Skip to content

Listening tips

How to prepare for the IELTS Listening test, tips and techniques that help to raise your score

Listening: distractions

Continuing the previous post, here comes

Listening Tip # 3 – don’t let them distract you
(oh boy, are they good at that! 🙂 )

In the Listening section of IELTS the recording uses several different voices – of younger and older people, men and women. You may also hear different accents – Australian, British, American, Japanese, etc. The background noise is also different. It can be of an airport, a cafe-shop, a street, a University lecture hall, you name it. Be ready for it and don’t let it distract you – because that is exactly what they want. Ignore the noises and listen for the answers.

Of course, the accent you hear the most is British. Suggestion: when you are studying for IELTS, listen to as much British accent as you can. Where can you get it? I liked what BBC have – visit BBC site by clicking here. You can listen there to news (and read the transcript), learn the news vocabulary, learn the pronunciation, etc. Try it, you might like it.

A very good site to use for listening exercises in American English is VOA News – click here to visit it. This is how they recommend using their site:
“The short sentences, limited vocabulary and slow pace of speaking make it easy to understand. It succeeds in helping people learn English in a non-traditional way. People around the world practice their listening and speaking skills by recording the programs and playing them repeatedly. Internet users can also listen to programs on the Special English Web site while reading the text.”

Hang in there, people, more tips are coming!

Listening – a skill, not a gift!

Often Listening can be your biggest problem. I know it because almost all my IELTS-taking friends had trouble there. Your Listening ability in many cases is not developed enough. But the good news is that Listening is a skill, not a gift, which means anyone can learn how to listen and understand (almost :)) every word. My friends and I came up with this technique that worked for us.

What usually happens:

You listen and hear a “Blablablablabla”, which you can’t to break into words, and for that reason it makes no sense to you. There is a big difference between seeing a word printed on paper when you read and hearing it. If you saw a word, it doesn’t mean you will recognize it when you hear it. Every word you have read, you need to hear at least once.

What can be done about it:

You need to teach yourself the words

How do you do it:

When training, take a recording of the news, a lecture, a television program, a movie or an actual IELTS Listening test and work with it.

Listening Tip # 1 – use a transcript.

Use an IELTS Listening test – just choose from all the links in the right sidebar. You need a test that has a transcript, so I suggest Listening test # 1 (be patient, their site is slow).
First try just listening, to get used to the accent. Then start working with a recording and a transcript: go over the recording, stop it after every sentence and use the transcript to make sure you understand every word.

Listening Tip # 2 – repeat phrases

You can use any recording. First, listen, remember what you heard and stop the recording after each phrase. Even if you didn’t understand the phrase, play it in your head a couple of times, like a broken record “Tonight we have a special guest”, “Tonight we have a special guest”, “Tonight we have a special guest”.
Then say it out loud. If you understood that phrase at first, this exercise will improve your pronunciation. If you didn’t understand the phrase for the first time, this repetition will give you more time to hear it better, break it into words and make sense out of them. And if it is still difficult, you can always rewind and hear the phrase again.