IELTS Listening: Don't Make These 4 Mistakes!

if you've been practicing ielts listening you will notice that sometimes the answer options are very tempting but they're wrong these are called distractors and this is what leads to mistakes there are four types of distractors and that's what we're going to look at in this video before we look at the four different distractors those misleading answer options i want to play a little game with you i'm going to show you a question from ielts listening with no audio i just want you to look at it and tell me which answer option you think is correct

so type of delivery chosen plane train or truck which one do you think is correct the answer is you have no idea and you should never ever use your intuition when you're looking at one of these ielts listening questions it's basically impossible to choose from what you see okay it's just guesswork you must listen in order to answer the question so don't use your intuition you should also never use your background knowledge take a look at this question what nutrient does dr peterson recommend before running a marathon fat protein or carbohydrates i don't care if

you're a doctor or a dietitian or an olympic marathon runner you should never use your background information your background knowledge to answer one of these questions okay so no intuition no background knowledge that's what you have to do in ielts listening okay let's take a look at distractor number one one of the ways that you can make a mistake in ielts listening distractor number one similar sounding words one of the ways that you can make a silly mistake in ielts listening is by mishearing an answer option because the correct answer option sounds very similar to

an incorrect answer option let's do a little practice listening question together okay listen carefully and how much do you think the package content is worth that's a good question well i suppose the guitar and lamp are worth about twelve hundred dollars but with the books as well i guess about fifteen hundred great and where will you be sending the package to to austria okay fantastic okay so did you hear australia or austria these are two very similar sounding countries and this is one way that you can make a silly mistake in ielts listening that's pretty

simple let's take a look at a different type of distractor distractor number two already mentioned words so this type of distractor is the most common one in ielts listening in fact it's in almost every single ielts listening question that is you're looking at a question let's say a multiple choice question and you hear one of the words actually mentioned and you think to yourself well he's just mentioned that it's written here as a possible answer option that must be the correct answer option not necessarily let's take a look at this question and do one together

listen carefully okay so you have three options for freight could you please explain that to me sure so you can elect to have your goods sent by plane which is the fastest and safest but also the most expensive or you can choose to have them sent by train which is safe and less expensive and finally you can send your things by truck which is less safe but much cheaper ah yes sending by truck can take far too long i'm in a bit of a rush so i'll go for the fastest option please so you may

have noticed there that the speaker actually mentioned one of the answer options but it wasn't necessarily correct let's take a closer look so here the speaker says sending by truck can take far too long so is this the right answer is truck the correct answer well no because then he says i'll go with the fastest option and the fastest option is plane or as the speaker says the quickest so here we have an example of an answer option that is not correct it's been put there to throw you off okay because then the correct answer

actually comes next this is extremely common in ielts listening okay before we look at distractor number three i want to talk to you about our fantastic live classes on e2 if you find it a little bit difficult to prepare for ielts like you don't know where to start or maybe you're lacking a bit of motivation our live classes on e2 test prep are the way to go they happen twice a day every day with expert teachers and they touch on every part of the test including listening as well as writing speaking and reading the teacher

will go through everything you need to know before your test so you feel confident sign up and join the live classes at e2language.com distractor number three synonyms so a synonym is a word that has a similar if not the same meaning as another word like big and huge or beautiful and pretty or smart and intelligent and sometimes it can be a little bit different like you might say for example in the question we looked at something like plane or by air so they're kind of different words but they mean the same thing they're synonymous let's

take a look at one of these questions and try to do it together listen carefully hi everyone my name is tom and today i'm going to talk to you about meditation which is a great way to decrease your stress and improve your well-being so here the answer is a because psychological well-being and mental health are synonyms they basically mean the same thing so the speaker said one word but on the question was written the synonym itself this is a way that they can get you right or that you can make a mistake now sometimes it's

not just the answer options that will have synonyms especially if you're doing a short answer question the question itself will be paraphrased or use synonymous language let me show you what i mean so listen carefully this question says learning to meditate demands a great deal of what in the beginning of your meditation practice you need to maintain a high level of concentration because the mind will wander from one thought to the next so the answer here is concentration and that's what the speaker said but the synonymous language was actually in the sentence itself compare these

two the question said learning to meditate demands a great deal of and the speaker said you need to maintain a high level of so it's actually the question that had the synonymous language okay so we've done similar sounding words like austria and australia we've done already mentioned words and we've just looked at synonyms let's look at the fourth way that you can make a mistake in ielts listening distractor number four negatives or the use of the word not so when i say negative i'm not talking about positive or negative or you know good and bad

i'm talking about negation where we negate something with the word not so for example i can say this is not a glass this is a mug this is not a glass this is a mug and in ielts listening you might write down the word glass when i've said it's not a glass you see what i mean take a look at this question here if meditating for extended periods you should avoid sitting on the what let's do it together the vast majority of people will have no problem sitting on the floor to meditate but if you

plan to meditate for more than 10 minutes then i recommend using a cushion so you can elevate your hips above your knees for greater comfort those who are injured or inflexible should use a chair to meditate notice how in this question the question itself didn't say the word not because it would be too easy if it just said not instead it used the word avoid we could write it this way if meditating for extended periods you should not sit on the what so in ielts listening they don't just say not because it's too simple there's

a variety of different ways that they can negate something here's a list of critical words they might say avoid or never or sometimes they'll use what are called prefixes which change a positive word like hydrate into a negative word like dehydrate or regulate to deregulate or accelerate to decelerate or disable disallow disassemble insignificant inflexible invisible illegal illiterate illegible irreversible irregular irresponsible mistrust misspell misdiagnose unclear uncooperative or unavailable so they are prefixes where you change a word from positive to negative keep an eye out or an ear out for those so this stuff's complicated right but

this is where in our live classes when you get to actually practice this type of question with an expert teacher and the expert teacher explains why it's wrong and this one's right that's where you get the aha moment and this is where you won't make the same mistake in the actual test okay i have one last special distractor special distractor so i was going through some official ielts listening material the other day and i noticed this one which is really kind of tricky to be honest it almost sounds like a negative but it's not and

it's not a double negative either let's do one together and i'll show you what i mean so listen carefully what two factors can make meditating difficult so when you start out learning to meditate you might think wow this isn't hard my mind is completely silent but of course that's your mind doing the talking what i'm trying to say is many people gradually realize how busy their minds are and if you do practice enough you will be able to sit for a long time but this comes with its own problems as well you see it's not

just self-deception that makes meditation hard but also the physical discomfort felt in the body so the answers here are self-deception and physical discomfort or just discomfort but notice how they used the word not and but but yet was still correct let's take a closer look so the speaker said it's not just self-deception that makes meditation hard but also the physical discomfort felt in the body okay so that's just one to keep an ear out for and this stuff just requires practice all right let's recap those four ways that you can make a silly mistake or

the fort distractors in ielts listening number one is similar sounding words like austria and australia number two words already mentioned like truck but the answer was actually by plane number three synonyms like mental health or psychological well-being they mean the same thing and number four negatives where there's a negation with the word not or avoid or never or a prefix that makes a negative cool thanks very much for that don't forget to subscribe to this youtube channel hopefully you learned some great tips for ielts listening so you won't make some silly mistakes my name is

jay see you soon [Music]