IELTS listening

[Chammanju]

It is very dificult to achieve the required band of 7 for IELTS listening. How can I improve?

[ESL Tutor]

The best way to improve your listening score is to practice. When doing IELTS coaching, I always tell my students to practice as much as possible. A great, easily accessible way to practice is to listen to podcasts in English, such as those available on NPR and the BBC. Also the experience you gain with current topics can help you on the writing module of the exam.

I hope this is helpful. I am putting together some tips for the IELTS Listening Exam. Check them out and let me know what you think!

[langly]

hi everybody,
How they do evaluate listening?
Chammanju, how much question you're passed?

[Chammanju]

Sometimes I get 28/40. Mostly, I am between 23-28. Hi, I am a Sri Lankan, therefore the accent is the most difficult thing. Thanks for your help

[Chammanju]

Thank You very much. It is really helpful.

I'll be taking my IELTS this month end. Thank you again

[Chammanju]

Originally Posted by ESL Tutor

The best way to improve your listening score is to practice. When doing IELTS coaching, I always tell my students to practice as much as possible. A great, easily accessible way to practice is to listen to podcasts in English, such as those available on NPR and the BBC. Also the experience you gain with current topics can help you on the writing module of the exam.

I hope this is helpful. I am putting together some tips for the IELTS Listening Exam. Check them out and let me know what you think!

[teacherdominic]

Yes, practice is a key for sure - but only on one condition. This is that you practice your listening skills. For me it isn't enough just to do one test after another as more quantity doesn't necessarily lead to more quality. What can happen is that you end up making the same mistakes.

My personal advice is actually not to practice too much. I suggest you practice less - no more than once or twice a week. This will put pressure on you to get it right and make you concentrate. The pressure is that you know that it will be at least a couple of days until you can do this again. That's the same sort of pressure you get in the exam.


Here are a few of my specific listening tips.

1. Make sure you can spell. Curiously, spelling matters rather more in the listening than the writing - if you spell it wrong: no mark.

2. Practice your shorthand. One difficulty in the listening is that you are doing 4 things at once: listening, reading (the question), writing (your answer) and of course thinking. The tip is to write only enough as you are listening and then to write it out in full in the 10 minutes at the end.

3. Look at 2 questions at once. It's not too much of a problem to get one question wrong. The real problem is to miss out on 2/3/4 consecutive questions. This can happen if you are still looking at question 4, but the tape has moved onto question 6.

4. Try to use the time between listenings to predict what sort of answers youa re looking for. Is it a number? Is it a name? etc

5. This is the BIG one and the one that causes easily the most problems. READ THE QUESTION. Sorry for the capital letters, but in my experience a huge proportion of mistakes are made not because you don't hear and understand what is said, rather you don't match what you hear with what the question asks you to do.

[teacherdominic]

It may interest you that i have just added a video tutorial to my blog on how to avoid what is probably the most common mistake in the listening test. In short, it is to read the whole question and not to focus on individual words within the question.