hi there it's asiya so far i've taken the ielts exam five times and i achieved band
nine in its listening on four occasions and it was actually the last time when i got only 8.5
and i even know which word i misspelled anyways the very first time i took my exam i could still
get by nine even though my english skills were far from being perfect and i had never been to an
english-speaking country at that point and today i would like to share with you my tips that will
help you perform better in your test and hopefully achieve a higher score okay let's get started
right now let me quickly tell you about the ielts listening exam format just to make sure we're all
on the same page ielts listening is the same for academic and general training students
it lasts for 30 minutes there are 40 questions split into 4 sections and questions generally
get harder as you progress if you answer 30 questions out of 40 correctly you get a 7
35 questions and you get an eight all 40 questions and you get the perfect band 9 score
if you take a paper based excel then at the end of the test you need to transfer
your answers to the answer sheet and you get 10 minutes to do that if you take a computer-based
test you don't need to transfer your answers and you get two minutes to quickly check them
now let's talk about the main difficulty in the ielts listening test
the ielts listening test is intense you need to listen to the recording while you're reading your
questions and writing down your answers and you know i've been living in london for 10 years and
i'm hoping to become a british citizen by the end of this year fingers crossed but i still can't
do it i can't listen and read at the same time so what i do instead is i try to redirect time
from other activities and read questions which are coming next if you take several practice tests
you know that the test begins with instructions which are read pretty slowly and they are the
same every time so you spend this time on reading questions from the first section
and then after you answer them those questions are relatively simple then you get 30 seconds to
review your answers so i don't review them i spend this time on reading questions from the second
section which are already longer and then i have more time to memorize all the options and so on
and it will be easier for me to answer those questions and if i missed something in the
first section i will come back to that question in the time after the test so you can still do that
basically my strategy is to learn the exam format and to use the instruction time and revision time
to read the questions which are coming next you know in the ielts listening test things happen
quickly and let's discuss how you can cope with the pace of this exam
well first of all you should know that they discuss each option only once if you hear that
it's incorrect that's it you can cross it out they will not come back to this option or if you hear
that a certain answer is correct you can mark it as correct and move on to the next question they
will not say later oh no actually we said that is correct but that is not correct they never do that
and to help yourself navigate through the test you need to identify the keywords in questions
and in longer options the keywords are the words which determine what this question is about
and they will discuss all the options if you have for example multiple choice questions you have
three options or six options they will talk about each of them
and these are the little details which determine which answer is correct or
incorrect but the keywords help you understand which option they are discussing so if you take
the paper-based exam you can simply underline all the keywords if you take a computer-based test
there is a function to highlight them in yellow but i find that it just takes too much time and
it's better to simply try to memorize the keywords this will help you to avoid the next danger
missing several answers in a row it may happen if you're listening to the recording and you miss the
correct answer but you don't realize that that's happened so you keep on listening and then you
miss the next question and then you understand that you're lost but you don't know what they're
talking about now and you miss several questions in their own so that's a situation to avoid
and using keywords can help you do that but also you should try to keep an eye on two questions
at the same time your question and the next question you don't need to remember both questions
just the key word from the next question and if you hear it it's time to move on after all if you
miss one answer it's not a big problem and if you don't know what the answer is or you're not sure
just mark this question to review and you will come back to it at the end of
the test if you take a paper-based exam you can just draw an exclamation a question mark
next to this question and if you take a computer-based test there will actually be a tick
to review and then you will see all the questions you want to review in the two minutes after the
test now let's talk about difficult types of questions and the first one is filling the gap
that's what you usually have at the very beginning of your listening test and here is how it looks
you have gaps you need to fill in with words here it's important to read the instructions
write one word and or a number for each answer this means that you can write one word
you can write a number you can write one word and a number for example ten dollars but you
cannot write two words because that will make your answer incorrect so let's have a look at
some and i will show you how you should try to help yourself find the correct answers number one
photos must not be in a or an album so try to anticipate what kind of word you're looking
for is it a noun or a verb in this case it's clearly a noun because we have an article a
and it's a singular noun and then try to figure out what kind of word would
fit there so photos must not be in an album or so that's something similar to an album
so the answer is frame and it's not a frame it's just frame one word next cost
the cost for 360 photos is pounds including one disk so what are we looking for we're looking for
the price a number so the correct answer is 21 and you have to write this number if you spell it out
21 these are two words and that will make your answer incorrect now question number five
and contrast can be improved if necessary so again what are we looking for we're
looking for a noun because we see the article there and it's something that can be improved
along with the contrast so the answer is color and in ielts listening you can use the british
or the american spelling whichever you prefer just remember that spelling counts if you spell
a word incorrectly it will not be counted as a correct answer and sometimes if you're
hesitant and you're not sure how to spell a word a good trick is to take a sheet of paper
and just write this word down in several different ways look at it and see which one looks correct
sometimes we don't remember how to write it but we can recognize it when we see it also
completed sentences must be grammatically correct so when you have some time to review your answers
after your test read each sentence where you feel they get and see if this sentence is correct
for example if you write in question one photos must not be in a a frame that's incorrect
because the article is there twice the sentence should be correct and yes never write articles
in your answers sometimes you need to write down a name of a person or a straightening
and what you should know is that those names have a spelling which is more complex
than it may seem let me give you a couple of examples could you please take a sheet
of paper and a pen and try to write those down so here is the first one you hear a dialogue and
someone says could you please give me your name of course it's james rosie rosie is it r o s y
no it's a o set i e you see the surname is more complex than it seemed and thus they gave you
an alternative and incorrect spelling and then the correct one so be prepared for that
sometimes they give you the correct spelling straight away like in the second example
could you please give me your address of course it's 10 leicester square lester could
you spell it for me of course it's l e i c e s t r again it's more complex than it seemed
sometimes you may need to write down a number a telephone number a house number or a flat number
and i have a few examples for you to practice ready could you give me your telephone number it's
0784 506 406 0. did you get it okay o is what we call zero in a telephone number
o and if you have two of them you say double o like double o seven james bond and if you have
three digits which are the same it's triple triple seven or triple six and number two void
here are two more telephone numbers let's practice already the first one is
oh five double o seven six
okay did you get this one correctly let's try once more
0 9 6 5 8 7 5 3 1 and here is the telephone number if you have like nine nine you don't have to say
double nine they may say nine nine so be ready for that too and for house and flat numbers
you may just get a number 13 or 85 but you may also get a letter for example
25 a or 30 b i actually had that in one of my previous tests so be prepared i think that
the two most complex types of questions in ielts listening are multiple choice questions especially
when those options are long and label the map questions and for them i have two separate videos
with strategies and practice tasks and i will link them in the description and now let me give you a
few tips for the paper-based and computer-based ielts listening if you take a paper-based exam
then in ielts listening you can work directly on the question sheets which is very convenient you
can underline keywords and it takes virtually no time you can cross out incorrect options
imagine you have four options you hear the two of them are incorrect you eliminate them but
then you miss the correct answer you have just two options left which means that you have a 50
chance to guess it correctly which is a good thing but in ielts listening paper-based exam
you need to be careful about the exam format the answer format for example if you have a question
like this and the correct answers are cleaning and shopping and you write those words
on the answer sheet these are incorrect answers because you need to use the letters b and d so
be careful about that it's not a problem in a computer-based exam because you simply click
on the correct options but in the computer-based test you have no time to use their highlight
to highlight keywords you simply memorize them and there is no easy way to cross out incorrect
answers either they will give you a sheet of paper with instructions and a pencil that you can use to
take notes but there is no time for that so i think that you should just concentrate on the
screen with your mouse and just click on correct answers and that's it in the computer-based test
all questions are split into four screens 10 questions per screen and when the test
opens you see probably the first eight or nine questions and you need to scroll
down to reveal the tense question the very first time i took a computer-based test i almost
missed it so be careful and scroll down and also when the test moves on to the second section
you need to click to go there the screen will not change automatically and you don't need to
wait for the instructions to go to the second section as soon as the tense question is done
you can click and start reading those questions straight away and you have a convenient function
to mark questions to review at the bottom of the screen if you're wondering how it all looks how
the computer based platform looks and how to use it i have a video demonstration and i will link
it in the description box below now let's discuss how you should spend your revision time at the end
of the test in a paper-based test you have 10 minutes that's quite a lot of time so first of
all transfer all the answers you're certain about to the answer sheet and here pay attention to the
answer format and don't write a word like cleaning instead of a letter b as we discussed before
then try to figure out answers to questions you missed sometimes if you read it again you can
just guess what the answer is if not just mark one answer answer all the questions by the end because
you don't lose any points for incorrect answers and you always have a chance to guess it correctly
and finally check your feeling the gap questions check the spelling of your words and check that
the grammar of each completed sentence is correct 10 minutes should be enough to do it all in the
computer-based test you have just two minutes but you don't need to transfer your answers
so spend this time on figuring out answers to questions you missed or wanted to revise and check
filling the gap questions finally if we're talking about how you should prepare for your
ielts listening test it really depends on how much time you have before your test i have a detailed
video with instructions to prepare in one week one month and three months and you can see it right on
the screen thank you so much for watching me today good luck with your preparation and your exam bye