Understand IELTS Listening in JUST 50 minutes!

there are six different question types in ielts listening and on test day it can get pretty intense because you only get one chance in this video i'm going to take you through everything you need to know okay before we go through all the different listening question types and whether or not you can write your answers in capital letters let's just recap the basics so in ielts listening you get 30 minutes to complete 40 questions there are four sections each section has 10 questions and as i mentioned there are six different question types all right let's take a look at each of those different sections but just before we do please click that subscribe button for great ielts videos in ielts listening section one you'll hear two people speaking in an everyday social context for example maybe you'll hear two people talking about travel arrangements or purchasing clothes or booking a hotel in section 2 you'll hear a single person one person speaking in an everyday social context for example you might hear one person talking about a new sports facility or a park ranger talking about a camping ground or a person talking about career development in section 3 you'll hear two or three people having a conversation in an educational context so for example you might hear two students talking about an assignment and perhaps you'll hear the professor as well or maybe they'll be talking about giving an oral presentation in section four you'll hear one person speaking on an academic topic for example maybe he or she will talk about architecture or biology or technology don't worry you don't need to be an expert in any of these academic topics however by section four the vocabulary is definitely getting a little more complex okay i've got a few more things to talk to you about so some important details are you only hear the recordings once you'll also hear a range of accents british american canadian australian and new zealand accents the good news is it's unnatural it's kind of fake which means that it's clear it's not like normal spoken english and if you're taking the paper-based test you'll have 10 minutes to transfer your answers what does this mean what i mean by that is you will write your answers directly onto the question booklet during the test and then you'll get 10 minutes at the end to transfer your answers from the question booklet to the answer sheet so make sure you transfer those answers carefully now if you're taking the computer delivered test it's a lot simpler because you'll actually just complete the answers as you go you will get two minutes at the end to check your answers but there's really not much you can do because again you only hear that audio once right we're about to get started and what i want you to do is to download the free practice test from the description below this practice test also has an answer sheet and it's a fillable pdf we're actually going to do quite a few questions in this video and i want you to do them with me directly into this practice test so in ielts listening what are they actually testing you for well in ielts listening you need to listen for main ideas detailed information opinions attitudes the purpose of what's being said as well as the development of ideas in terms of scoring if you're aiming for an ielts six you'll need to get at least 23 points out of 40. seven you'll need to get at least 30 out of 40 and if you're aiming for an ielts 8 you'll need to get at least 35 questions right out of 40. so you can see that there really isn't much room for error here if you get 34 instead of 35 then you won't get that ielts 8.

that's why we need to do some practice and we're going to look at the first question type now get your pen ready question type number one note form table flowchart completion this one that we're looking at here is a form completion make sure you pay attention to the instruction this one for example says write no more than two words and or a number it's absolutely critical that you understand what this means fully because if you get this wrong and you write three words or two words and a number but not a number i don't know it gets confusing let's look at it closely so if you need to write no more than two words and or a number well you can write one word like table or fred you can write two words like studio apartment or three dollars where three is actually a word if you're writing one word and a number then you can write three dollars with a numeral three dollars or july 16 or seven million where seven is a numeral if you need to write two words and a number you can write three red flowers or twelve male geese but you cannot write twelve male geese with three words if you just need to write a number you can write the number 7 or 7123 is considered a single number but you cannot write 7 100 because that is one number and three words see how all this works now keep in mind that ielts never test you for contractions so the answer will never be o'clock or don't or lets or there you never get tested on contractions and if you have to write a hyphenated word for some reason which is very rare it's counted as a single word as one word like co-work or round-trip or ill-advised now before you actually start hearing the audio and you begin the test you get a little bit of time for pre-listening which is absolutely essential to get right so back to form completion in the pre-listening what you want to do is predict what words you might hear before the audio starts playing for example here it says customer last name you know that you're going to be listening for a surname or for the next one number two you're listening for the name of a street number three a postcode number four and five the names of books number six where something currently is number seven a date and number eight a number this one's straightforward okay we're about to start on the first practice question we're going to do it together if you're doing this on the practice test that you've downloaded from the description below that's great because that's like real life practice if you're watching this on your phone on your bed you're feeling a bit lazy that's okay you can skip it if you want but let's go through this now and then after i want to go through the answers with you because i'm going to point out all the things that can trip you up on test day all right let's do it you have 10 seconds to look through the notes and predict what you might hear ready listen carefully good morning jungle books how can i help you today hi i'm calling to inquire about a couple of books that i bought a few weeks ago but haven't received yet no problem at all would you like me to track them for you yes please okay firstly i'll need to ask for some personal details sure what's your full name it's james murray how do i spell your last name yes it's m u double r a y e y a y thank you and did you have the book sent to a post box or to your home address my home address and what's your home address it's unit 3 21 adams street albion is that a-d-a-m yes but with an s atoms and you said that's in albion a-l-b-i-o-n that's right and what's the postcode it's 254-837 right and now i need to know the names of the books well the first book is for my university course i'm studying botany botany yeah it's quite interesting so the book's called plant science got it and the other one well this one is a gift for my younger sister who's really into anime oh nice like king of seven yes but it's not that one it's perfect green okay got it so it looks like they're still in transit oh i see they're still on their way yeah but uh it looks like they'll you'll get them uh on september 13th okay but i can give you a tracking number if you like that way you can keep track of them and you'll know exactly when they'll arrive that'd be great so the tracking number is 739 316 739-316-590 got it i just go to junglebooks. com and enter this that's right okie dokie how did you go hopefully you're feeling confident this is the easiest part of the test let's run through all of those answers so number one the answer is murray m u double r a y there was a distractor there that said e y and then the speaker said no it's a y number two the answer was adams a-d-a-m-s and there was a distractor there because the speaker said a-d-a-m and then the other speaker said yes but with an s adams if you wrote adam a-d-a-m you would have gotten it incorrect so we're beginning to understand what a distractor is a distractor is a tempting answer option that's wrong okay and there are heaps of distractors all through ielts listening this is pretty much what it's about it's about synonyms and it's about distractors if you want to learn more about distractors there's a video link in the description below that will help you out okay number three was a postcode 254837 hopefully you got that right number four look at all of these distractors i'm studying botany botany that's not the right answer the book's called plant science and number five look at these distractors anime king of seven both of those are wrong and especially king of seven because that's three words and you have a two word maximum word count the answer here is perfect green okay number six was a bit difficult the answer is transit books currently in transit if you don't know what that word means then the speaker said ah i see they're still on their way which means they're in transit for number seven we needed a date and the date was september 13. so with these ones you could write 13 as a number 13 as a word you could write 13th or 13th as a word with a th all of those would be considered correct finally the tracking number was 739-316-590 maybe you wrote junglebooks.

com which would have been incorrect so you want to make sure that you get all of these note completion ones correct because this is the easiest part of the test so we've done eight questions so far there are 10 questions per section so we've got a couple of other questions coming up related to that conversation question type number two multiple choice i think multiple choice questions are pretty difficult in listening because you're listening which is fine but you're also reading and you have to kind of do this flash reading flash listening make sure that you're listening more than you're reading though now before the audio begins you get a little bit of time to look at the questions your task is to flash read and listen also to eliminate incorrect answer options and to select the correct answer option sometimes you'll need to select more than one answer option the instruction will indicate if this is the case the multiple choice style questions test you for a detailed understanding of specific points or an overall understanding of the main points okay ready let's do the multiple choice questions again if you haven't downloaded that practice test i recommend you do because it's going to give you real life simulation and it's a fillable pdf so you can do it on your computer or again if you're watching this on your bed on your phone fine you can skip through if you want i'm going to look at the answers with you in just a minute you have 10 seconds to quickly read the questions and prepare to hear the answers okay listen carefully is there anything else i can help you with today actually i've been looking for another book but i can't seem to find it i can have a look for you that'd be great it's called botanical varieties uh yes we have that uh it comes in a few different formats formats do you mean like hardcover or paperback yes as well as an ebook oh i dislike ebooks and i'd rather have a hardcover book than a paperback can you tell me the price difference between the two yeah it looks like the hardcover is slightly more expensive it's uh 12 dollars more expensive hmm i haven't got much money to spend at the moment but that's probably worth it i think they do tend to last longer than paperbacks i agree so i'll have that sent to the same address oh before you do can you please tell me what edition that book is my university professor said that we should buy the most up-to-date edition if we can or if we can't find it he said the second edition would do uh this one is the latest edition okay great yes please send that one to me as well then no problem all right how did you go with those multiple choice questions did you notice that you have to listen and read and listen and read and you're sort of going back and forth and back and forth it's a bit tricky notice that question 9 didn't start for quite a few sentences in ielts listening they always give you a little bit of time to orient yourself to the text which is good it's always just a little bit of background information so question 9 says format of book chosen paperback hardcover or ebook the answer here is hardcover why let's look at the transcript so it says ebooks which is a distractor then the speaker says i'd rather a hard cover than a paperback which is kind of a distractor but you don't know yet then the other speaker says the hard cover is slightly more expensive so maybe you're thinking oh it must be the paperback then the other speaker says i haven't got much money to spend at the moment so you'll think oh must be the paperback but then the speaker says but that's probably worth it i think hard covers do tend to last longer than paperbacks can you see why the answer here is hardcover so what you'll notice in multiple choice is that all of the answer options will be mentioned they will be said you will hear the words of all of those answer options but two of them will be incorrect one will be correct you need to eliminate the incorrect ones to find the correct one and not be distracted by those incorrect ones also this question was a little inferential it's an inference question the speaker doesn't explicitly say i want the hard cover that would be too easy instead you have to kind of work it out when the speaker says hard covers do tend to last longer than paperbacks or it's worth it i think so in the listening you'll be hearing synonyms paraphrases and sometimes making inferences or drawing conclusions from what you heard again it won't be as simple as somebody saying i want the hard cover book that's too easy okay question 10 says book edition selected first second or third in the transcript the speaker says my university professor said that we should buy the most up-to-date edition what's the most up-to-date edition there first second or third must be third if we can or if we can't find it he said the second edition would do so there's a distractor then the other speaker says ah this one is the latest edition then the speaker says okay great yes please send that one to me here that one is referring to the latest edition the latest addition is referring to answer option c third so here we've got the use of a pronoun that one referring to the answer which is also inferential you can see how difficult or tricky listening can be but it's not if you practice properly again if we look closely the speaker says this one is the latest edition and then please send that one to me the latest edition is c third cool so we've just done multiple choice now if you need help with synonyms and pronouns etc there's a video in the description below that you can click on and watch after this one about that exact topic question type number three short answer the short answer questions are pretty straightforward in terms of their format as in how you see them on the paper on test day they make sense however as i mentioned as you progress through the sections the listening is going to get more challenging so here's what the short answer questions look like remember to always read that instruction this one says write no more than two words so this time no numbers or no numerals now as you listen you'll be taking the word or words directly from the audio you don't change them at all they should fit in those gaps contracted words are never tested spelling is tested so if you get the right word but you spell it wrong it will be wrong hyphenated words which are very rare do count as single words now before the audio begins in the pre-listening read the questions and especially think about what considerations what essential needs what aspects so this particular one we're looking at here is asking you for two answer options per question sometimes it'll do that sometimes it'll ask you for a single answer you need to remain flexible because you might see anything on test day and as long as you've practiced it won't be a problem okay ready to do these short answer questions you have 10 seconds to quickly read the questions and prepare to hear the answers here we go choosing the type of work you'll do is arguably one of the most important decisions you can make selecting a career can take weeks months or even years as you consider what you want and need in a job the first thing you'll want to do is perform a self-assessment nobody else can do this for you you need to ask yourself what your key values are some people are driven by money while others pursue careers that are about helping people everyone's different you should also reflect on your natural abilities for me i am a good public speaker a good communicator while for others they're much more technical and detail-oriented again everyone's different next you'll need to take some time to identify your must-haves in a job this can be something as important as a job location because you may need to live and work close to your family it's important to know what you need from a job for instance do you need to earn a consistent salary if so then you may want to avoid freelance work as the income can be intermittent at best perhaps a job title is also critical if so then you should probably avoid working for yourself unless you choose to call yourself ceo after you've reflected on yourself and what is most important for you in terms of work you might want to start researching your favorite companies you'll want to find out about the employee benefits they offer including rates of pay the ability to work from home or even if they will take care of your health you also want to make sure that the company has growth opportunities you don't want to work for a company that doesn't have a future for you you need to advance and take on more responsibilities as you progress how did you go let's take a look at those answers and let's take a look at those distractors so when self-assessing students should consider their own what the answer to number 11 is key values you need to ask yourself what your key values are driven by money pursue careers and helping people would all be incorrect as they just don't fit grammatically and they're just distractors number 12 is natural abilities the speaker says you should also reflect upon your natural abilities in other words consider and the distractors here are public speaker good communicator technical and detail-oriented none of which fit properly so you're really starting to understand now how you're listening and you're disregarding a lot of information but then holding something that's critical that answers the question okay you're listening for something now there's something important i want to show you here if you wrote key value it would be incorrect or natural ability would be incorrect you need to make sure that you get the plural nouns right so key values natural abilities they are the correct answers and if you did put one of the distractors in like public speaker which is wrong just read the question and see if it makes sense when self-assessing students should consider their own key values yes and public speaker well it just doesn't make sense does it nor does good communicator but natural abilities does so with these short answer questions you need to make sure that the sentence is grammatical after you've completed it let's look at the next ones so what essential needs does the speaker give examples of well job location was given to you as the first example the second need is consistent salary consistent salary is the correct answer there and freelance work was the distractor and the answer to question 14 was job title and there wasn't really any distractors here it was just job title so what essential needs does the speaker give examples of consistent salary and job title now for this one if you just wrote the word title and not job title it would definitely be incorrect because it just doesn't make sense okay questions 15 and 16. what are two aspects of an attractive company that students should look for before we look at the answers to 15 and 16 i want to talk to you about something really important about vocabulary take a look at the transcript so this is the transcript of what you've just listened to after you've reflected on yourself and what is most important etc now the words in yellow are content words these are words that have meaning like reflect important terms work want start researching favorite companies etc now take a look at these words these are not meaningful words these are called function words or grammar words like after you've on yourself and what is most for you in of these words don't have meaning and you'll never be tested on these words i don't want to say never actually because you never know but it's very uncommon that you're going to be tested on those grammatical words you're not going to be listening for those function or grammar words you're going to be listening for those content or those meaningful words the nouns the verbs the adjectives and the adverbs they're the critical ones so what's an aspect of an attractive company that students should look for well employee benefits is the answer for number 15. rates of pay would be incorrect ability to work from home doesn't work take care of your health also doesn't work and for number 16 the answer is growth opportunities both words would be needed here have a future need to advance more responsibilities and progress are the distractors and they are all incorrect so how are you going so far if you're enjoying this video make sure you click that like button feel free to leave a comment but let's push on stay with me i want to do all of the questions with you question type number four matching the matching question on the paper-based test to be perfectly honest with you is very confusing let's take a look at it so this is what it looks like on the paper-based test it says which restaurant matches each description the names of the restaurants are in the little box there a six penny b attica c lumi d fred's place and e bentley and the description are next to the numbers great seaside views fusion meals locally grown food and seasonal dishes what you need to do is put a letter next to the number so for example number 17 great seaside views might be a six penny or b attica or c lumi you just write the letter just be mindful that you may be able to use any letter more than once if so this is going to be mentioned in the instructions let's look at how it looks on the computer delivered test now because it's quite different so on the computer delivered test the question is going to look like this so this is a different question type and you can see a b and c a weekend intensive a blended course or a drop a subject what you need to do is match one of those letters to one of those statements so number one the lecturer does not think this is a good idea what a weekend intensive a blended course or drop a subject you would then need to click in the box a b or c then move on to number two here are some key points with these matching questions you're going to be listening for details for example descriptions of a restaurant as i mentioned you write the letter a b c d or e next to the number for example if you think attica has great seaside views that's b then you write b next to number 17.

don't write the word attica okay question time let's do it ready you have 10 seconds to wrap your head around what all of this means before the audio begins here we go hi max how are you i'm good hey i'm ringing because i need some advice it's my wedding anniversary next week i want to take my wife to a nice restaurant and i know that you know all the best places in town okay right great idea well i have five favorite restaurants that you might like they'd be perfect for an anniversary they're nice and romantic did you want something near the city centre or somewhere out near the beach i'm not sure what do you suggest well there are two restaurants right in the city centre there's fred's place and lumi but if you don't mind catching the train you can check out bentley it's got sweeping views of the harbour then there's six penny and attica which are just outside of the city centre in darlinghurst hurst i don't really want to take public transport although that does sound nice what about the two in darlinghurst can you tell me a bit more about them they're both great restaurants if you want something a little different you could try six penny it was a greek restaurant but then the management changed hands and the new owners are korean so now it's a really interesting mix of mediterranean and east asian food or there's attica just up the street from six penny which is more traditional greek food it's also really good i must say that attica is a little expensive though and it can get a little bit cramped in the front dining area what about the two restaurants you mentioned in the city you don't happen to know if they use organic ingredients you know my wife is big on health if that's the case then you might want to try fred's place or lumi they're both near the central train station i know fred's place actually grows its own vegetables in fact i think they have their own farm just outside the city where everything is produced the only problem with fred's place is that it gets really crowded so make sure you book a few days in advance then there's lumi it's just across the road from fred's place it's famous because it only uses vegetables that grow in that particular time of the year right now they're doing all things winter i'm pretty sure all lumi's produce is organic as well but i'm not sure where they get it from i don't think it's from the local area i think they must source some ingredients from other parts of the country okay how did you go let's look at the answers and those distractors okay so which restaurant has great seaside views well fred's place and lumi was mentioned six penny and attica was also mentioned as well however bentley it's got sweeping views of the harbour notice how it doesn't use the exact same words it's using synonyms or a paraphrase okay so which restaurant has fusion meals well then the conversation moves to six penny and they talk about six penny they say it's a really interesting mix of mediterranean and east asian food so that is a fusion meal next which restaurant talks about locally grown food well next you would have heard about attica but in fact there was nothing mentioned about attica it didn't have great seaside views it didn't have fusion meals it didn't have locally grown food and it didn't have seasonal dishes it was put in there as a distractor you'll notice that there are six restaurants but only five descriptions so one of the restaurants will not be used and that one is attica there will be no bee here so where's the locally grown food was it fred's place or lumi well fred's place actually grows its own vegetables in fact i think they have their own farm just outside the city where everything is produced notice how we're moving through the description sequentially okay we're not moving through the list of restaurants sequentially because they could go anywhere but we are moving through the description sequentially so which restaurant has seasonal dishes well lumi which is just across the road from fred's place don't be distracted lumi has seasonal dishes and although it says lumi has organic food it does say that it doesn't come from the local area they must import ingredients from other parts of the country so that means it can't be d so the answer for 20 is c so as you can see the matching questions are pretty confusing remember you can always practice on e2 let's look at the next question type question type number five sentence completion so sentence completion is similar to short answer except you'll be filling a gap in a sentence and it needs to be grammatically correct as well as meaning of course here's what it looks like here and it tests you on understanding key information make sure you read the instructions for this particular question it says no more than two words for each answer the word or words that you use must be taken directly from the audio and they do not change you do not need to transform the word at all it should just fit contracted words will not be tested misspellings will be penalized hyphenated words if you ever need one will be counted as a single word all right let's do this one together and we'll go through the answers and again the distractors after this you have 10 seconds to read through these questions and get a feel for what the answer might be then the audio will begin hello stephen i guess we better start on our assignment you know we only have two weeks left to research and write an essay yes well at least we don't have an end of semester exam that's a relief yes very true okay so what do we have to do again sorry please remind me well we have to choose one of three topics to research and write about oh that's right we have to choose between corruption social movements and what was it global development no corruption social movements and global interdependence that's right interdependence i keep getting that mixed up with development well which one would you like to choose i really think we should focus on corruption i think it's interesting it's a problem for every country but some countries are much worse off than others hmm really i find it kind of depressing i'd much rather do something else how about social movements that seems fascinating i'm a big fan of history so we could read about how societies transform from one generation to the next i find that social change is interesting too but i did something similar last semester in my political science class and i'd rather not repeat it how about the global interdependence subject it's quite optimistic to think that all countries need each other in some way okay that sounds interesting and you're right it might make us feel a bit better about international relations we really are more connected than ever these days through trade and the internet and we'll be able to read macquarie i think he's the most important thinker on the topic oh great how do i spell his name m a c q c-q-u-a-r-i-e great well i think i'll start by going to the library and asking for any relevant books and you can start to read some relevant articles online how does that sound that sounds like a good idea i think we should definitely avoid watching the news it's too time consuming and we don't have enough time great so we'll stick to the library and the internet all right how did you go there it's getting pretty challenging isn't it you'll be okay let's go through the answers together all right so the answer to number 21 was essay beth said you know we only have two weeks left to research and write distractors an essay one word was the correct answer there and then stephen says yes well at least we don't have an end of semester exam if you wrote exam that would be incorrect that's a distractor the answer to question number 22 was global interdependence not global independence interdependence have a look at this stephen said we have to choose between corruption social movement and what was it global development beth said no corruption social movements and global interdependence stephen says that's right interdependence i keep getting that mixed up with development so if you wrote global development that would also be wrong the answer for number 23 is also global interdependence now i've never seen an ielts listening paper that has the same answer twice but it might happen and you should always just concentrate on whatever's said and go with whatever's said don't go with instinct or what looks right or what looks wrong go with what you hear so the students choose global interdependence as their topic beth says i really think we should focus on corruption stephen says how about social movements beth says how about the global interdependence subject stephen says okay that sounds interesting the answer to number 24 the author the students plan to read is mcquarrie how do you spell macquarie m-a-c-q-u-a-r-i-e if you spelled it wrong it would be considered incorrect the students will use information from the library and the what's the answer for number 25 internet there was a good distractor there beth said read some relevant articles online online would be incorrect because you can't say the online stephen says avoid watching the news beth says the internet so that question type is pretty straightforward but we saw some little distractors for example you can't write the online it needed to be the internet okay sometimes you need to wait a little bit to find that right content word the right answer okay we're up to the last question type let's do it question type number six plan map diagram labeling so you might see a plan that looks like this this one is from the computer delivered test in which case you will write directly into the gaps on the screen you might see a map that looks like this and they'll look pretty similar on the paper-based test let's now look at a diagram completion task that you'll see later on in the test as it gets more challenging so the one we're going to do today looks like this so you're going to listen to a description using a visual representation notice how it's numbered from left to right 26 27 28 29 and 30.