how can you understand every word in IELTS Listening and answer every question over the
years of learning English I tried many different ways of improving my listening skills and today
I'd like to share with you the five that I personally found most effective and that I
believe can bring you the most meaningful and quick results it's Asiya here let's get started
[Music] to improve your IELTS Listening skills you need to understand where your weaknesses
are and work on improving them to do that take an official Cambridge practice test to assess
your level I recommend using recent tests from 15 and up but for our purposes any Cambridge practice
test will do complete one test then check all the answ answers and find the ones you got wrong open
the audio script go back to every question you answered incorrectly read the question again read
the script and try to understand why you got it wrong there are several possibilities maybe you
understood everything but you simply missed the correct answer this can easily happen as the pace
of the listening test is quite fast in this case work on your test technique I have videos giving
you an overall technique for IL listening as well as techniques for each type of question
luckily there are only four types of questions in I listening every single test has multiple choice
and filling the black questions and then you will have either Maps or matching features once
you know how how these questions are organized it will be easier for you to answer them the
second possibility is that you read the script and everything is clear but when you listen to
the recording you struggle to understand some of it this is a sign that you need to work on
your English listening skills to get the recording more easily I'm going to give you some excellent
exercises in just a second the third possibility is that you don't know some of the words either in
the question or in the script and you simply can't understand which answer is correct or you spell
filling the blanks answers incorrectly in this case you need to work on expanding your English
vocabulary not just your listening but this is a topic for another video because today today
we're concentrating on improving your a listening skills so what can you do if you can't understand
the recording effortlessly there is an excellent exercise I call listen read listen and you can do
it with your Cambridge practice tests or another English source for which you have an audio and a
transcript here's what you do choose something short between two and 5 minutes first listen to
the recording trying to get it then open the transcript and listen to the recording again
while following what's been said on paper or your computer screen this can help you match sounds
to words and if a particular word or phrase seems tricky rewind the recording and listen to it again
try to really hear every word once you're done close the transcript and listen to the recording
again I bet this time you'll be able to understand it a little bit better and you've already improved
your listening skills a bit you know when I just moved to the UK I really struggled to understand
people over the phone and this exercise helped me so much to do it you can use a practice tests or
another source for example BBC learning English which videos are fully subtitled and only a few
minutes long just what you need you could also do this exercise with movies or songs however their
pronunciation might be very casual and present extra complexities I find that films and music
are great for your general listening in skills but for I listening I choose something a little
bit more formal and clear the next exercise is to play with speed take an audio recording
again it may be a practice test or a YouTube video and listen to it at normal speed how much
do you understand 70% 90% then slow it down to either 0.75x or 0.5x the recording will become
slightly weird but clear next listen to it again at normal speed or even accelerate it to 1.25x or
1.5x to give yourself an extra challenge if you can understand the accelerated recording then
listening to it at its original speed will be a walk in the park now let's get to the fundamental
question of why you know certain words and phrases and can easily recognize them when you see them
in a text but you struggle to understand them when you hear them well that's because of the
way native speakers pronounce words and sounds and their pronunciation also depends on their
accent some words in British and American English sound pretty different let me show you British
and then American water water here is another one hot hot laboratory laboratory BS V oh this
one has another option V and the classic example tomato tomato if it's School you always listen
to American accents then listening to a British accent may be challenging for you ideally you
should get used to both before you exam but first and foremost the British accent another thing that
may cause some problems is what's called connected speech native speakers don't pronounce words one
by one they link them together and when they do that certain sounds may appear or disappear here
let me show you a few examples so when two vow sounds meet English speakers tend to insert an
extra sound this is called intrusion this new sound intrudes for example you we are friends
we are friends were you are my friend you are my friend or are I saw it I saw it idea of idea of
in other cases certain sounds are dropped this is called alion for example I should have known it I
should have known it good boy good boy handbag handbag must be must be I speaking part three
part three if you have some time before your exam I highly recommend learning more about
English pronunciation it's going to help you not only in I listening but of course also
in a speaking there are some amazing lessons on YouTube for example teams pronunciation Workshop
by BBC learning English and I'm also going to link some lessons from British and American
teachers in the video description of course the more you listen to English speech the easier it
gets you may think you don't have time because of your work or studies but I bet you could find up
to an hour a day that you could spend improving your English skills without changing your routine
how by turning boring time into listening time when when you are commuting to work or school
cooking food or cleaning your home listen to an audio book in English or a podcast for years
I thought I didn't have time to read fiction books but now I easily listen to two books a
month without dedicating any extra time to this activity if you're not yet on Audible you can
sign up for a free trial and get any book for free I'll leave a link to the software in the
description and if you use my link I'll earn a small commission at no expense to you but
if you don't want to start a Pete subscription don't forget to cancel your trial before T and
you get to keep your free book on Spotify you can find tons of amazing podcasts just choose
something you're interested in and listen to it oh yes and for this excise excise choose real
English not English lessons where teachers tend to be extra clear remember the longest journey
begins with a single step start working on your listening skills and you see how you improve and
you definitely get to the level at which you can pass your iats test just keep on going and
all the links to the resources I've mentioned in this video are in the video description box below
thank you so much for watching me today good luck with your preparation and your exam bye