IELTS Listening: Four Essential Exam Skills

There are four important skills that you will need to use throughout the listening exam.

1. Predicting Answers
2. Understanding Synonyms and Paraphrases
3. Avoiding Distractors
4. Understanding Fast/Connected Speech

In this post, I'm going to how to do these four things on exam day. If you look at this blog on my website you can also do some extra practice exercises.

1. How to Predict Answers

Before listening, you have 20 - 35 seconds to read the questions and predict some of the answers. Making predictions will help prepare your ear to catch the correct answer.

Prediction Exercise:

Look at the following exercise and ...

1) ... think about what type of word/number the answer could be.

Which of the answers (1-8) would be ...

NOUNS / VERBS / ADJECTIVES / NUMBERS / NAMES / TIMES / PRICES / DAYS OF THE WEEK

2) If it's a noun/verb/adjective, think about what specific word it could be.

• Can you make any reasonable guesses as to the missing words?

• Did you make predictions similar to those below?

When preparing for the exam, take your time to practise looking at these gap-fill type exercises and making predictions for 1) the type of word it could be 2) if it's a noun/verb/adjective, what specific word it could be.

On exam day you only have 20 - 35 seconds to read the questions, but if you've practised this skill beforehand, you should be able to make predictions quickly and efficiently.

2. How to Understand Synonyms and Paraphrases

Look at the following multiple choice question.

It is very unlikely that in the recording the speaker will say the exact words you can see in the question (“Stevenson’s was founded in 1926”) - they will most likely use a synonym of ‘founded’ or explain the idea using a paraphrased sentence.

Some possible synonyms for 'founded' could be:

- started

- began

- set up

- launched

Look at the audioscript to see how the speaker gives the answer:

In the recording, instead of "founded", the speaker says "set up" and instead of "he set up Stevenson's" he says "this company", referring back to the first sentence.

When preparing for the exam, take your time to practise predicting synonyms and paraphrases. Also, improving your own ability to rephrase sentences and use synonyms will help you for the other three parts of the exam.

Now look at the audioscript.

• How have the ideas in questions 11-14 been expressed in the audio with synonyms and paraphrases?

Answers:

12: A - the healthcare industry (apart from including some 'distractors', this answer is given quite directly!

13: B - the company has no plans to move (the site is big enough, so moving to a new location has never been necessary ... we intend to carry out major refurbishment of this site)

14: C - meetings with a teacher (you'll have a presentation from one of the managers)

3. How to Avoid being Tricked by 'Distractors'

Low level listeners or candidates who are only listening superficially might think they hear an answer, but it is actually only a ‘distractor’ (or, 'red herring'). These distractors are designed to separate the higher level listeners from the lower level listeners.

In contrast to lower level listeners, higher level listeners will be able to understand the meaning of whole ideas, not just individual words or bits of phrases. They will also be more sensitive to ‘signpost’ language like ‘but’, ‘however’, ‘actually’ and ‘in fact’ as well as rising and falling intonation.

You can find a practice distractors exercise here.

4. How to Understand Fast/Connected Speech

Being able to understand fast, reduced, and connected speech will help you follow the recordings in general, and in some cases will also help you identify the correct answer.

When English learners think about 'fast speech', they might simply think how native speakers say many words in a short space of time, or, very quickly.

However, one of the ways in which native speakers are able to say many words in a short space of time, or, speak quickly, is by using reduced forms and connected speech.

Reduced forms and connected speech are quite large topics, which include pronunciation features such as:

• Contractions (I am > I'm, we'll, they've)
• Geminates (twin sounds: She's studying > She'studying")
• Catenation (linking words: Pick it up" > Pi-ki-tup)
• Intrusion (adding an extra sound: Do it > Do-wit)
• Elision (deleting a sound: Don't go!" > Don' go")
• Assimilation (joining sounds to make a new sound: Don't you > Don'cha)
• Abbreviated phrases (want to > wanna, going to > gonna)
• The Schwa (He's a friend of the family > He's ? friend ? th? family.)

Learning about these pronunciation features will help you understand the speakers in the test and will improve your listening comprehension in general.

But don't worry, in the IELTS exam, the speakers never really speak that fast. You'll never come across this for example:

Bonus: How Improving your Vocabulary, Grammar, and Pronunciation will Improve your Listening Score

To improve your listening comprehension, as well as listening to more English, you should work on building your vocabulary, improving your grammar, and learning more about how native speakers sound when they're speaking naturally.

If you improve your vocabulary by learning new words and phrases, synonyms, paraphrases, and collocations, it will be much easier to predict answers and follow the audio in the listening exam.

If you improve your grammar, this will help you predict answers, as well as distinguish distractors from the real answers.

If you improve your pronunciation, you will be able to better understand fast, connected, reduced speech.

Listening to English every day and working on the above four skills will massively increase your score in the IELTS listening test.

If you'd like any extra help with your IELTS preparation, send me a message!