What is the best way to improve your IELTS listening score? You often see it written that the best thing to do is to practise, practise, practise. I beg to differ. Listening is a skill and skills are improved by practice – but so long as you are doing the right kind of practice. For me it is obvious that you need to practise in a way in that you actually reduce the number of mistakes you make. In this video I identify one very common cause of avoidable mistakes. Before you listen to it, however, may I make another related suggestion:
Use the transcript
My suggestion is to use the transcript of the listening. There are different ways you could do this:
- while you are still learning about the exam, for your first few attempts read and listen at the same time: for me this isn’t bad practice at all as it helps you learn about the types of question you find in IELTS without the pressure of looking for an answer.
- when you are getting close to the exam, you should spend plenty of time going through the transcript to identify why you got the answer wrong and how you could have got the right answer. Don’t just mark your mistakes, find out why they were wrong in the first place. This way you can improve your score because while each listening is different, the questions are always set in the same way.
The video
Before you watch this video, here are some questions for you to consider:
Do you underline key words in the question?
Why?
What are distractors?
Are you from China?
A Chinese friendly version of this video is available on Youdu here.
An exercise
Now that you have listened, which words in the question should you focus on? My answer is added as a comment
You can underline words in the question before you listen, but you MUST focus on the whole question as you listen.
Very useful for me!
Thank you indeed.
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Excellent man ! GOD bless you
Thank you very much. This is one of the most organized web-sites about IELTS that I have ever seen.
THANK YOU.
Thank you! This web-site is great!
Hi, Dominic!
I really need a piece of advice on filling out the listening answersheet. What about the capital letters? Should the answer “sports center” or “international house” be marked correct if the answers at the end of the book give “Sports Center” and “International House” ? And what if the blank space is in the beginning of a sentence?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Your blog is of significant importance for anybody preparing to take IELTS. There is so much useful information!
Hi. Sorry for the delayed response. Don’t worry about capital letters in the listening but do worry about spelling. In fact, you can write the words all in capitals if you like. In some ways this is a good idea as if the marker can’t read your writing, you will lose the mark.
Thanks indeed!
thanks nery much
A true friend of the Test takers…!!!!
This website of yours Rock,,,,,
Thank you for your great support..*_*
hi . I need more tricky ways or signs for distinguish between “No” and “NOT GIVEN” .
thanks in advanced for your help.
It is tricky isn’t it? I suggest you check my reading pages where I give some advice. Other than that, the best tip is simply to analyse as many reading questions as you can find: you should begin to see the pattern.
very thanks about your information tips.. i think its very useful for my exam.
hi dominic
great website.
I just wanted to ask you about the MCQ’s in the listening.
The problem is I don’t know whether to read the question and the choices or just the question.don’t have enough time to read all the choices.
so what do you suggest/
regards
I’d focus on the question first of all – these show you when the answer is coming. Then as the listening is going focus on the options – always remembering that some of the options are there to confuse you and that you need to understand their precise meaning to get the right answer and that you may well go wrong if you only focus on one or two key words. It is a tough skill as there is a lot of information to process all at once. I always think that the hard part of the listening is that it is not just listening but listening, reading and writing all at once.
Hi Dominic,
I’ve just known about your blog and find it really valuable.
OK, I have a question about the example given in the video. I can see that you took the transcript from Cambridge Ielts 4 Test 4 Section 2 but changed the options a little. Option C in the original test is “are for people with GOOD fitness levels” and it is absolutely wrong. The right answer, therefore, is option A: cater for a range of walking abilities. So what do you think about that? Did you find it not completely persuasive so you made this change?
Hope for your early reply. Thank you!
Apologies for the late reply. I simply can’t remember how I wrote that particular question. Dos the sample question work for you? If not, I’ll go ahead and change it.
Tanxx dude
Hi Dominic ,
i’m arabian girl and i don’t use English alot … so i find big problem in filling a table or such like that when they say ” no more than three words ” … what if there was a grammar mistakes in it ???… because if i had to make the sentence or the answer no more than three words i have to change the answer little bit …
i’m really sorry if u didnt understand what i’m saying but i wish you could give me the answer
OMG!!! Very impressive video …. thank you.. Dominic