Hi there! It's Asiya. I've just taken my computer-based IELTS exam in London.
Here is my result. Last year I also took a paper-based exam and I got a band 9
score in IELTS Listening. So in this video I want to share my tips with you.
I'm going to make similar videos about each section of the IELTS exam and publish
them in the coming weeks. Now let's get started!
let me quickly tell you about the test format and then we dive into tips so
IELTS listening is the same in both academic and general training exams it
lasts for 30 minutes and includes 40 questions which are split into four
sections and questions get harder as you progress through the test you need to
answer 30 questions correctly to get a 7 or 35 questions to get an 8 and I would
say the main difficulty of IELTS listening is the lack of time so I'm
gonna talk about how you can manage your time more effectively during this test
in order to answer more questions if you take a paper-based exam you're gonna get
question sheets and an answer sheet so while you're listening to the recording
you mark your answers on question sheets and then at the end you're gonna get extra
ten minutes to transfer your answers that's more than enough time if you take
a computer-based exam you answer directly on the screen so you don't need
those ten minutes and they're only gonna give you two
basically that's enough to check your answers you may only need to check those
where you write down type words and check your spelling you may need to
think about how to spell a certain word so that's it two minutes was enough for
me a big advantage of a computer-based test is that you always get earphones
and you can hear everything clearly in a paper-based exam you may get earphones
in some of the centers but quite often you're just in a room full of people
with loud speakers and it's not as clear at all I actually have a separate video
where I talk about all the differences between a paper-based and computer-based
exam and you can watch it to decide which format is better for you I'm gonna
link it here ielts listening is a hard test because it's difficult to understand
what they're saying in there recording but because you need
to listen read and write almost at the same time it's a test of your
concentration and ability to manage your time your seconds in a very precise way
basically I know that if I put myself in a situation where I read the question
for the first time while listening to the recording I'm unlikely to find the answer
so I'm just gonna miss it so I need to read questions before I listen to the
recording and let the idea in the test because when it starts they give you a
few seconds to read questions and you really need to use that time to the
maximum so as soon as you see the task like don't read the task don't think
about anything try to read all the questions in this section and before the
recording starts come back and look at the first and second question to know
what you're expecting then you listen to the first recording and they tell you
you have some time to revise your answers don't do that immediately go to
coming questions and keep on reading and memorizing them that's the biggest tip I
think the biggest thing you can do in order to improve your score and I would
say always try to keep an eye on two questions your question and the next
question you'll see questions where the question itself is quite low and then
you have several long options so when you're reading them before the recording
starts try to pay attention to key words in
each of them in each option then when you listen to the recording you'll be
able to locate them more easily and they may give you let's say four options and
they're gonna talk about each of them in the recording and most likely they're
gonna say something like initially I thought it would be this one but then it
turned out to be wrong but that one which we didn't expect
much from turned out to be the best something like that and they're going to
mention all of them and their opinion will be changing as soon as you hear
that a certain option is wrong just cross it out straight away it really
helps in a paper-based exam in a computer-based exam unfortunately you
don't have such an option so you have to pay even closer attention to key words
one more tip if you take a paper-based exam keep the task in your head and
always remember if you need to choose a word or a letter for example in this
task if you wrote down the word film it would be an incorrect answer
you need to write letter B and if you don't know what the answer is
make a guess you don't lose points for incorrect answers
anyway now let me talk you through some of the most difficult types of tasks in
ielts listening you always get questions when you need to feel a gap and the task
would be write down not more than one word or a number or not more than two
words and a number and what you can do here is you can read your question your
sentence and think what kind of word can go there predict the answer would it be
a noun a verb or an adjective what kind of information are you expecting would
it be a street name a flat number or maybe color try to guess what kind of
answer you might get event it will be much easier for you to recognize the
word when you hear it pay attention to singular and plural nouns it matters and
how you can sometimes check yourself just read the whole sentence and see if
it's grammatically correct once you write down those words your sentence has
to be grammatically correct and let me show you an example let's say our
sentence is and the company is looking to recruit University and then we either
need to write graduate or graduates but then graduate is singular we need an
indefinite article which should go in front of the word University a
university graduate but we don't have it right so it has to be plural the
company is looking to recruit University graduates that's how you can check
yourself sometimes and remember spelling matters you have to spell the word
correctly in order to get a point for your answer but it doesn't matter
whether you spell words using the British or American spelling in a test
you will always have to write something down it may be a surname or a name of
the street in this case usually they pronounce the word first
and then they spell it out but the spelling will be really weird for
example someone may say oh my surname is brown and you think of the word brown
but then their spelling is gonna be absolutely different like much longer
and not what you expect at all be prepared for that quite often you need
to write down a telephone number that's what I had in my exam actually when
someone gives a telephone number in English they don't say zero they say oh
oh seven oh five if you have two digits which are the same it's double you know
James Bond double oh seven and three digits which are the same is triple
triple seven seven seven seven actually I had a telephone number and I had
a number of a flat and it was something like 17A yeah in the UK a
flat can have a number and a letter 17A 6B so don't be too surprised there are
two types tasks where you need to read a lot of
the first one is multiple-choice questions
that's where you have a question and four options usually options are quite
long or you may have a question and six options and then you need to
choose two which are correct so here the main difficulty is to read
everything before the recording starts so try to put as much time as you can
into reading identify key words in each option if you take a paper-based exam
you can highlight key words for example in my exam
these were roses chocolate candles and then as soon as I hear is something
about roses I know which option they're talking about and then I can check if
what they say and what's written in this option are the same things or my option
is actually incorrect and if it's incorrect and you take a paper-based
exam then you can cross it out straight away it really helps because then you
have to choose between fewer options in a computer-based exam you can't cross
out incorrect answers and you have to concentrate on key words and just
memorize which answers are wrong so it's a bit more challenging I find that those
tasks are easier in a paper-based exam sometimes you get a map it can be a map
of a building let's say a library or a map of a town and then you need to find
where some objects things are located so always remember about directions north is
at the top south is at the bottom east west like on any map and it's important
because you will hear things like you need to go to the north or to the south
so you should know which way you need to go and always make sure you find the
starting point before the recording starts only then you can follow where
you need to go once you reach the end of the test in a paper-based exam
you'll have ten minutes to transfer your answers to the answer sheet in a
computer-based exam you have two minutes to check your answers basically check
that all the words you write down are spelled correctly and also try to read
whole sentences to see if the sentence is grammatically correct that's the best
thing you can do in those two minutes and don't leave any questions unanswered
if you don't know what the answer is just make a guess these are my IELTS
listening tips and if you've already taken an IELTS exam let me know what
score did you get and if you want to learn more about the differences between
a computer-based and paper based exams then watch my video and I'm gonna
publish new videos about each section of the IELTS exam and my tips in the coming
weeks thank you for watching me today good luck with your preparation and your
exam bye