Listening tests

How to practise

Practice is obviously important for IELTS but it is important to practise intelligently. Here is a little advice:

My suggestion is that you do each listening at least 3 times:

1. test yourself
2. read the transcript as you listen – seeing where the answers come
3. retest yourself a week or so later.

The important stage here is stage 2 – that is where you are going to learn. You will little or nothing just by doing test after test. Aim for quality not quantity if you want to improve.

Band score

If you want to know what your band score is, you can try my online band score calculator.

Cambridge ESOL official materials

If you have not found them already this is the place to start nowadays. You will find here questions in the precise exam format, clearly labelled to show the type of questions you can expect:

ESOL official listening questions

Dominic Cole’s IELTS Blog practice

Part 1

 part 1 practice: hiring a van: full part 1 practice with form filling exercise and advice on listening for numbers. addresses and dates

part 1 practice: booking a festival: full part 1 practice with multiple choice questions and form filling

part 1 practice: at the train station and the hotel: full part 1 practice with gapfill, spelling and numbers problems

Part 2

part 2 multiple choice: practice with a tutorial listening to a tour guide

Listening to directions on a map – compass points: practice with a tutorial

Listening a map: practice with a tutorial

Part 4

part 4 practice: listening practice with advice on how to use your time between listenings

British Council

A benefit of this site is that it allows you to download and print a paper activity which makes it a much more realistic exercise. You also get an audioscript and one suggestion here is to use the audioscripts provided to read through afterwards to discover how to get the right answers.

Part 1 practice

exercise 1 (with advice)

exercise 2 (with paper activity and audioscript)

Part 2 practice

exercise 1 (with advice)

exercise 2 (with paper activity)

Parts 3 and 4 practice

exercise 1 (with advice)

exercise 2 (with paper activity and audioscript)

exercise 3 (with paper activity and audioscript)

exercise 4 (with paper activity and audioscript)

British Council China

These are hard. They are not exactly in exam format as there are no pauses between groups of questions and the number of questions varies for each listening text. They are not put into categories so here is some help for you if you want to work through them systematically.

10 sets of listening questions

Part 1

Dormitory tour: 16 questions

Educational software – 10 questions

Part 2

Flat hunting – 8 questions

Group meeting – 12 questions

Phone contract – 15 questions (too many)

Part 3

Economics group – 10 questions

Study abroad – 12 questions

Part 4

American Literature - 15 questions (too many)

Hybrid cars – 9 questions

Peak District National Park - 20 questions (too many)

British Council China – listening practice

As with the reading, these are  practice listenings not quite in the IELTS format as they are both short and fairly easy but still excellent for improving your skills:

Learn Online – listening practice

 

 

Canadavisa

These exercises are also excellent, giving you the opportunity to do a complete test from one internet page. This is important because in the exam part of the difficulty is that you need to do all 4 parts of the listening in 30 minutes with no rest in between each part.

Practice test 1

Practice test 2

 

Masterclass – very highly recommended

Masterclass is a series of English language books produced by Oxford University Press and comes highly recommended for it’s general quality. These are very professionally produced and give excellent exam practice.

A complete exam listening

A real bonus here is that you are able to download the question paper which allows you true exam practice. Online tests may be fun, but as exam practice they don’t really work. I strongly suggest you use the you go through the test afterwards with the audioscript to see where and why you made mistakes. That way the practice will become a learning process.

 

 

 

This seems to have disappeared. Oxford Online Testing does, however, give you a free sample part 3 listening and reading question that you can do online. This is made by OUP (which produces Masterclass) and is similar quality.

There’s more, much more

If you are looking for more, you will find many more helpful links to places to practise here. I’d only say that quality should always come before quantity.

Loads more exercises

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