Explore

Listening

Winsdor

Summary

IELTS Computer-Based Test Notes:

- Notes allowed on paper with pencil. - Answers entered on computer. - Four sections: reading, listening, speaking, writing. - Writing task one: 1/3 of writing score. - Writing task two: 2/3 of writing score. - Audio files unique, not found in practice materials.

Listening Test Preparation:

- Strong grammatical and lexical background needed. - Identifying keywords essential. - Adjectives and articles as keywords. - Focus on keywords, not every word. - Predict word forms, use background knowledge.

Listening Test Strategies:

- Turn to relevant section before audio starts. - No negative points for incorrect answers. - Predict word forms, use collocations. - Instructions may specify "one word only" for countable nouns.

Improving Listening Skills:

- Work smarter, not harder. - Pay attention to discourse markers. - Answers often found at end of paragraphs. - Post-listening strategies: listen again, note potential answers, read transcript. - Russian speakers tend to perform well. - Maximize listening score for overall band score.

Webinar Introduction:

- Participants asked to introduce themselves in chat. - Difficulties: understanding every word, fast speech, accents, single audio exposure. - IELTS and TOEFL use clear, non-regional accents. - Paper-based vs. computer-based format pros and cons. - Personal preferences and learning styles important for format choice.

IELTS vs. TOEFL Listening Skills:

- Anticipation, targeted listening, signposting language, language of making distinctions, pronunciation features. - TOEFL requires inference skills, listening for function. - IELTS is a paraphrase and synonym game. - TOEFL requires investigative listening.

TOEFL Listening Test Structure:

- Two conversations, several lectures. - Total duration: ~36 minutes. - Total questions: 28. - Question types: note, form, table completion, matching, multiple choice, short answer, map/plan labeling, diagram/flowchart completion, sentence completion, summary completion.

Listening Test Tips:

- Prepare for numbers, letters, different accents. - Questions in same order as audio. - If an answer is missed, move on to next question. - Read instructions carefully for word/number limits. - Pay attention to discourse markers, sentence stress.

Screen Fatigue and Test Format Considerations:

- Screen fatigue can affect computer-based test-takers. - Paper-based test may suit those with screen fatigue. - Computer-based test: faster results, headphones provided, smaller rooms.

IELTS Listening Test Structure:

- 40 questions in ~30 minutes. - Time to read questions before and check answers after listening. - Four sections with increasing difficulty. - Sections 1 and 2: everyday contexts. - Sections 3 and 4: academic/training contexts.

TOEFL Listening Test Structure:

- Three lectures on academic topics.

Summary made by Jill White Voice Notes Assistant (https://t.me/JillWhite_voice_notes_bot?do=open_link)

All right, welcome Natalia, Timur, Norman, good to see some names for the second time. Welcome back to those who came on Monday.

If you're new, if this is your first time to come, write in the chat which city you're in and maybe which exam you're planning to take in the future. See a lot of people joining, great, nice to meet all of you.

My name is Alex, you can see, of course, on my picture, but yeah, write in the chat where you are, which city you're from, and which exam you plan to take if it's your first time attending one of these webinars. Good evening Aljona, maybe it's the same Aljona from last time, if it is, good to talk to you again.

And today we're going to talk about IELTS listening. We talked last time about the different types of exams, the different types of English exams and IELTS reading in particular, and today we'll talk mostly about listening in IELTS, but also some listening in TOEFL as well.

Good evening Natalia, third time here from Omsk, great. Natalia, have you ever been to Tomsk or is that not typical for people from Omsk to go to Tomsk?

I think I read Omsk is the capital of humor, is that, I don't know if that's true or not. Kaliningrad, great, welcome, it is a good, Kyrgyzstan, great, welcome again, Norman, I remember from last time, Anna, welcome, good evening.

Well what I want to do to start then is I just want to ask all of you, what do you find most difficult when you're doing a listening test or even when you're just listening to people who are native speakers or fluent speakers speaking in English? I already see some people say numbers, yeah, welcome from Valencia, Anastasia from Spain, Tatiana is saying numbers are quite difficult, yeah, welcome Jelena, great, I'm glad you're enjoying the marathon.

I have some other options here on my screen, I just want all of you to maybe consider, which of these do you find the most difficult when you're listening to someone?Natalia, it looks like you're saying maybe E, right? You want to understand every word.

And if you don't understand every word, it can cause some panic, maybe, or just it can make you stop listening very closely, lose confidence. If all of you have a different option, you can, of course, just write it in the chat, explain it in your own words.

But maybe you agree with one of these options, A through F, here. Too fast, yeah.

Seems like C is a common one, yeah. C and E, maybe, like Natalia said.

Accents, yeah. Are there any accents that are very difficult, Natalia, in particular, or just the individual accent of a person?

Maybe that's sometimes quite difficult. Every person talks differently from the other people that speak their language, right?

So we all have kind of individual accents as well as national accents. Hearing the audio only one time, yeah, Aljona, that is stressful, and unfortunately, it's true for IELTS, TOEFL, all the big exams, they only let you listen once.

All points to some extent, Liverpool accent, yeah, Nermin. I used to have a colleague from Liverpool, but I could understand him pretty well, but I could understand why, for people who aren't familiar with the accent, it can be kind of different, for sure, in some countries, yeah.

So yeah, hopefully, we'll address a lot of these questions later, and we'll talk about why maybe some of them shouldn't make you so worried, and why maybe some of them can be easily overcome with different preparation strategies. The first thing about accents, of course, is that in IELTS, at least, and in TOEFL as well, actually, you'll hear a range of accents, but the good news is the people who are speaking are trying to speak as clearly as possible, so it's unlikely that you hear a lot of dialect accents, you know, like maybe Liverpool, for example, you won't hear an accent that is very regional, or maybe is considered, you know, non-standard, like some accents might be considered kind of slang or dialect.

Luckily, in IELTS and in TOEFL, you won't hear as much of that, but you will hear a range of accents. IELTS, they tend to be more often British and Australian, but also Canadian and American.American, TOEFL tends to have more American accents, but it also has accents from other parts of the Anglosphere, the English-speaking world.

So it is good to be familiar with all of them, but they don't affect people's speech too much in the audio, fortunately. So yeah, let's...

Welcome, by the way, Tatiana. Glad you could join from St. Petersburg, wonderful city.

Let's look at the overview then for what we're going to talk about today. So we'll talk about the listening test, mostly in IELTS, but also a little bit in TOEFL.

And in particular, we'll look at the test formats and scoring method, the structure of the listening test, the different question types on the listening test, and some strategies and general tips to help you perform better, hopefully, on the test. Very similar to what we did with the reading test, but maybe a little bit more detailed this time.

So let's start then with the test formats. In IELTS listening, you can take it in two different ways.

One of the ways you can do it is the traditional way, the paper-based format of the exam, which you take at a test center. And you can also take a computer-based version.

This is also at a test center, but in recent years, they've also introduced an option where you can take the exam from your home on your computer. The majority of tests, though, tend to be paper-based at a test center or paper-based at some kind of, I'm sorry, computer-based at a test center as well.

So those are the two most common options. And which one you take ultimately depends on your own preferences, but we'll talk about the differences between these formats so you maybe know a little bit better what your preference is.

This is what the computer-based test looks like. I know it's not very easy to see the picture.

It's a bit blurry. So apologies, but it's the best picture I could get.

But you can see, basically, you just click if your answer is here for number 31. If your answer is age group, you just click here with your mouse and it selects that answer for you.

If you want to change your answer, maybe you click age group and then you want to change it. You can change it very easily on the computer-based version.

You just click the other option. If you have to write something in the sentence, if it's a completion task, then you just click here and then you type on a keyboard your answer.

All right, so it's fairly straightforward, right? There's a timer, which is nice.

They tell you how much time is remaining. And of course, you can change the question you're looking at, but of course, you can't replay the audio more than once in IELTS listening, computer-based or paper-based.

So you probably don't need to go back to the earlier parts of the exam unless you want to check maybe...a question from earlier, an answer from earlier, to make sure that you wrote it correctly. But yeah, that's basically what it looks like.

And when you're thinking about which format is best for you, there are some different things that you can consider. We kind of looked at some of these in the context of the reading test.

They're kind of similar, but some of them are unique to the listening test. So the paper-based format for the listening test might be better for if you want an extra 10 minutes at the end of the test to check your answers.

The computer-based test doesn't give you 10 extra minutes at the end to transfer your answers because you're typing them, right? So they don't give you that extra time.

In the paper-based test, you do have 10 minutes to transfer your answers to your answer sheet. And during that 10 minutes, of course, you can check the spelling of different words to make sure that you spelled them correctly.

That can be very useful if you're worried about spelling. Also, for some people, typing is not very comfortable to do while listening.

For me, it's not a big deal. But for some people, for sure, it can be a big deal.

So it just depends on your own learning preferences, right? When you're doing listening practice, do you find it easier to write or to type?

If it's easier to write, the paper-based version is better for you. And some people don't like the idea of splitting attention.

You do have a piece of paper and a pen and a pencil, I should say, when you're doing the listening test on the computer. But, of course, if you're taking notes with a piece of paper and pencil and then typing with your hands the answers, you can feel like you're splitting your attention too much.

It's kind of fragmenting, maybe. So that's another thing to consider.

And maybe if, like some people, you get screen fatigue very easily. We talked about this word.

Fatigue just means kind of tiredness, when you feel tired. If you get tired from looking at a screen too very easily, then the paper-based test might be better for you as well.

On the other hand, the computer-based format might be better for you. If you don't need that extra time at the end, you're confident about your spelling, and you like typing on computers, you like writing answers on computers.

The good thing about the computer-based format as well is that in many test centers, you get headphones for the computer-based, but maybe for the paper-based, they don't give you headphones. So you should check with your center.

They might not offer headphones to listen to the audio for the paper-based, but they will need to offer headphones for the computer-based. So that's one good thing about the computer-based.

You always get headphones. Another thing is that with the computer-based, often you have smaller rooms, so there are less people.around you.

If you're easily distracted, that might be better for you. And, of course, the most important thing, probably, for the computer-based is you get faster test results.

So, if you need your results in 3-5 days, you should definitely take the computer-based version, but if you can wait 13 days and you prefer paper-based, that's a better option for you. So, Tatiana is asking in the chat, by the way, can you stop the recording or maybe listen twice?

And the answer, Tatiana, unfortunately, is no. You can't stop the recording at any point or skip ahead, right?

You have to listen as it's played. They play it for you.

And also, you can't obviously, yeah, listen a second time, right? So, you can't go back to the beginning.

You just listen once through, alright? So, because, actually, the academic and the general versions of IELTS, we talked about how in the reading, academic and general have different content.

The good news is for the listening test, they're the same, right? So, you don't have to make a difficult decision based on the listening test.

If you take academic IELTS, you have the same listening as if you take general IELTS, alright? So, for that reason, the scoring method is the same.

It's kind of similar to the reading, a little bit different, but if you get 39 to 40 correct, like in academic reading, you get a 9.0, 37 out of 38 answers, or 37 or 38 answers correct, you get an 8.5, right? So, there's the basic range of correct answers.

Any guesses what the most common score is, the average score is for test takers whose first language is Russian? Anyone have any guesses?

In the chat, maybe you can write the band score you think most Russian-speaking test takers receive. Alyona says 7.5, Tatiana 7.5, Marina says 7, Natalia says 7, 6.5. You're all really close, actually.

It's actually 6.9, so between 7 and 6.5, but closer to 7. This is the highest, usually, among all the different sections of IELTS.

Russian-speaking test takers tend to do better on listening than reading, writing, and speaking, and that might have an impact on how you create your study plan, alright? And also, maybe you decide that if listening is your lowest score, and all the other scores are quite high, like we talked about in the previous session, you might not need as much time to study because the listening testtends to improve more quickly than the other tests for test takers, right?

You can increase your score in listening more easily than in other tests, at least according to the research that's been done. So that's one thing to keep in mind as you're preparing.

People tend to do better. Hopefully that gives you a confidence boost that it's not impossible to do well on the listening test.

In TOEFL, the scoring is a bit different. I just wanted to include this because I know some people here are preparing for TOEFL as well.

In TOEFL, you get a score out of 30, and basically 22 to 30 correct is like advanced, 17 to 21 is like high intermediate, 9 to 16 low intermediate, and so on, okay? So they're a little bit different in terms of scoring.

But let's look more at the structure, and we'll look at the TOEFL structure as well. But let's focus a little bit on the IELTS test structure.

Can anyone tell me how many minutes, how many questions do you have in IELTS listening? 40 DR, is that questions or minutes?

40 questions, 30 minutes, 40 questions. Aliona says 28 to 30.

Yeah, questions, you're exactly right. DR and Anastasia, you're right as well.

You have about 30 minutes. Sometimes it's 40 minutes if you have that extra 10 minutes to transfer your answers.

But 30 minutes usually of actual listening, and that includes 30 seconds to one minute that they give you to read the questions before you hear the audio. So they always give you a little bit of time to read the questions.

And then after you listen to the audio, they often give you 30 seconds to check your answers. So that's really important.

We'll talk about how to use this time later, but that's good because it's very difficult to listen to 30 minutes of consecutive English speech if it's not your first language, right? It can be very exhausting.

There are small breaks in there, although not really longer than a minute. Like I said, if you're doing the paper-based test, you also have this 10 extra minutes to transfer your answers.

If you're doing computer-based, it's only two minutes, okay? So that's the main thing in terms of time.

There are 40 questions, like a lot of you mentioned, and you have 10 questions per section. So you have four sections, and about 10 different question types are possible.

We'll look at these four sections now because these are also really important because, first of all, they don't change, so they're always the same. And second of all, they include different types of speech, so it impacts how we study for the different sections.So you can see on the screen here, we have a little table with the different sections of the listening test.

So in the first section, you always hear a conversation, okay? It's always between at least two people, and it's going to be in an everyday context, not an academic context.

Maybe you have to complete a form to register for a concert, or maybe you have to complete a form to register for a series of webinars. It's some kind of everyday context that doesn't include too much academic language.

Okay? The first section is usually considered the easiest section.

The IELTS listening test, like we talked about with the reading test, and similar to what you probably talked about with the speaking test, it becomes more difficult as it progresses. So the first section is easier than the second, which is easier than the third and fourth.

Although some people struggle with the conversations, so they might find the conversation more difficult in section three than the monologue in section four. It's somewhat subjective, but for the most part, the test becomes more difficult as it progresses.

Part two is always a monologue, everyday context. Maybe you're looking at a museum.

Someone's giving you a tour of a museum. Or maybe they're telling you about changes to the park, and you have to look at a map of the park and make the right choice about what the changes are.

And then in parts three and four, if you're doing general or academic IELTS, it doesn't matter. You'll always have a conversation about a more academic context.

It could be discussing a research project, or maybe it could be a discussion between a professor and students. But it's always about something in a more academic or maybe training context, like work, for example.

And then there's always a monologue on a more academic subject. For your practice task, you heard something about the health benefits of dance.

So, you know, it's not the most academic topic. It's not, you know, phenomenology or epistemology or something.

It's something that is familiar to most educated people, but the focus is just more academic. Okay, so they'll talk about health benefits, but they'll use things like improve cognitive function.

Words like that that are more familiar when you're looking at academic texts. So that's the basic structure for IELTS listening.

Does anyone have any questions about this structure or about any of the formats?If you have any questions, you can put them in the chat, and I'll be happy to address them as we go on. But yeah, I don't see any questions for now.

It seems pretty straightforward. Okay, great, yeah.

So the TOEFL listening structure is actually kind of similar in some ways. So instead of two lectures, you have three lectures.

Well, although monologue is not the same as lecture, the thing about TOEFL lectures is that they're always on more academic topics, okay? So there are three lectures.

Some of these lectures include classroom discussion with the students and the professor. But yeah, it's usually an academic topic.

And then there are also two conversations, which are connected to campus life, university life. So within these two conversations, you'll have five questions per conversation, and each one is only about three minutes long.

For the different lectures, they're about three to five minutes, and you have six questions per lecture. So in total, it's about 36 minutes, a little bit longer than IELTS listening, but only 28 questions.

So much fewer questions in TOEFL listening than in IELTS listening. TOEFL used to have more questions than 28, it used to have closer to 40, I think.

But they've recently updated it, June 2023, and now there are only 28 questions, okay? So those are the main things about structure.

Let's look at the question types in more detail, because these impact how we are. Oh, Alexei, that's a really good question.

So Alexei is asking, can we see the questions before the listening? For IELTS, yes.

That's a really big difference between IELTS and TOEFL. In IELTS, you see the questions before you do the listening.

For TOEFL, you don't see the questions before you listen. You see the questions after you listen, all right?

So they require quite different skills. In TOEFL, you have to make notes while you're listening and hope that your notes are useful, and then you have to use those notes to answer the questions.

In IELTS, you get to see the questions before you listen, so you're just looking at words that match the questions. You don't have to take many notes, although we'll talk about something you will have to do when you look at these questions.

But let's talk a little bit about the question types here. So there are, like I said, about 10 different question types.

Note completion, form completion, table completion, matching, multiple choice, short answer questions, map and plan labeling, diagram and flowchart completion, sentence completion, and summary completion. Ooh, sounds like a lot, right?

And it was a lot for me to say there. But the truth is, a lot of these question types can be categorized or grouped together.

A lot of them are very similar in nature and similar in form.terms of the skills that they require from you. So let's look at how we can break these down into categories.

So the first category we can call the completion category, maybe. So here you have things like form completion, note completion, table flowchart summary, sentence completion.

They all have something like this, a gap in the sentence, right? What kinds of skills do you think are being tested by this kind of question type, where you have a gap in a sentence and you have to fill in the gap?

What do you think these questions are, or what do you think they require from you while you're listening? And you can think about these in terms of the skills we talked about with the reading test or the strategies we talked about for the reading test.

Can we use any of those strategies? Knowledge of parts of the speech, Aljona says.

Yeah. So when you're looking at the sentences, I think, Aljona, what you mean is like guessing what part of speech will be in the gap, right?

In this space here, yeah. We talked last time about what kinds of words might go into these gaps after increases, and maybe we can only use one word only.

What kind of word do you think will go in the gap in number 31? Noun, verb, adjective.

Aljona says noun. Yeah, a lot of people are saying noun, exactly.

And if we can only write one word, it's probably some kind of abstract noun or a noun which doesn't need an article. So maybe it's like, let's say, fitness, for example.

If that's the answer, then like, I think, Aljona said, spelling is also really important. So if you write fitness like this would be considered wrong.

It would be considered incorrect, unfortunately. You would have to write it with the correct spelling like this.

So then you could get the right answer. Yeah, it was memory.

That's right. They increase, I think, memory here.

But anyway, regardless of the word, you need to be able to spell it right. And using this skill of prediction that a lot of you mentioned earlier, guessing the parts of speech, it's really important for these kinds of question types.

Now for 29, you don't have to spell anything. You just have to spell the letter A, B, C, or D.

Hopefully, that's not a problem for all of you. But what kinds of skills do you think are required inin these multiple choice question types where you have to choose between A, B, C, or D down here.

What do you think might be difficult about this kind of question? Scanning for particular information, yeah.

And notice here too, analytical skills. Yeah, Natalia, sometimes you think all the answers might be possible.

Look how much more you have to read for number 29 if you're, like Marina said, scanning for particular information and, or Natalia said, trying to choose one answer, you have to read four different sentences before you listen. And number 31 up here, you only have to read one sentence basically.

So you have to look through a lot more text before you listen. Jelena and Aljona both have good points too about the analytical skills required or the confusion that can result from having these different options.

You will have to analyze which one is correct because in the listening, they don't just say something about conflicting data. Very often with multiple choice questions, they'll also talk about maybe research or maybe they'll talk about trends, but the answer will be A.

They'll talk about B and D to try and trick you. Unfortunately, like we said about the reading test, the listening test is trying to kill you.

It's trying to trick you. It will give you false words, confusing words, distractor words, as I'll call them later on.

And you have to try and ignore them if they don't sound perfectly correct. Maybe in the audio, they'll say something like, it focuses too little on possible trends.

So that makes us know, okay, letter B is not correct. So you can cross it out, but then they'll say something about letter D, which will sound kind of correct, but instead of it draws on research that is out of date, it might say that is up to date.

So then you have to keep listening until they finally say the correct answer. Only one answer is correct in this kind of question, Tatiana.

There are some questions where you can choose multiple answers, but this is just multiple choice. But in this kind of answer too, often the correct one is the last one that they say.

Not always, okay? But very often they'll talk about one.Say, no, that's not a good idea.

And then they'll talk about the last one, which is correct. But don't use that as a strategy, because they definitely change the order.

So Aljona said, sometimes the speech is understandable, but it's hard to understand. Yeah, that's what the author means, right?

That's a good point, Aljona. There's a difference between intelligibility, which is the ability to understand the words, and then also comprehensibility, which is understanding what the words actually mean.

And that's where it becomes really important, Aljona, to listen for some words that mark discourse, words that tell us what the author or what the speaker is thinking. So they could be words like apparently.

If I say, for example, apparently, the study was falsified, that would show that I'm not 100% confident about what I'm saying. But that's a really important word in that kind of sentence, because it tells you what I mean, not just what I'm saying.

So yeah, when you're doing listening practice, that's why it's also good to listen to other types of speech, where people, for example, in a podcast, where people are just talking. Because in everyday speech, we use our voice a lot to show what we mean, right?

We don't just use words. We also use the sound of our voice, intonation, stress, et cetera.

That's why, as you're preparing for the listening test, it's good to listen to all different kinds of authentic speech. Anyway, let's look at some other types of questions.

So you can see on the next one, I have here plan, map, diagram, and labeling. This is a task where you have a map, some kind of picture usually, or a plan, a diagram maybe.

And you have to choose the right option for these different letters. So maybe they'll say like A is where something will be built, the new library.

That will be an option. It'll say A here, and then it'll say library.

And you have to write A next to number 11, for example. Excuse me.

Now, this task is quite difficult for me, because sometimes when I'm doing this, I get lost or I stop paying attention. And then I don't know where we are on the map.

Because what they do is they give you a kind of audio guide. And they tell you where to go.

They say, keep going down London Road until you get to Main Road, and then take a left on South Entrance. What do you think might be difficult with this kind of task, besides, like I said, getting lost and forgetting where you are?

What other kind of language might be used in this kind of task?Maybe even parts of speech, you know, when I'm telling you where something is, I'm telling you where the nearest magnet is, what kind of language might I use? Language about giving directions, and Tai says, yeah.

Take a left, take a right. Prepositions of direction.

Yeah, Yelena, you're spot on. You're exactly right.

Prepositions of place, of direction, second turning, like Natalia says. This language is really important when you have a map task.

They'll say, A, for example, they'll say is opposite the apartment blocks, just north of the lake. Whenever they give you a compass in IELTS, like you have up here, or I should say a key, when they give you the directions, north, south, east, and west, you should always circle it because in the audio, they're bound to use one of these words.

They're going to say probably in the northeast part of the map, and you have to know that's up here, or they'll say, for example, if you're heading south, and then you take the first turn next to the south entrance, and then go all the way down to the end of the street, and they expect you to know that that is I. This kind of language is really great to review, language which talks about prepositions of place, directions, and so on.

There are also matching questions where you have features that describe different hotels, and you just have to match these features to the right hotel. This is quite similar to other tasks where you have to listen for synonyms.

I didn't include here, but there are also question types where you have to think about what two people agree on, and maybe you have to choose multiple answers. That can be quite tricky because they might talk about five things, but they only agree on two of them.

Language of agreement and disagreement is also really important. In the audio, they don't just say, I agree, or I disagree.

If they agree, they might say something like, oh, that's it, good. Let's go with that.

Or they might say, if they disagree, they might say something like, hmm, I'm not sure about that. How about blah?

And then they'll talk about something else. So you have to be careful with those, and we'll see an example later where people use this agreement and disagreement language.

So yeah, the main skills, if we can kind of summarize the main skills that are needed in IELTS listening, the main types of listening skills, because there are many types when you're listening in another language. One of them is anticipation.dating language, like someone said earlier, predicting the word forms, the parts of speech.

That's what you have to do in a lot of these questions when you're reading them. Before you listen, try and predict what part of speech it might be, maybe even what type, what category, you know, if it's about professions or types of, you know, memory, for example, then you can predict or anticipate this language.

Also, targeted listening. So this is kind of like what we talked about last time when we talked about scanning.

This is just listening for specific information, target information, and maybe synonyms most often. The only difference is it's audio rather than text, but it's very similar to the reading test.

Another thing about audio that you have to pay attention to is signposting language, transition language. All this is is basically language that we use to show the person who's listening what we're going to talk about next.

So if I say, for example, there are many advantages to taking computer-based over paper-based. First of all, after I say first of all, you know that I'm going to give the first advantage.

Second of all, I'm going to give the second advantage. And finally, now you know I'm going to conclude, I'm going to finish my list of advantages.

But then I might say, on the other hand, and this signals to you that I'm going to talk about paper-based advantages or disadvantages of the computer-based version. This kind of language is really useful when you're doing the audio, when you're listening to the audio, because it helps you know where you should be focusing on in the questions.

The questions are in the same order as the audio, but still, you don't always know when they're going to start talking about one of the questions. This kind of language can really help you orient yourself, become oriented in the flow of speech.

Also, language of making distinctions. So this is qualifying language, like we talked about with the reading test.

Instead of many, they might use the word few. And so that's a sign that it's a distracting answer choice.

We don't need to worry about this answer choice, because it's not a synonym. Few is the opposite of many.

IELTS will include a lot of distractor words like this to make sure that you can make distinctions when you're listening. Otherwise, it's easy for you to get confused when you're listening to something, and so they can't give you a band score that's high for listening, because this kind of confusion could lead to big errors, right?

And then finally, some pronunciation features. So like I was saying earlier, the good news is...that regardless of the accent the speaker has, they usually speak very clearly and they don't have a very unusual accent, right?

So, they speak in a way which is considered, you know, standard BBC English, whatever. And you will, though, have to listen to features of fluent speech.

Regardless of the accent, they'll use features of connected speech. So, instead of saying something like, you know, I will have to get a second opinion.

When you hear this in the audio, they'll say it more naturally, like, I'll have to. I'll have to get a second opinion.

I'll have to get a second opinion. A becomes shorter.

Have to becomes almost like one word. So, you will have to be familiar with this kind of feature of fluent speech because maybe sometimes the word which is reduced is an important word in terms of the answer because maybe in the answer is the phrase doesn't have to.

And in the audio, they say, for example, I will have to. Well, then, knowing this feature of connected speech where have to often just sounds like have to will help you get the right answer.

So, pronunciation can also be important in the listening test. Most of the answers are stressed in the sentence, though.

So, they're in the position of the sentence where we use stress or in Russian, when we give the word or phrase more prominence in our speech. So, being familiar with how it sounds when people stress words can help you hear the right answer as well.

All right. Those are the main skills for IELTS.

Now, keep in mind, if you're taking TOEFL, the skills are actually quite different. So, the format is very similar.

The content is very similar. The types of things you listen to are very similar.

Maybe a little bit different, a little bit more academic for TOEFL. But still, the difficulty of language is very similar.

But in TOEFL, you do have to use inference skills. So, this is where you have to not just listen for what the speaker says, but for what is suggested or implied, but not directly mentioned by the speaker.

In IELTS, you don't have to use inference skills. You're just listening on the surface of the audio.

In TOEFL, you have to go kind of below the surface, if you know what I mean. You also have to listen for function in TOEFL.

So, they might say something like, it's getting chilly in here. And you have to answer a question about why the speaker said that.

What's the function of what they said? Well, if somebody says that they probably want tothe other person in the room to open, or I'm sorry, to close the window.

So you have to do some investigative listening in TOEFL, and you have to think a little bit more about why people say things. You might even have to make a prediction about the future based on what people have talked about in the audio.

In IELTS, you never have to do that. IELTS is above all, like I said about the reading test, a paraphrase and synonym game.

You're listening to language. You're not really listening for ideas, okay?

The listening skills are more local, not so global. So this has a big impact on how you should prepare if you're taking IELTS.

Obviously, studying for IELTS will help you with TOEFL because you're improving your knowledge of language, but the skills are a little bit different. So you need to be able to be aware of what exactly the strategies are for IELTS in particular.

So let's take a closer look at some of these. So just some general tips.

People were asking earlier about how often or how many times we can listen to the audio in IELTS. Well, like I said, YOLO, you only listen once.

That's something to remember. When you're practicing, you can listen more than once, and I'll talk about why that might be a good idea.

But when you're doing the listening test, you only get one chance to listen, okay? Also, like Nerman was saying, if numbers are difficult, this is a good time to revisit and revise your knowledge of how numbers are pronounced in English.

Same thing with letters, right? If you don't remember that this letter here is pronounced I, then it's a good time to revise, or this is H, or I'm trying to think of another common difficulty for my students, Y, right?

Now is a good time to revisit how these letters are pronounced, and how, for example, these two numbers sound, right? 50 versus 15.

They sound a bit different, but this is one of the most common mistakes when students have something like 40 and 14, or 90 and 19. It's a common mistake that students will write down the wrong one because they sound very similar.

But if you can become more sensitive to the difference between these, 90 versus 19, then it'll be a lot easier for you when you have to do this in part one of the listening. So numbers and letters are important.

Also, accents, like we talked about, you need to be familiar with some different accents. I didn't put New Zealand here, but there are a lot of actually New Zealand accents in IELTS because part of IELTS, one of the owners of IELTS, I should say, is based in Australia.

So it doesn't ignore Australian and New Zealand accents. If you're not familiar.with these accents, try to get some practice listening to them.

They're not too different from, you know, they kind of sound like a mixture of British and American. They're not too different, but there are some things that are different, right?

Especially vowel sounds in New Zealand English can be a bit different from what you're maybe used to. Yeah, they have American-Canadian accents, although I've noticed the American accents, they sound like it's like a British actor doing an American accent.

So it's very clear, because when actors do accents, they speak very clearly. So you don't have people who are speaking too quickly, because obviously, maybe they're pretending to have another accent.

And also because they're doing it for the listening test, and they have instructions not to speak too quickly. So just remember this, the speed is not as big of a problem in IELTS as it is in natural conversation, okay?

But you will hear different accents, tomato, and so on. The questions are always in the same order as the audio.

This is really important, because in the other, you know, the reading, for example, sometimes the questions are in a different order of the text, a different order than the text, I should say. In the listening, they're always in the same order.

Even if you have, for example, a matching task, where you have to choose from A through F different features of a hotel, for 11 through 16, the features themselves, or the parts of the hotel, will be in the same order as the audio, okay? Yeah, even when you have multiple answers, they're in the same order as the audio.

So that's a really important thing to keep in mind. If you miss an answer, for example, then you're not going to be able to hear it again, right?

You just need to look at the next answer, or the next question, because that's where the audio will go next. It won't go back and re-answer a question that you missed.

So we'll talk about why that's important too. Also, the questions are far enough apart, so you have enough time to write your answer before they say the next answer.

This is a really important point, because a lot of students say that, you know, they don't have enough time to write their answer when they're doing listening tests, because then the next word is said. Well, it shouldn't be like that, because, you know, they've tested.

The people who have developed dials have tested enough that they have a good idea of how long it takes to write down a word. So the way that the test is constructed is they give you that amount of time between answers, so you have enough time to write down the word, and then start focusing on the next question.

Now,It is also good, though, to try and write quickly. Try not to write too slowly, but don't be too stressed.

If you feel like you don't have enough time, there should be enough time, right? That's the whole point of spacing these questions apart from each other.

Also, don't forget to read the instructions. This is probably one of the most common problems with students is that they don't read the instructions.

It's a very simple thing to remember, right? But all of us, when we're taking a test, it's easy to become stressed, and when we're stressed, we make mistakes, right?

So this is something that might happen to you, but if you remind yourself not to do it before taking the test, while taking the test, it can help you avoid a lot of mistakes that are not the problem of your listening, but just the problem of your ability to read instructions. So always read the instructions.

If it says one word, you can't write more than one word. If it says two words only and one number, you can't write two words and two numbers.

That will be considered incorrect, okay? And also, if you miss an answer, don't panic, because then you can compound your mistake, which means you can make another mistake because of your first mistake.

If you miss an answer, try not to lose focus. Try to regroup, to regain focus, and just start looking at the next question.

You can always come back to the answer that you missed later and write something down, but try not to lose too much focus, because then you might get five answers incorrect instead of just one. Try to minimize your losses if you can.

Also, we talked about discourse markers earlier, so becoming more familiar with this concept and listening, when you're listening to audio, about listening to how people structure their speech can be really useful in the listening test, because it helps you understand where the speaker is in terms of the questions and where the speaker is going next. So, you might not listen to these things right now, but as you continue to prepare for the test, try to focus on how people structure their speech when they're giving presentations or when they're explaining things in a conversation.

The good news is this is really easy to do with, you know, TED Talks. There are millions of TED Talks on YouTube now, and there are thousands of podcasts that are available.

You can listen to podcasts and just listen to how people, when they're giving answers, how they try and provide structure or how they signal to the person listening what they're going to do next. And the good thing about listening for these things more often is this can also help you with your speaking skills.

This is one of the key things that the examiner is listening for when you're listening to podcasts.do the speaking test in terms of fluency and coherence. So listen to discourse markers more.

Try to use them a little bit more. Also, the concept of stress is something that is really important to practice listening for before the exam because a lot of the answers, like I said earlier, are in the stress position in a sentence.

So the author will be talking about something, and he'll be talking, he'll be talking, and then he'll say, and then one of the main important things is the hair of the animal. And in that sentence, the hair of the animal, the word hair is stressed, but that's because it's the right answer.

And IELTS, the way that they've created this test, they don't want you to have any doubts about what the answer is once you know the answer. So they all need to have some kind of reason for being the answer.

Obviously, the first thing is it's a synonym, maybe, of a word in the question. And another reason is it's clear for anyone listening that the word is said in the audio.

So all of the words that are the answers are usually almost always said with pretty clear stress, okay? That's something you can listen to when you're doing your own practice without even trying to listen to every single word that somebody is saying.

Just try and pay attention to the words that are stressed in their speech. English is a stress-timed language, which means that stress plays a key role in English pronunciation.

In Spanish, for example, it's not a stress-timed language, right? So stress has less importance in terms of meaning.

But in English, stress has a lot of importance. It tells us what the focus word is.

It tells us where contrast exists. So when you're listening to people, try just listening to stress from a native or fluent speaker.

Don't even think about the language, the words that are being used. You can also practice your ability to listen to pronunciation, not just to meaning.

Another thing is that a really actually key thing here, once a section is finished, you can, of course, they say you now have 30 seconds to check your answers. And you can use that 30 seconds to check your answers.

If you're confident about your answers, maybe it's section one of the listening test where the answers are quite simple. If you're confident about those, you don't have to wait for the examiner to tell you or for the invigilator to tell you, okay, now turn to section two.

You can go straight to section two and you can start reading the questions. That gives you 30 seconds extra, a minute extra maybe, to start reading the questions and looking for keywords.

All right? So that's a key strategy we'll talk about in just a second.

Finally, never leave an answer blank.I know some of you said last time that you're preparing for exams like SAT or other exams where an incorrect answer can give you a negative point in your overall score. In IELTS, there are no negative answers, okay?

So if you get the answer wrong, it doesn't hurt your score. Well, you could get a higher score, of course, but it doesn't give you negative points.

It's just neutral. So if you can guess A, B, C, or D, always guess one of those four, right?

You have a 25% chance of getting it correct. If you think it might be a word like we talked about last time, and you know the phrase push the limits or push the boundaries, but you didn't hear it in the audio, then you still can write something, right?

And you're better off writing a word rather than just leaving the answer blank. You might have very good karma at this point in your life.

Maybe you've helped a lot of grandmothers cross the street. You could get this answer correct.

So don't leave anything blank. Always try to answer the questions, okay?

Alright, so those are the general tips, and you've probably heard a lot of those already. I want to look at some more specific strategies, and maybe some of this will be new for you.

Maybe you've heard about this as well, but some of these strategies are more specific to IELTS, and yeah, I hope they're useful. So the first thing is to think about focus.

So one of the most common pieces of advice that students hear when they're doing IELTS is focus. If you get a bad score next time, you just need to focus more.

Can anyone think about why this might be maybe not the best advice? Anyone type in the chat.

Why is it not always true that you just have to focus more in IELTS listening? Any ideas?

Alexei says no. You doubt yourself when you focus too much.

Yeah, Nermin, you know, people listen differently.Focus can make you more stressed, maybe, Irina says. Maybe you don't know the meaning of a word, and will focus on it.

Yeah, that's a good point, Margarita, right? No visualization, Tatiana says.

That's interesting, yeah. We'll talk more about maybe that in a minute.

But the thing is, I think some of you were really close when you said that it can make you more stressed. And maybe also you don't know the meaning of a word, but maybe you also don't need to know the meaning of a word.

So a more helpful way to think about focus in IELTS listening is, rather than thinking about how much you're focusing, try to think about what you're focusing on. You don't have to listen to every word in IELTS.

They're not asking you to give a summary in your own words after you do the listening test. They're only asking you for certain words.

Can you hear their synonyms in the audio? And so if you can try and focus only on the keywords, then you don't have to worry about all of the other language that's being spoken.

And you don't have to, because they're not required for the answers. And Anastasia says, you might fixate on a question.

Yeah, exactly. Doesn't do you any good, right?

So when you're listening, try not to focus on every single word when they're speaking, because then you'll waste a lot of your energy. You'll waste a lot of your attention bandwidth, I call it.

You only have a limited amount of attention when you're doing this kind of test, or at least I only have a limited amount. It's really exhausting to listen to 30 minutes straight in another language.

I've often found, when I'm listening to Russian, for example, if I'm watching a film and I try to understand every single word throughout the film, then I end up understanding very little for some reason. But if I just try to understand one or two words in every sentence or every spoken line, I notice that I understand a lot more, because I'm not stressing out about every word.

I'm only focusing on keywords. And then some of the other words, I just passively catch.

Or maybe when I hear one word, I make sense of the other words around it, because it gives me a lot of ideas about the context. So the same thing is true for IELTS listening.

You don't have to understand every single word. You just have to understand the most important ones.

How do you know what the most important ones are? Well, that's what we're going to talk about next.

Before you do the listening, you always have time to read the questions. And this is where you can, first of all, think about the word forms.

And like we said earlier, you can predict sometimes the types of words that are missing, the form of words that are missing. And this will help you activate your brain so that when they say the word, you'll either hear the correct word that is the correct form of the word, or you'll hear the correct form of the word.

And then you'll be able to make sense of it. And then you'll be able to make sense of it.

And then you'll be able to make sense of it.was as you predicted, or you'll hear a different type of word which creates a contrast with what you heard, but still it triggers your awareness, and it says, oh yes, that's different from what I thought. I thought it would be doctors, but actually the answer was lawyers.

Nonetheless, doctors and lawyers are pretty similar in terms of the word form. So you can see, for example, in this sentence here, or in these two questions, 39 and 40 here, what kind of word form do you think will be used in number 39?

Or maybe even, what kind of word? Aliona says noun.

Yeah, almost certainly a noun. What kind of noun, by the way?

What kind of noun do we often use after suffer from? Disease, maybe?

Yeah, feelings? Something abstract.

Obesity. When I was reading this, Jelena, I also thought about, maybe it's a noun ending in I-T-Y.

A lot of nouns that follow suffer from end in I-T-Y. A lot of abstract nouns end in this ending.

So it could be obesity. It could also be, oh, Zumba, you do, Jelena, great.

It's apparently very good for you. But yeah, it could be depression, obesity, which Aksana, that means being overweight.

Suffer from burnout. Artyom, that could be possible, yeah.

As a result of Zumba. Maybe not, but maybe some people do get burnout from doing too much Zumba.

But all of these words are totally appropriate after the phrase suffer from. Then you just have to listen for, okay, which word is it exactly?

Probably some kind of abstract noun. Some kind of, you know, a condition probably, right?

A health condition, physical condition. So the more of these listening tests you do, the better you'll become at predicting these types of words.

Background knowledge, yeah, Jelena, really does help. IELTS is not a test of background knowledge, but I would be lying if I said it doesn't help, right?

Of course it helps. Linguistic knowledge is a type of background knowledge, by the way.

If you have background knowledge that people suffer from burnout at work, that kind of background knowledge is also a kind of background linguistic knowledge. Your knowledge of word partnerships in English, what we call collocations, these can really help you to predict the kinds of words that will be following a verb, for example.

Or in this kind of sentence, Zumba became a for the participants.What kind of word do you think can follow become a and for? NNS is saying habit, yeah.

The word habit can definitely work here. If you've seen from other contexts, the phrase became a habit for somebody, it'll really help you to be able to guess.

If you haven't seen it, Yelena is exactly right. You still know that it's going to be some kind of singular countable noun because of the word a, right?

A relief, yeah, might even be it became a source of relief or something, right? Became a form of, yeah, kind of a sense of pleasure.

Well, pleasure, I guess, couldn't work because pleasure is uncountable, right? Same thing with relief, actually.

So if this section says one word only, then you have to know, OK, it can't be, for example, advice, right? Because in English, we never say an advice, right?

We have to say a piece of advice. We can't say access here, right?

Because in English, right, we never say an access, do we? No, we say a form of that or kind of something of access, you know, permission of access or whatever.

But we can never use these words in the countable form unless we use a phrase before them. So that's why it's really important to your background grammatical and lexical knowledge.

The more you improve your language overall, the better you'll be at making these kinds of predictions. That's what you do before you listen.

Another thing that's really important before you listen is just like we talked about with the reading test, your ability to identify keywords is key, if I can be a bit circular. So when you're doing the listening test, every single answer either contains a synonym or a paraphrase or some kind of reference to one of the words in the questions.

Otherwise, the test wouldn't be very fair, right? But all of them will be in the questions, usually in the form of nouns, verbs, adjectives.

But also like we saw earlier, articles can be really useful too. They can be kind of keywords.

But usually the words that are paraphrased or that are a synonym of them is used in the audio. Usually these are words like adjectives like really.

And instead of really, they say something like significantly or considerably. Instead of the word like more, they'll use in the audio the ER form of an adjective.

So instead of more interesting, they'll use the phrase, for example, livelier or something. With an ER, that means more interesting in terms of cities.

Or maybe it's an antonym, okay? So regardless, it's something.from the questions that will be used in the audio, but not used directly.

Usually it'll be a different form of the word or a synonym for the word or an antonym for the word. So if we look at number 35, for example, what are the best options here?

Oksana, do you mean about the number 35 or 39 to 40? For these two here, yeah, this one was, 40 was habit.

And number 39 was, I think, obesity as well. I don't remember the exact answer, but 40 was definitely habit.

For 35, what does everyone think will be a keyword in this sentence here? What kind of word generates a lot of synonyms, do you think?

Mm, well, before we think about the answer, NNS, think about what are some keywords from the question? Which words would you underline if you're reading these questions?

I know a lot of you probably know the answers from doing the practice test, but I'm thinking about the keywords, first of all, before the answers. Work faster, yeah.

Now, it, Natalia, maybe it will be useful, but maybe not, right? There aren't a lot of synonyms for it.

There are direct words that mean, that maybe refer to it, but maybe synonym, maybe it won't be as useful. Function, maybe, will be useful.

Yeah, function, work faster. What about improves?

Nobody mentioned improves. What is a synonym for the word improves that all of you know about?

Is there any other, maybe, paraphrase? Increase, yeah, make better, absolutely, Aljona.

Increase NNS, develop, maybe, Tatiana. For sure, train, enhance.

Ah, you guys are like a thesaurus. Thesaurus is a synonym dictionary.

This might be a useful tool, by the way, when you're preparing for IELTS. Going to thesaurus.com can help you, sometimes, with synonyms.

But yeah, you're exactly right, everyone. The keyword here was improves.

In the audio, they didn't say enhance, or develop, or increase, but all of those are definitely possible. In the audio, they said more quickly, or more information.

So, basically, the idea was that, if something is more quick, it is improved, especially if it's an important skill. So, process things more quickly.

This was how the phrase work faster was.Paraphrased, more quickly, a synonym for faster. If your brain processes things, I saw some people say that the answer for this question is brain.

You're exactly right, it was brain. And your brain can do different things in English.

It can function, it can also process things, and it can work fast or slow. If it's my brain, usually around this time of day, it works slowly.

But if it's your brains, maybe it works faster. Either way, these are the synonyms that we had to listen for, work more quickly, more fast, or faster, I should say, and improves a synonym for more.

So, okay, Jelena, that's actually a good question. Remember, if this is not a grammatically complete sentence, notice here, when we have these bullet points, it's not really a sentence, it's more of like a note that's being written down.

When you have bullet points like this, and the first word is not like what you would expect in a grammatical sentence, here we don't have the subject. What improves brain function?

Well, when it's this kind of sentence, you don't have to have a grammatically complete word in the gap. So the real answer here was brain function.

And you would imagine, sometimes it could be something with an article, Jelena. But here it doesn't have to be, well, because also function, by the way, is uncountable.

So that's the reason we don't have an article. But if it's another type of sentence where it just says like, let's, let's you start.

And then the answer is like new chapter in life. They don't always use the article before the gap when it's a note completion like this.

If it's a full sentence, then they will use the article. They'll say this form of dance allows you to start And then the answer maybe is new chapter, right?

But with notes, they're not always grammatically correct. That's one thing to keep in mind.

But usually they are quite grammatically correct, okay? All right, what about number 36?

What do you think will be the keywords in this question? I see a lot of time or more gives, yeah, more, absolutely.

Aljona, I agree. Gives, maybe, yeah.

There are a lot of synonyms for gives in English. More, exercise, yes.

All of you are correct. People is not a keyword, right?

People is not a keyword. So, people is not a keyword, right?People are people.

They might refer to people a hundred times in the audio. But the phrase take exercise is a little bit more unique.

More is unique, of course. And you can see in the audio, instead of more, they used greater, a direct synonym or a direct paraphrase.

And instead of take exercise, they use the phrase be more active. IELTS is testing your knowledge.

How well can you paraphrase? How well can you use synonyms for something like take exercise?

If you can hear be more active, then you're doing well enough to get the right answer. And yeah, motivation was correct.

If all of you wrote motivation, that was the answer for this one. And well, actually, no, it might have been concentration.

I don't remember the exact answer now. But these were the keywords that helped you greater, be more active.

All right. For 37, what do you think will be the keywords here?

Lesson, yes, exactly. Lesson is a word IELTS loves to use, right?

There are different ways to say this word. Feeling, yeah.

Feeling of. Loneliness, isolation, exactly, Yelena.

Those are the answers, right? One of those is the right answer.

I don't remember which one. But the keywords here are lesson and feeling because in the audio, yeah, very common as well.

In the audio, instead of less than the feeling of, they said reduce older people's sense of. So sense of something is just a feeling of something.

Reduce synonym for lesson, very common in older people. They just said it's a huge problem in many countries among older people.

So it's more of a paraphrase than a synonym, but it's enough for us to be able to find the right answer. Okay.

This is probably the most important skill that you need to develop as you're preparing for IELTS in particular. It's not the same in TOEFL, of course, because TOEFL, you don't get to see the questions beforehand.

What makes IELTS unique is that you see the questions first and then you listen. So this skill of identifying keywords is something that you absolutely need to try and improve to do well on the listening test.

All right. What can you do while listening?

Well, the first thing is to focus on the keywords. Like I said earlier, you don't have a lot of mental energy to focus.

You don't have as much mental energy as you might need to focus on every single word. And it's also not important.

It's not required for 9.0. Your brain has limitations, right? And you don't want to push it to the limits by trying to listen, trying to understand every single word in the audio.Just try and focus on the keywords.

I used to have a colleague who was probably the laziest colleague I worked with, but he was also very effective. And he would always tell me, Alex, work smarter, not harder.

Because I was working very hard, but I wasn't always getting the results I wanted. So maybe this is a useful thing to remind yourself in the listening.

You want to work smarter. You don't want to work harder, unless you're focusing only on the key information.

Another thing you can do, too, is to pay attention to discourse markers like we talked about earlier. These things are just words that help give structure, as we said, and IELTS uses them a lot to tell you when the answer is coming.

So if you just look at the transcript for the listening test that all of you did, before every single answer, they used some kind of discourse markers. So they used something like, but what about older people?

And then they went on to talk about the benefits for older people. Dance can be especially beneficial for older people who can't.

Now I know they're going to talk about people who might have some kind of disability. Then at the beginning of a paragraph, again, they might say there are some less obvious benefits of dance.

Now they're going to talk about unusual advantages, unusual benefits. So the listening speech has a lot of these things.

And if you can kind of recognize them, it helps you to find out where you are in the speech. We'll look at the full example here.

So you can see at the beginning of every paragraph, dance can be especially beneficial. There are some less obvious benefits.

Current research also shows in the first maybe five or six words of every paragraph of speech, the speaker is basically telling you what they're going to talk about. So after a speaker ends an idea, ends a topic, listen for what those first few words are when they start the new topic.

It will help you find out where you are and then help you listen for the answer more efficiently. What else do all of you notice about the answers here, by the way, in this transcript for the audio that you did?

Where do you notice most of the answers are in the speech? I see in the chat, some people are saying at the end, exactly at the end of every kind of paragraph of speech.

And of course, you can't really hear a paragraph necessarily. In the same way that we can read a paragraph, we can see, right, the space between paragraphs.

I was just asking where the answers, I should say, by the way, the answers are these words that are underlined.that are underlined. So NNS, I was asking, where do we see most of the answers?

Most of them are at the end of a paragraph, which when we're speaking, a paragraph is kind of like a topic, right? We start talking about a topic and then we finish talking about a topic.

And then we start a new topic, we finish it. We can represent that introduction and conclusion of topics with paragraphs.

And you can see basically at the end of most of these is where the answers are. Sometimes it's earlier, right?

Like, you know, class burns calories, right? This one was closer.

It wasn't exactly at the end, but it's close to the end. So IELTS always gives you a little bit of time to, well, I should say in the section four, it often gives you enough time to become familiar with what's being talked about and then to hear the specific information.

Notice there's space between these answers, right? So you have enough time to listen for the next one.

Here, they're all part of the same answer. So that's why they're all underlined, but you have enough space to write your answer and then listen for the next one.

Yeah, well, let's listen for what you can do after you listen, or let's look at what you can do after you listen. This is one thing that students often maybe neglect or don't think about, because during the test, as we said earlier, you only get to listen to the audio one time.

So why would you do something else after you listen? You need to go to the next section, right?

Well, of course, when you practice, you can do different strategies than you use during the actual exam, right? You're not just trying to improve your ability to listen once only.

You're also trying to improve your overall listening level when you prepare for IELTS or TOEFL or whatever, because your overall level is what really matters at the end of the day. Strategies can help you increase the band score that's closest to your overall level.

But the thing that increases your band score the most is increasing your overall level. So think about some different after listening strategies you can use while you're preparing.

Try to incorporate them into your study plan, if possible. For example, instead of just listening to the audio and then moving on, try listening to it again, or maybe even try listening to it before you look at the questions.

This can help you develop your sense of the kinds of words that IELTS likes to use as the answers. So you can listen to an audio without looking at the questions at all, and note down the words that you think will be the answers, and then look at the questions and see can.Any of the words that you wrote down fit into the questions?

This will also help you develop a better ear for sentence stress. Because the most important words are often given stress in a sentence.

And the most important words in IELTS listening will be the answers, of course. So by developing your idea of what you think is the most important word in a sentence, you're also developing your ability to hear sentence stress.

And this can be a useful activity to give yourself a change of pace. If you're just doing listening practice as it is on the exam over and over and over, you kind of limit your ability to improve.

You're not giving yourself any variety in terms of practice. Maybe after doing a listening section, you listen again.

After you write down the answers during the questions, you listen one more time and you read the transcript. And just notice how different words are pronounced.

In particular, notice how the answers are pronounced. You can hear them a little bit more loudly, a little bit more clearly.

And you can also listen to features of connected speech, like I talked about earlier. Features that fluent speakers use, which can be very difficult for people to hear if they're not familiar with how we connect words when we're speaking fluently.

So a lot of practice booklets have transcripts available. Try to make use of these transcripts by reading them after you do the listening, following along, maybe even reading them yourself.

Another thing you could do, for example, is after doing a listening section, instead of listening with the transcript, just read through the transcript and look for some useful lexical constructions, grammatical constructions. The listening test is usually a pretty good resource for language, especially the kind of language which helps you in IELTS.

You've already become familiar with a lot of the language in the listening test. You can return to this resource and use it to help you improve your language a little bit more.

So those are just some strategies. But the key thing is, remember that after you listen, you can return to this material and you can use it in different ways to help you improve your overall level.

Alright, and then I want to end here with some good news because, you know, what's an ending if it's not a happy ending? The good news is that, as I said earlier, test takers who are from Russia or whose first language is Russian tend to do quite well on listening compared to other sections.

The average is close to a seven, which is quite impressive if you consider that a seven across all sections is like a C1 band score. So listening does tend to be easier for Russian speakers.

I don't know why, but that does.tend to be the case. Also, listening has been shown to improve with practice more than the other sections.

Reading, for example, is a bit stubborn. The reading section doesn't always improve as quickly as you want it to, but listening improves more quickly.

So that's just some good news to consider, but I can't give you good news without also giving you a little bit of a warning. So remember, just because listening tends to be a little bit easier than the other sections, that doesn't mean that you should neglect this skill or take it for granted.

As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats. What I mean is, if you can do the best that you can possibly do on the listening score, even if you're at a 7 for listening, maybe you can get an 8.

That's really important because it will increase your overall band score. Maybe you do badly on the speaking because you're nervous.

By increasing your listening score as much as possible, you provide some insurance against poor performance, maybe, in the other parts of the test. And also remember that by improving your listening practice, by doing a lot of listening practice, you're also improving your speaking ability.

So don't neglect listening just because it is easier than the other sections, maybe. So yeah, just remember to keep working on those listening skills, and you will do well on the listening test, and hopefully on IELTS in general.

That's all I have for everybody today, but I'll be very happy to hear if you have any questions, write them in the chat, you know, you can write them in the Q&And I can stay on and answer those questions. See, yeah, thanks, Artyom, for coming.

Does anyone have any maybe questions on their minds, or? Tatiana says crystal clear.

Great. Yeah, thank you all for coming.

I'll wait another minute or two to see if anyone has any questions, but if not, you're free to go, of course, and enjoy the rest of your evenings. Nazeem is asking, can we take notes during computer-based IELTS?

You can, Nazeem. You have a piece of paper you can use to take notes with pencil, and if you do take notes there, though, remember, your answers have to be on the computer, okay?

Thanks for nice English. Glad to hear that, Oksana.

Yeah, thank you for attending as well. Does anyone else have any other questions, maybe?

Okay. Seems like no.

Oh, one more question, it seems like, fromAlena, could you please tell us how much of the final IELTS score being formed? Do we have an equal weight?

So yes, Alena, the four sections have equal weight. Basically, you get, you know, the reading, listening, speaking, and writing are all combined and divided by four.

Now the writing, remember writing task one, and you'll talk about this with Samuel, with Sam, but writing task one only counts for one-third of your score, but writing task two counts for two-thirds of your writing score. But then the writing score is averaged with all of these scores, and they all have equal weight.

Yes, Alena. And audio files, is it possible to meet a familiar file?

Tatiana, I'm not quite sure how many audio, do you mean like, how many, because you hear four different sections, right? So there are basically four different audio files in the real test.

If an audio file is used during the test, you probably won't find it in practice material, right? They don't reuse material, they're always developing new material, if I understood the question correctly.

Okay, yeah, thank you, Norman, have a great day as well. Okay, great, I'm glad I answered that.

Tatiana? My Russian, yeah, most people would not call my Russian cute, Maria, but I appreciate it.

Yeah, usually when I speak Russian, it's like you hear the sound of nails on the chalkboard, or you hear the sound of a cat fighting another cat, but thank you, I appreciate that. And I don't see any other questions, so I want to say again, I appreciate all of you coming tonight and asking questions.

It was interesting to interact with you, and if you found some of this information useful, I'm very happy to hear that, and I hope you all have a very lovely evening, and good luck with your studies in the future, and I hope you enjoy the future webinars as well, tomorrow and the following day. All right, well, in that case, goodbye everyone, and have a great evening, okay?

Full text made by Jill White Voice Notes Assistant Link: https://t.me/JillWhite_voice_notes_bot?do=open_link Telegram: @JillWhite_voice_notes_bot

Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.

Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.