hi there it's asiya what is the biggest difficulty in ielts listening
i think it's the pace if you just listen to the recording it's not
that bad if you read the questions you can probably understand almost everything
it's when these two come together but ielts listening becomes really challenging and you know
i found this opinion about ielts listening the very first time i took my exam to study in london
when my score was 7.5 and i still feel this way today after 10 years in the uk so whichever
english level you're at right now knowing how to distribute your time and attention
is key in this test and i have a strategy that i believe can help you okay let's get started
how do you feel about a little demonstration i'll show you five questions listen to the recording
follow the instructions and try to answer them it will take you four minutes and fully reveal
the problem i'm talking about if you'd rather go straight to the strategies click on the
video timeline to jump to the next section okay here is a task you will hear two urban planning
students called carla and rob discussing their presentation on cities built by the
sea following instructions from their tutor first you have some time to look at questions 21 to 25.
now listen carefully and answer questions 21 to 25
okay so what i'd like you to do now is to talk to your partner about your presentations
on urban planning you should have done most of the reading now so i'd like you to share your
ideas and talk about the structure of your presentation and what you need to do next
okay rob i'm glad we chose quite a specific topic cities built next to the sea it made it
much easier to find relevant information yeah and cities are growing so quickly i mean we know that
more than half the world's population lives in cities now yeah though that's all cities not just
ones on the coast but most of the biggest cities are actually built by the sea i'd not realized
that before nor me and what's more a lot of them are built at places where rivers come out into the
sea but apparently this can be a problem why well as the city expands agriculture and industry tend
to spread further inland along the rivers and so agriculture moves even further inland up the river
that's not necessarily a problem except it means more and more pollutants are discharged into
the rivers so these are brought downstream to the cities right did you read that article about miami
on the east coast of the usa no well apparently back in the 1950s they built channels to drain
away the water in case of flooding sounds sensible yeah they spent quite a lot of money on them
but what they didn't take into account was global warming so they built the drainage
channels too close to sea level and now sea levels are rising they're more or less useless
if there's a lot of rain the water can't run away there's nowhere for it to go the whole
design was faulty so what are the authorities doing about it now i don't know i did read that
they're aiming to stop disposing of waste water into the ocean over the next 10 years
but that won't help with flood prevention now will it no really they just need to find the money for
something to replace the drainage channels in order to protect against flooding now but
in the long term they need to consider the whole ecosystem right really though coastal cities can't
deal with their problems on their own can they i mean they've got to start acting together at an
international level instead of just doing their own thing the thing is everyone knows what the
problems are and environmentalists have a pretty good idea of what we should be doing about them
so they should be able to work together to some extent but it's going to be a long time before
countries come to a decision on what principles they're prepared to abide by yeah if they ever do
okay the answers are 21 b 22 a 23 c 24 b 25 a it was a hard task wasn't it let me
know in the comments how many questions out of five you could answer correctly
coming back to our strategy could you read all the questions and options before the recording started
i couldn't we were given around 35 seconds and that's just not enough and i find that
in multiple choice questions knowing each option in advance really makes a difference
i'll link the video about this particular type of task but more generally my main ielts listening
trick is to use the time for instructions and revision to read coming questions
there are four sections in ielts listening at the end of each section you are given
30 seconds to review your answers together with instructions telling you to do so that's
45 seconds plus a time with instructions for the next section you could get one minute 45 seconds
to read the questions instead of 30 seconds do you think it would make a difference to your
ability to answer these questions and if you're wondering if you're actually allowed to turn the
page and go to the next section before you hear the instructions to do so the answer is yes once
you open the test questions you can go to any of them to any page you wish in a computer-based exam
you just need to click on the next question or the arrow to go to the next section
as for reviewing the answers there is a bit of time at the end of the test when you can do that
two minutes for a computer-based test and 10 minutes for a paper-based test so the only thing
i do during the test is i mark the questions i want to return to next
ielts listening questions come in order i've often talked about the question order in ielts reading
where knowing which questions common order and which don't is essential to answering more of them
i actually discussed my reading strategy in a separate video
as for ielts listening all the questions come in order just sometimes it's not obvious let me show
you a couple of more difficult types of tasks so this is a matching information exercise in the
box saying decisions you have seven options and below you see your questions 26 to 30.
so you should follow the questions first you hear about the historical background then geographical
factors and so on before the recording starts try to memorize the options in the box
so you could quickly understand what they're talking about another complex type of task is maps
it's easier to deal with if you study the map and try to memorize all the elements on it
the main road access road factory trees and so on again questions come in order first you hear
about a coffee room then warehouse staff canteen and so on the third element of the strategy is
to concentrate on the right things remember that information is never repeated in ielts listening
each option is only discussed once it's either correct or incorrect the answer will not
change once you've found your answer move on to the next question if you're not sure
what the answer is mark this question to review and go to the next one if you missed an answer
don't re-read the options don't even think about it while the recording is still playing you likely
miss the next answer and may even lose where you are in the test which is much more costly
concentrate on the questions which are being discussed and come back to the questions
you missed once you've completed the last section if you're taking a paper-based exam
underlying keywords they will help you concentrate and cross out incorrect answers
in a computer-based exam there is an option to highlight words but i find that there is
no time for that united's listening and all this clicking is quite distracting so just
read and memorize let's summarize to answer more questions in ielts listening use the time
for instructions and revision to read common questions follow the questions in ielts listening
they come in order and try to concentrate on the right things don't think about questions
you missed or how to highlight keywords in a computer-based exam that's all for today the
videos about my reading strategy and multiple choice questions that i mentioned before are
right here thank you so much for watching me today good luck with your preparation and your exam bye