Oh my god! I missed the word; what to do now? Does this sound familiar? Are you also one of them who wants to know how to improve listening in IELTS?
If your answer is yes, then this blog is created for you. Here, I mention complete guidance on improving listening skills in IELTS. Our main aim here at iwinvisa is to help students get their desired band score with our guidance.
Be well-verse with the IELTS listening test-
The IELTS listening test will be for 30 minutes, and you will get 10 minutes extra for transferring your answers to the answer sheet.
Note: The great part is that both IELTS academic and general training modules are the same.
You will hear a total of four recorded texts, conversations, and monologues by the native speakers and write the answers to the questions by listening to the recordings carefully.
The listening test examines the student’s capability to understand the speakers’ central ideas, factual information, opinions, and perspective.
| Point to remember- Different native-speaking accents and voices are utilized, and you will only listen to every section only one time. |
Different sections of listening-
| Sections | Listening Types | Topic example |
| 1 | Day to day english conversation | Talk with a traveling agency |
| 2 | A monologue ( a person talking about a particular topic) | The advantage of public transportation |
| 3 | Conversation between two or more people in the context of academics. | Two classmates discuss the assignment. |
| 4 | Monologue on one of the subjects of academic | University lecture by the lecturer. |
Effective Ways Of How To Improve Listening In IELTS
Way 1: Practice English listening daily.
The purpose of the listening exam is to see how excellently you understand the verbal English language. As a result, the most obvious strategy to develop your listening abilities is to listen to a lot of English.
The question is: What must you listen to?
You will get every kind of help on the online platform. Whether you want to spend just only 15 minutes or 1 hour for preparation, it all depends on you, but you will get a lot of material online in no time.
You will listen to variations of things. The IELTS listening test involves two types of listening-
- One person speaking
- Conversations between two persons
So you have to practice both types of listening.
Platforms you can use for listening to english-
- Online news,
- Podcasts,
- Ted talks, and
- Listening to music.
It is one of the best tips on how to improve listening in IELTS. If you listen to English for 10 to 15 minutes daily, you will gradually improve yourself.
Way 2: Know your weak points
There is no benefit in spending so much time listening to English and doing mock tests until you do not know about your weakness.
Is grammar creating problems in understanding English, limited vocabulary knowledge, or are you facing issues in conversations? The one method to know your weakness is to examine your outcomes from the mock tests and know what kind of mistakes you are regularly making.
Few online mock tests and Cambridge English books involve recording transcripts. It will help you to know why your specific answer is wrong.
Way 3: Complete mock tests
Most students make sure they do so many mock tests in a row, but they don’t need to do that if they don’t know about their weaknesses. First, they know about their weak points and start improving them.
After that, start completing the mock tests and measure your progress. Also, listen to english from general level to advanced level so that you can score a good band score in every module.
Way 4: Do paraphrasing
While listening to spoken English, try to practice developing one skill: paraphrasing.
The listening test recordings include so many synonyms and paraphrases of keywords.
Here is an example of it-
| Query and answer | Audio |
| The inception of the park was in 1979. | The park was not built until 1979. |
The podcasts are useful for paraphrasing practice. Moreover, you can stop it and resume it whenever you want. After listening to every sentence, you can stop the recording and think about paraphrasing the sentence and synonyms you can use.
Do this every day, and your paraphrasing skills will improve.
Way 5: Try to create concentration
Losing concentration is very easy when you aren’t used to listening to English.
It is a main problem in the listening test. Losing concentration for a few seconds leads you to miss the opportunity of scoring 8 bands.
For instance, you can hear misinformation because a lack of concentration makes it difficult to recall the answer. At this moment, many students panic and cannot complete the test properly. As a result, they lose more marks.
So, if you want to improve your focus, try meditation and start listening to English calmly.
Way 6: Take care of the instructions
First of all, you must read all the instructions before solving the questions. For example, if instructions state, “Write only one word,” then make sure you write only one word.
In the missing word questions, take care of grammatically correct answers. Also, take care of the plural and singular forms.
Spelling and capitalization of the answers also matter!
All the above ways answer your question of how to improve listening in IELTS. Follow it and crack the listening exam with a good band score.
| Additional tips- Here are some tips on how to improve listening in IELTS- Always try to attempt all the questions to avoid losing marks because of missing answers. Take care of the plural and singular in answers. If a question needs a plural answer, the singular answer is wrong. Make sure you listen to the recordings in order so that you can get the answers easily. Sometimes the speaker speed is fast, so when you start listening, try to focus on that only. Take care of the instructions when you transfer your answers to the sheet. Multiple choice answers include the a, b, c, and d options, so you must write the correct option when you write the answers. If there is an instruction to write no more than two words, the right answer is “glass bottle,” but “a bottle made of glass” is wrong. The same scenario applies to numbers as well. The hyphenated words are viewed as one word. For example, part-time. Always concentrate on what the speaker is saying, not how he speaks English. |
Wrap up!
Hopefully, this blog will help you answer your question about how to improve listening in IELTS. Follow the ways mentioned above and the tips to score a good band in this section. But, to score good bands overall, you have to focus on other sections, i.e., reading, writing, and speaking.
Moreover, if you want to boost your IELTS preparation and need more blogs like this, stay tuned with iwinvisa.
Best of luck!
FAQs-
1 What is the way of calculating the IELTS listening score?
The examiner sees how well you are listening to the information and successfully answering the questions. The listening scores are given out of 40 and are estimated based on the right answers.
You will get the band score in the range between 4 to 9.
2 How long does it take to prepare for the IELTS?
Preparing for IELTS depends on your confidence and ability in English. If you have to learn everything from scratch, it will take you hardly two to three months.
