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.
British Council – the place to start
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)
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.
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 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.
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.