IELTS Listening Tips and Tricks | How I got a band 9

Hi there, it's Asya. I've just taken my computer-based IELTS exam in London. Here is my result. Last year, I also took a paper-based exam and I got a band 9 score in IELTS listening. So, in this video, I want to share my tips with you and I'm gonna make similar videos about each section of the IELTS exam and publish them in the coming weeks. And now, let's get started! Let me quickly tell you about the test format and then we dive into tips. So, IELTS listening is the same in IELTS academic and general training exams. It lasts for 30 minutes and includes 40 questions, which are split into four sections. And questions get harder as you progress through the test. You need to answer 30 questions correctly to get a 7 or 35 questions to get an 8. And I would say the main difficulty of IELTS listening is the lack of time. So, I'm gonna talk about how you can manage your time more effectively during this test in order to answer more questions. If you take a paper-based exam, you're gonna get question sheets and an answer sheet. So, while you're listening to the recording, you mark your answers on question sheets and then at the end, you're gonna get extra 10 minutes to transfer your answers. That's more than enough time. If you take a computer-based exam, you answer directly on the screen. So, you don't need those 10 minutes and they're only gonna give you two. Basically, that's enough to check your answers. You may only need to check those where you write down type words and check your spelling. You may need to think about how to spell a certain word. So, that's it. Two minutes was enough for me. A big advantage of a computer-based test is that you always get earphones and you can hear everything clearly. In a paper-based exam, you may get earphones in some of the centres, but quite often, you're just in a room full of people with loudspeakers and it's not as clear at all. I actually have a separate video where I talk about all the differences between a paper-based and computer-based exam and you can watch it to decide which format is better for you. I'm gonna link it here. IELTS listening is a hard test, not because it's difficult to understand what they're saying in their recording, but because you need to listen, read and write almost at the same time. It's a test of your concentration and ability to manage your time, your seconds, in a very precise way. Basically, I know that if I put myself in a situation where I read the question for the first time while listening to the recording, I'm unlikely to find the answer. I'm just gonna miss it. So, I need to read questions before I listen to the recording and that's the idea in the test, because when it starts, they give you a few seconds to read questions and you really need to use that time to the maximum. So, as soon as you see the task, like don't read the task, don't think about anything, try to read all the questions in this section and then before the recording starts, come back and look at the first and second question to know what you're expecting. Then you listen to the first recording and they tell you you have some time to revise your answers. Don't do that. Immediately go to coming questions and keep on reading and memorizing them. That's the biggest tip, I think, the biggest thing you can do in order to improve your score. And I would say always try to keep an eye on two questions, your question and the next question. You'll see questions where the question itself is quite long and then you have several long options. So, when you're reading them before the recording starts, try to pay attention to keywords in each of them, in each option. Then when you listen to the recording, you'll be able to locate them more easily and they may give you, let's say, four options and they're going to talk about each of them in the recording and most likely they're going to say something like, initially I thought it would be this one, but then it turned out to be wrong, but that one, which we didn't expect much from, turned out to be the best, something like that. And they're going to mention all of them and their opinion will be changing. As soon as you hear that a certain option is wrong, just cross it out straight away. It really helps in a paper-based exam. In a computer-based exam, unfortunately, you don't have such an option, so you have to pay even closer attention to keywords. One more tip, if you take a paper-based exam, keep the task in your head and always remember, if you need to choose a word or a letter, for example, in this task, if you wrote down the word film, it would be an incorrect answer. You need to write letter B and if you don't know what the answer is, make a guess. You don't lose points for incorrect answers anyway. Now let me talk you through some of the most difficult types of tasks in IELTS listening. You always get questions when you need to fill a gap and the task would be write down not more than one word or a number or not more than two words and a number. And what you can do here is, you can read your question, your sentence, and think what kind of word can go there. Predict the answer. Would it be a noun, a verb, or an adjective? What kind of information are you expecting? Would it be a street name, a flat number, or maybe color? Try to guess what kind of answer you may get, then it will be much easier for you to recognize the word when you hear it. Pay attention to singular and plural nouns. It matters. And how you can sometimes check yourself. Just read the whole sentence and see if it's grammatically correct. Once you write down those words, your sentence has to be grammatically correct. Let me show you an example. Let's say our sentence is, the company is looking to recruit university. And then we either need to write graduate or graduates. But then graduate is singular. We need an indefinite article which should go in front of the word university. A university graduate. But we don't have it, right? So it has to be plural. The company is looking to recruit university graduates. That's how you can check yourself sometimes. And remember, spelling matters. You have to spell the word correctly in order to get a point for your answer. But it doesn't matter whether you spell words using the British or American spelling. In a test, you always have to write something down. It may be a surname or a name of a street. In this case, usually they pronounce the word first and then they spell it out. But the spelling will be really weird. For example, someone may say, oh, my surname is Brown. And you think of the word Brown. But then their spelling is going to be absolutely different, like much longer, not what you expect at all. Be prepared for that. Quite often, you need to write down a telephone number. That's what I had in my exam. Actually, when someone gives a telephone number in English, they don't say zero, they say 0. 0705. If you have two digits which are the same, it's double. You know James Bond? 007. And three digits which are the same is triple. 7777. Actually, I had a telephone number and I had a number of a flat. And it was something like 17A. Yeah, in the UK, a flat can have a number and a letter 17A6B. So don't be too surprised. There are two types of tasks where you need to read a lot. The first one is multiple choice questions. That's where you have a question and four options. Usually, options are quite long. Or you may have a question and six options. And then you need to choose two which are correct. So here, the main difficulty is to read everything before the recording starts. So try to put as much time as you can into reading. Identify keywords in each option. If you take a paper-based exam, you can highlight keywords. For example, in my exam, these were roses, chocolate, candles. And then as soon as I hear something about roses, I know which option they're talking about. And then I can check if what they say and what's written in this option are the same things or my option is actually incorrect. And if it's incorrect and you take a paper-based exam, then you can cross it out straight away. It really helps because then you have to choose between a few options. In a computer-based exam, you can't cross out incorrect answers. And you have to concentrate on keywords and just memorize which answers are wrong. So it's a bit more challenging. I find that those tasks are easier in a paper-based exam. Sometimes you get a map. It can be a map of a town. And then you need to find where some objects, things are located. So always remember about directions. North is at the top, south is at the bottom, east, west, like on any map. And it's important because you will hear things like you need to go to the north or to the south. So you know which way you need to go. And always make sure you find the starting point before the recording starts. Only then you can follow where you need to go. Once you reach the end of the test in a paper-based exam, you'll have 10 minutes to transfer your answers to the answer sheet. In a computer-based exam, you'll have two minutes to check your answers. Basically, check that all the words you write down are spelled correctly. And also try to read whole sentences to see if the sentence is grammatically correct. That's the best thing you can do in those two minutes. And don't leave any questions unanswered. If you don't know what the answer is, just make a guess. These are my IELTS listening tips. And if you've already taken an IELTS exam, let me know what score did you get? And if you want to learn more about the differences between a computer-based and a paper-based exam, then watch my video. And I'm going to publish new videos about each section of the IELTS exam and my tips in the coming weeks. Thank you for watching me today. Good luck with your preparation and your exam. Bye!