 questions where you are going to listen to some conversation for about 30 minutes and then you will have 10 minutes to transfer your answer your answers over to another sheet. So, in total it’s 40 mintues, 30 minutes for each listening. In this part of IELTS is very possible to get high mark, especially if you follow some tips.
1. Write no more than three words.
What is the meaning of this? In the IELTS you have to read the instructions of what to do. Often times the instructions, before you listen, you are going to see on your question booklets. But some students don’t take care of the instructions they just start to reading the question without reading the instructions. They are nervous, stressed out when the listening section start. So if you see something like:-“write no more than three words”. You can’t write four and five words. But you can write less than three.
2. Get use to the British language
A large part of the IELTS, for the listening, you will be listening the British accent. Sometime you might hear Australian, Canadian accent. But the lot of the accents will be British. So it is very important to get used to listening to British accents. The more you practice listening with British accents; it’s easier to understand British speakers. Especially, if you are used to American English.
3. Take care of singular and plural
This is the thing which most of the students do.You have to listen carefully on whether you are writing down the plural with an “s”. Or the singular. If in the question your answer is “cats”. But someone write the “cat”. It’s incorrect. So it is important to be careful to really listen that is it singular or plural.
4. Practice test
This is probably the most obvious tip, but it’s very important to do practice tests. There are many books out of there on the IELTS that have practice test with CDs. You can listen that test for practicing. If you do more and more practice tests then your scores will be improve. Sometime, when you start practice, it will be very difficult. May be you will do it very poorly. But it’s good to keep going because practice always makes man perfect. If you do more practice, you get used to these accents and avoid spelling errors.
5. Listen read listen
For this you need to find the short audio in English of about 4 to 5 minutes and its transcript (the written text). So first of all you listen to the recording once or twice and you try to understand as much as you can then you take the transcript and you should listen to the recording again while following what’s being said on paper or on the screen if the certain moment is difficult for you the you can pause the recording.
Listen to it again when you can’t guess the meaning of certain words from the context you can check it up in the dictionary once you have done that listen to the recording again without the transcript and only use it if you encounter a moment where you still don’t understand what’s said.
6. Improve your vocabulary
The audios that will be played in the listening section will be on different concepts and factors. You must improve your vocabulary to understand this section in a better way. Read a few words every single day and use them in your conversations every day.
7. Don’t lose attention
Remember, you will only hear the audio once. So if you didn’t hear some words and passed over some questions, don’t worry! Leave them blank and focus on the actual part. Review those questions at the end of the section, otherwise, you will only miss more questions and tangle in the recording. You will need to read, write and listen all at the same time.
8. Utilize your listening time
Use this ‘spare’ time carefully to read the questions and survey the page. Get an idea of the context. Find out who is speaking, where they are and what the purpose of the conversation is. Try to predict the type of information you need, e.g. a name, a place, a point of view, etc.
Thank you :-
