- [Chris] So today I'm gonna answer a very common question
that we get at IELTS advantage which is,
how do I get a band eight or a band nine
in IELTS listening tests?
And the problem is really the fact that the listening test
is divided into four parts.
Part one is the easiest part
and then it gets more and more difficult with part three
and part four being the most difficult.
Especially part four.
So most of the students struggling to get a band eight
or a band nine have no problem with part one,
they find part two quite easy.
But once they start getting into part three and part four,
they come across some very common problems.
And then what they try and do
is they try and solve it the wrong way.
So there are two ways that students try
and solve this problem.
And if you are doing these two things,
you're never going to solve this problem
of trying to get a band eight or a band nine.
So the first common problem is they will rely on,
strategies.
Now strategies do work.
They do help you.
But unless you have three other things
that are way more important than strategies,
strategies will be useless.
So strategies are useful,
but they are one piece of the puzzle.
The bigger mistake that we see students doing,
is doing lots of listening
tests.
So often students will come to us and say,
I have done every single listening test I could find,
but I still cannot get a band eight or a band nine.
Strategies and especially listening tests
are not going to help you get beyond a band seven.
They are not going to help you solve part three
and part four.
The three things that will really help you for part three
and part four are number one,
listening skills,
number two,
vocabulary,
and number three,
focus.
Especially the ability to focus on multiple speakers
speaking at the same time.
So let's take a sentence from
a listening test.
And analyze it to show you that
these two things are useless
until you address these three things.
And then at the end we're going to give you a technique
that we teach our students.
That helps them improve their listening skills,
their vocabulary,
and their focus on listening all at the same time.
And you will enjoy yourself whilst you're doing it.
It's not often you enjoy something
while you're studying IELTS.
So let's say on the listening test,
we hear this,
sentence.
Do you want to go to the jazz festival?
So unfortunately,
especially in parts three and four,
the speaker will not speak as clearly
and as slowly as I am speaking right now.
I do not speak to my friends and my family
in this very slow well-spoken way.
If I was to ask this question to one of my friends,
I would not say,
do you want to go to the jazz festival?
It would sound more like,
do you wanna go to the jazz festival?
So that is something that is very difficult for people
in part three and part four.
Not that the person is speaking quickly,
but they are speaking naturally.
The way I am speaking to you right now
is not my natural voice.
I'm speaking to you right now,
because I know that you are an English learner
and I'm trying to speak as clearly
and as slowly as possible.
So what the person really says,
for part three and part four,
when they are saying the sentence,
sounds more like this,
do you
and this connects together,
wanna
connects together,
go to,
go to
the
jazz
festival.
So there's a few problems here for most people
who are trying to get a band eight or a band nine.
They're not used to connected speech.
So here we have connected speech,
here we have connected speech,
and here we have connected speech.
And these (indistinct) sounds reduced sounds.
Because this is how most native English speakers
actually speak to one another.
And they're testing your ability to understand real English.
So one of the skills is understanding this connected speech.
And without this skill,
it doesn't matter how many listening practice tests you do.
Doesn't matter how good your strategies are.
If you don't understand,
do you wanna go to,
you will never be able to answer this question.
Also if we have a look at
two key parts of this sentence,
jazz,
do you understand what jazz is?
Lots of students trying to get a band eight or a band nine,
have no idea what jazz is.
Also do you really know what a festival is?
And then we combine these,
do you really understand what a jazz festival is?
There is no way that you will be able to answer
this question if this is the key part of the listening,
if you don't understand what jazz and festival mean,
and you cannot understand connected speech.
So this is why listening and vocabulary are so important.
Also you have to be able to focus for long periods of time.
Think about the last time that you really focused
on listening to something in English.
And think about how long that was.
It's probably only one or two minutes for most students.
Also think about the fact that you're not just listening,
you're reading,
you're thinking,
you're writing,
all at the same time.
Unless you are able to focus for a long period of time,
listening and thinking and writing in English,
you're not going to be able to get part three
and part four questions correct.
But don't worry we'll show you a really easy technique
that you can use that helps you improve
all three of these things.
So let's say this is person one.
And then person two says,
no
I've got to
study
for
my
finals.
So,
what does this actually mean?
You may have never heard of this word in this context.
So you also have to guess what this word actually means
from contexts.
No I've got to study for my finals.
You might not know what finals means,
but from the context of the conversation,
you might be able to guess that this means
exams or a test.
Their final test.
Normally a university student,
their final test,
their final exam,
they will call them their finals.
So you will never be able to understand a hundred percent
of the vocabulary,
but you need to get used to guessing
the meaning of some words in context.
While listening at the same time
and thinking at the same time
and writing your answer
and deciding your answer all at the same time.
Now that sounds very very difficult,
but it does not need to be difficult.
But before we show you this technique called,
micro
listening,
please do not go and look up some strategies,
do lots of practice tests and then waste days and weeks
and you're still below a band eight or a band nine.
Please use this instead.
So what is micro listening?
So let me show you exactly what it is.
So the first thing we're going to do
is you're going to pick
something
you enjoy
listening to.
And the keyword there is that you enjoy it.
Why?
Because you're going to have to do this technique every day
or three four or five times a week,
over weeks and months.
If you came here looking for a quick tip
that is going to guarantee that you're going to get
a band nine,
you're watching the wrong video.
We don't teach you those things
because those things simply do not work.
Anyone teaching you quick tips to get a band nine
in listening was never a real IELTS teacher.
They're a YouTuber who is pretending to be an IELTS teacher.
So once we pick something that we enjoy,
so this could be,
a podcast,
or it could be
a YouTube video,
but
not,
English learning YouTube.
So not someone trying to teach you English on YouTube
because that is not real English.
And most of the English learning on YouTube
is going to make your English worse not better.
Pick something real.
Like two people talking to each other
who are native English speakers.
Or,
TV show,
or for example,
a news program,
whatever you're interested in.
Or it could be a movie,
whatever you're interested in.
Just make sure that it is real English native speakers
or very high level English learners,
talking naturally.
I would strongly recommend podcasts
because A they're free,
and B there isn't a single topic in the world right now
that there aren't hundreds if not thousands
of really great podcasts.
So pick the topic that you love.
You could love cooking,
cricket,
reading,
business,
leadership,
whatever you are into.
Pick something to listen to.
And here's where the micro listening comes in.
All right so you're gonna listen,
until,
you don't
understand.
So you don't understand.
So imagine we are listening and we hear this,
do you wanna go to the jazz festival?
You might not understand that
because of the connected speech.
Do you wanna go to.
So you would,
stop,
then
stop,
the podcast,
the YouTube channel,
the movie,
whatever it is just stop.
Then you're going to listen again,
until,
you can
write
the sentence.
Don't worry if you cannot understand the sentence fully,
just listen again a few times.
So listen again,
pause,
go back,
listen again.
You're just listening to one or two sentences.
That is why it's called micro listening.
Until you feel comfortable enough that you can attempt
to write out the sentence.
So for example let's say you're listening to me interviewing
another IELTS teacher.
And you hear,
is
it
okay
if I
talk
to ye
about
click
bait.
So you might find some of the connected speech difficulty
here so,
is it is it,
so it sounds like a zer,
tuh is it okay if I,
if I it's connecting together,
talk to ye,
so it's reduced sound here
about click-bait.
What is click-bait?
I don't understand this.
So you're listening until there's some connected speech
or maybe the person is speaking a little bit too quickly
for you,
or there's some vocabulary that you don't quite understand.
So we're focusing on our listening skills,
our vocabulary,
and we're improving our focus all at the same time,
whilst we're listening to something
that we're actually enjoying.
So listen
as many
times
as
you need
to fully
understand
the sentence.
Don't worry if it takes you five six seven eight nine
10 times.
But if you do that,
what will happen is all this connected speech
will start to make sense in your brain
and you'll start to become used to
how real native English speakers actually speak.
You don't have to worry about practicing your pronunciation
at this stage.
You can if you want to.
But most of the students who we work with
who have this problem,
don't really have a pronunciation problem,
they have more a understanding connected speech
rather than a problem with pronouncing this.
And then what we're going to do is if there is a new word
or a new phrase,
don't look up the meaning.
Guess meaning,
from
context.
So what does context mean?
It means that the words around this word,
it means the sentences around this word,
need to think about the title
of
the podcast
or what the general topic is they're talking about.
So maybe I'm interviewing another teacher
about why they keep putting click-bait titles,
that mislead students into their videos
in order to get views rather than teach students.
You would be able to guess the meaning of this word.
click-bait is when you,
focus on tricking the viewer
into clicking on your video,
that shows that you are more concerned
about growing your YouTube channel,
than you are about actually helping your viewers get better.
So from this context you can guess what this means.
Remember you will hear words that you probably
will not be familiar with,
when you're looking at part three and part four.
Or looking at,
listening to part three and part four.
There will always be some words you don't quite understand.
You need to develop this as a skill.
One of the skills that we teach
is guessing meaning from context.
Not only is this going to help you
guess meaning from context,
if a new word comes up,
you are improving the range of your vocabulary.
So you're reducing the number of words that you don't know.
So again you're enjoying yourself,
you're improving your listening skills,
you're improving your ability to guess meaning from context,
and you are improving your vocabulary.
Not only will that help you in the listening test,
it's also going to help you in the reading test,
in the writing test,
and the speaking test all at the same time.
So it requires a little bit more work
than just going onto YouTube and looking up you know,
top 10 tips to get a band nine,
but this is way more effective.
Finally,
add
new
vocabulary,
to a
vocabulary
notebook.
It can be a paper notebook,
it can be a digital notebook,
but don't lose this new vocabulary.
If you lose,
if you don't use it you will lose it.
And then finally,
review
new
vocab.
You can review it by using it in example sentences
for example.
There are many many many things that you can do
to review vocabulary.
I'll maybe make,
a video soon on how to review new vocabulary.
And then what you do,
once you have listened,
use micro listening on one or two sentences,
then just keep going.
Start again.
Keep listening to that podcast or that movie or that TV show
until you find something that you again don't understand.
Pause it,
start the whole process again.
What you can also do
is most podcasts and YouTube channels,
and
TV shows have subtitles,
but turn the subtitles off while you're doing this,
and only turn them on to check that you are correct.
Because often you'll hear a sentence
and there'll be a few words that you just really
don't understand at all.
Try to understand them first.
And then turn the subtitles on at the end and check them.
But just be careful on YouTube,
sometimes the subtitles are not accurate.
Most of the time they are.
But sometimes they are not.
If you want more help with listening,
you can go to our website,
ieltsadvantage.com
I've got lots of articles,
free resources for listening.
Or if you click below,
you will find a
fundamentals course that covers
writing speaking reading and listening.
And has a great video on listening
to help you understand the fundamentals
of how to improve your IELTS listening score.
Hopefully you enjoyed this lesson.
And,
the key really
is to
do it.
If you just watch this lesson and don't actually
do any of this,
you are not going to improve in any way.
Don't waste your time on things that don't work,
especially doing lots and lots and lots of listening tests,
do things that really do work.
(upbeat music)