IELTS Listening - Top 14 tips!
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Hello. My name is Emma, and in today's lesson, I am going to teach you my top tips for the
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IELTS listening module. Okay?
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So, before I teach you these tips, you might be wondering: "What's the IELTS listening
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module?" Well, the IELTS is a test and one part of the test is listening. So, in the
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listening section, you're going to have 40 questions where you're going to listen to
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some conversations for about 30 minutes, and then you'll have 10 minutes to transfer your
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answers over to another sheet. So, in total, it's 40 minutes; 30 minutes for listening,
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10 minutes for writing down your answers.
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Okay, now this part of the IELTS is very possible to get a high mark, especially if you follow
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my tips. All right? Now, before we get started, I just want to let you know: I know you can
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do the IELTS. I know you can pass, I know you can get a great mark, a great bandwidth
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- you just have to have confidence in yourself and you have to practice. Practice, practice,
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practice; it really pays off. So let's get started.
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So, my first tip: write no more than three words. What do I mean by this? I don't mean
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for the whole thing, write no more than three words. On the IELTS, you will have to read
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the instruction of what to do. Often times, the instruction, before you listen, you're
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going to see: "Write no more than three words." This is an example of an instruction you must
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follow. One mistake a lot of students make during the IELTS is they don't read instructions
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properly. They're nervous, they're stressed out, they write whatever, they don't... They
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don't follow the instructions. If you see something like: "Write no more than three
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words." Do that. You can't write four, don't write five. Write three or less. Okay? So
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my main point here: follow the instructions carefully.
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Point number two: get used to British English. A large part of the IELTS, you will be listening...
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For... For... Sorry, for the listening, you will be listening to British accents. Sometimes
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you might hear Australian accents or Canadian, you might hear a range, but a lot of the accents
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will be British. So it's very important to get used to listening to British accents.
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And also, listen to other accents like Canadian, Australian; that's a good idea too. Where
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can you find British accents to listen to? I recommend the BBC. They have a lot of great
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videos there and most of it's with British accents, so it's a very good idea so you can
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practice listening. The more you practice listening with British accents, the easier
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it will be to understand British speakers. Especially if you're used to American English,
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this is a very good thing to do.
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Related to this point: British vocab. You should learn British vocabulary. For example:
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in American English and Canadian English, we say: "truck". In British English, we say:
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"lorry". So it's good to know some of these British expressions, some British words. One
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idea where you can practice these is if you check out our website: www.engvid.com, we
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have a new teacher who is British and who will be talking about British English, so
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check out her... Her videos. It will also be good to help you with practicing listening
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to British accents.
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Number four: spelling counts. Okay? Very important. The listening part of the IELTS is not just
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listening; you're actually using other skills like writing and reading. Now, with writing,
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when you write down your answers, you sometimes have to spell something out, so you have to
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be very, very careful with spelling. Okay? This is something you should really study
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and practice before you take the listening part of the IELTS. Practice your spelling.
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Learn spelling rules. We have a lot of different videos on how to spell on engVid, so I would
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come and check those ones out.
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Number five - this is the thing that always gets my students and I always warn them about
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when we practice - plural versus singular. Okay? You have to listen carefully on whether
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you're writing down the plural with an "s" or the singular. If the question wants me
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to write down: "cat", someone's talking about their cat and I write down: "cats", it's incorrect.
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I would get an "X". Okay, so it's important to be careful, to really listen: is it a singular
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thing, is it a plural thing? Are they saying "store" or "stores"? Okay?
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Number six - this is probably the most obvious tip, but - very important to do practice tests.
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There are many, many books out there on the IELTS that have practice tests with a CD.
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You can listen and you can practice. The more you do, the better, and the better your mark
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probably will be. Okay? So do as many practice tests as you can for the listening. And again,
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maybe when you start, it will be very difficult. Maybe you'll do a test and you'll do very
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poorly on it - a practice test - it's good to keep going. Even if you do bad at first,
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I'm sure the more you practice, the more you get used to these accents - you're going to
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do fine. Okay? Just keep practicing, practicing, practicing.
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Number seven: prediction. It's very important on the IELTS. During the listening, at the
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end of each section, you have some time to check your answers and to read the questions
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that are coming up. Very important that you look ahead. Okay? Any time you have a chance
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to stop and to... to read ahead on the IELTS, the... the listening part, it's very important
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to do this. The reason is you can make a guess, you can predict... It's not exactly a guess,
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but you can predict what an answer is going to be, and your chance of getting that answer
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right is going to go up. So, for example, maybe this is one of the questions:
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"The woman will travel on __________." Okay, so I'm going to have to listen to the
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CD. Now, what I can do is in pencil, I can just write in what I think it's going to be.
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Well, I see the word: "travel", "travel on", so maybe she's travelling on a bus, or maybe
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a plane. Okay. Think of some... some things she might be travelling on. And then you can
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just write quickly what your prediction is. And then, when they actually play the... the
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tape, listen, see if your prediction was correct. If it's not, you can just write in the correct
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answer. But you'll have a good chance of getting the answer right. The listening goes very
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quickly so it's very good to do this prediction so you can prepare yourself. Know what they're
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looking for. Okay. Prediction, very important.
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Now, let's learn some other tips to succeed on this part of the test.
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Okay, my next tip is about predicting again. But if you can't predict the word - maybe
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there's not enough information - at least you can predict if they're looking for a noun,
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adjective, adverb, or verb. Okay, so what's an example of this? I come over here. For
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the fill in the blank questions, maybe it will say something like:
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"She has three __________." Okay, she has three, what? I have no idea;
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she could have three of anything. But what I do know is this is going to be... What is
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it going to be? Is it going to be a verb? No. Adjective? No. It's going to be a noun.
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Keyword: "She has", there's already a verb here, I know it's going to be a noun. So that
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can help.
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Next tip. This is one of the challenging things about the IELTS, you're listening and writing
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at the same time. Okay? So, again, the listening is not only a listening; it's also listening,
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writing, reading, not speaking. So it's important that you practice these skills together. What
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you can do is you can maybe go on the BBC, listen to what they're saying, take notes.
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Get used to writing quickly while you're listening. I think this is one of the most important
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skills you can learn.
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Number 10 - this is the trick on the IELTS - be aware of changes. Often times, they have
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a phone conversation in the listening and somebody says something like: "Oh, the number,
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it's 2078." And so you write: "2078". But then they say: "Oh, no, wait. I'm sorry. It's
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actually 4078." So you have to be very careful because often times, they will give information
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and then they will change it. They will say: "Oh, I'm sorry. That's the wrong information.
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It's actually this number instead." Okay. So be aware of that. The first time you write
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something down, they might change it, so keep your ear out for that; listen for that.
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Number 11. One thing to practice is listening to groups of numbers. Maybe you're good at
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listening to the number one, if I say: "five", "seven", you understand that. But if I say
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a lot of numbers at the same time like: "My phone number is 971-225" - it's not this,
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by the way, so don't call this number - "1-877-43298". Okay. I hope nobody has this number. But if
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I say something like that, were you able to write down all those numbers?" All right?
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You've got to get used to listening to large groups of numbers in sequence.
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Again, about the numbers because you often have to listen to something about numbers
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in the IELTS. It's also important to listen for the difference between "13" and "30",
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"14" and "40", "15" and "50", and so on. Okay? So the trick here is: "13", "teen" is usually
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louder, "thir" is quieter and shorter, versus: "30" where "thir" is longer, "ty" is shorter.
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So get used to listening to these numbers so you can actually hear the difference, because
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you might hear that on the IELTS.
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Number 13, this is also very important. Your handwriting must be clear. All right? If they
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can't read what you write, you're not going to get the marks for your answer. Even if
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it's correct, if they can't read it - that's a problem. So if you have bad handwriting,
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this is something you should work on. Practice writing. Start off slow and then work on speed;
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get better and better and better, and faster at writing. All right? So write well.
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Number 14, this is my last tip of the day. With... Again, this is with spelling because
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it's so important on the IELTS for the listening section. One thing they often do is they'll
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have somebody spell something out. So maybe they'll... Someone will be on the phone and
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they'll say their last name. "My last name is Tattoli." Okay? And then they'll spell
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it. "That's T-a-t-t-o-l-i." Now, one thing to be careful of is often times they do these
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double lettering thing where when they're on the phone, they'll say:
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"It's T-a- double 't'-o-l-i." This means there are two "t's". So if you hear the word: "double", "double
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't'", "double 'm'", "double 'n'". My name has a double "m". Be aware of that. It means
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you have to write down two of those. All right?
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So I know you are going to do well on this test. It's... It's... You can do it. It's
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all a matter of practice, practice, practice. All right? And just constantly practicing
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to improve. So you can do it, I know you can, and you need to know you can do it. It's very
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important to be confident in yourself.
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So, for a lot of extra language learning material, you can come visit our website at www.engvid.com.
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Also, there's another great website: www.GoodLuckIELTS.com. On our website, I will have a quiz to test
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you on some of these tips to see if you remember them. So, until next time, take care.
