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