This is the IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1589 How to Practice Staying on Track During IELTS Listening.
Welcome to the IELTS Energy Podcast from All Ears English downloaded more than 35 million times with examiner-trained IELTS whiz Aubrey Carter and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer.
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Get a clear template on how to use AI or a conversation partner to practice recognizing parallel expressions.
On listening, so that you never get lost.
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Hello, Lindsay.
How are you today?
Good, Aubrey.
How are you doing?
Excellent.
Welcome everyone out there listening.
Lindsay, I am curious.
When was the last time you panicked?
Oh my gosh.
Yesterday I almost panicked because I'm staying at an Airbnb right now and all of a sudden I'm working.
It's like midday.
All of a sudden, the door opens, the side door to the Airbnb, and it looks like someone's about to come in.
And it was the cleaner who thought we had – they had a key and they thought that we had like checked out, but we hadn't.
And I could feel like my heart kind of sank.
My dog came up and started barking.
So I almost went into a panic in that moment.
Oh, goodness.
I was on the verge of home invasion.
You kind of.
It was a little scary.
Yeah.
I can see that.
That reminds me really quickly when I was in Rocky Point.
Once in the middle of the night the front door opened.
And same thing.
I thought someone was breaking into that.
I like heard it open.
So I quickly went out to the hall and it's wide open.
And I panicked.
I thought someone was breaking in, but I think we hadn't deadbolted it correctly and the wind blew it open.
But that panic when you think someone's breaking into your home.
Yeah, when your body starts to go through the process of the adrenaline spike and the panic, it's so scary.
Then I wonder what would I do if it really was an intruder, right?
I was thinking that too.
What would I have done?
Start screaming, I guess.
What else could I do?
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
Wake everyone up.
So we talked about this recently.
It is easy to panic on IELTS and we want to help you avoid it.
So today we are providing practice that will help you avoid that panic you might feel when you realize you've missed an answer on IELTS listening.
That's so scary because not only do you realize I've missed an answer.
But also like I'm lost in the audio.
I might miss more answers if I can't get back on track.
Exactly.
So important to stay on track and get back on track if you get lost.
And again, this is a part two of a two part series at the state to the end.
And we will let you know how to find part one.
Yes, because you can definitely listen to these out of order.
We're providing this practice today.
Go through it with us.
Use this practice.
And then, if you didn't get the strategies we provided in part one, we'll give you details at the end of the episode, so you don't miss those.
Perfect.
So we have a couple of options on how to get in this preparation beforehand.
Build the right skills so that panic you know what to do if the panic arises or it's less likely to arise.
Exactly.
You want to have felt this before test day.
You want to be listening to audio. very intentionally listening for specific things.
And if you realize you missed one, you want to feel that like, okay, what do I do now?
Control the panic.
So we're going to give you two options you can do to practice this.
And the first one is to work with a speaking partner.
This unfortunately, isn't something you can do on your own, because what you need to do is know what's in the audio already and In order to create parallel expressions for that.
And if you do this yourself then you already know what the parallel expressions are.
The learning isn't there.
So you need to work with someone else to do this.
Mm hmm.
So I used to do a lot of language exchanges when I was living in New York, half an hour practicing Spanish, half an hour practicing English at a Starbucks.
Those are things you can find.
Or you can go over to italki and just hire someone for half an hour of their time.
Right.
That's another thing you can do.
But find that speaking partner.
Yes.
And if you're in our community, there are a lot of other students practicing English or studying for IELTS.
You could meet up with one of them and do this activity.
So what you're going to do?
Because you're going to prepare today's activity for your speaking partner and then ask them to prepare it for you as well.
So you'll need to provide them this episode or some details to explain to them what you need.
Right.
So step one. is to listen to a podcast or an audio recording.
If it's a video, you must listen without watching to practice for IELTS audio, where you'll have no visual cues, right.
So the first step is to find audio that's similar to IELTS audio.
It can also be actual IELTS audio for practice exams, but any audio really would work.
Okay.
And step two, we're going to pull out four or five interesting words or phrases, right?
And step three is to look up and write down synonyms or parallel expressions for these phrases.
Because those phrases that are actually in the audio likely won't be in the answers, right?
There will usually be synonyms, parallel expressions for these.
And that's the trick to be able to listen to the audio, knowing the keywords, knowing these parallel expressions and synonyms, listening to the audio and recognizing the parallels.
Okay.
And what are we going to provide to our speaking partner, Aubrey?
Right.
So you're going to provide them with those synonyms, those parallel expressions, along with the audio clip.
And they must be in order because on the IELTS listening exam, they'll be in order.
They don't want to have to be jumping around finding them.
You want them all to appear in order in the audio.
And then what are we going to challenge them to do, Lindsay?
We're going to challenge them to listen for the words or phrases in the text that match the synonyms.
And if they do miss one, they're going to practice not panicking and just listening for the next one.
So going through the motions of what might happen on test day.
Exactly.
So you can provide this to your speaking partner.
You can ask them to provide it for you so that you can practice.
A little bit of a learning curve here, but once you've done one, it's like, okay, this is easy.
And we're going to walk you through, stay to the end of the episode.
We're going to do one of these for you so that you can see exactly how this works.
Yeah, so if you struggle to find a speaking partner sometimes it's hard, people are busy you could use AI for this.
This is your second option, Aubrey.
So what would this look like using AI?
So I used AI to see what this would look like.
And it does work.
Of course, it's not as good as a speaking partner, but you can make it work.
So what you can do is upload audio.
Ask AI to provide you with parallel expressions for it.
Or alternatively, you can ask AI to provide you with audio and synonyms for phrases in it.
So the paid version of ChatGPT can read the audio to you.
The free version will return suggestions.
It'll say, if you want to hear it, paste this paragraph into one of these free text-to-speech tools.
And the ones I was given were Natural Reader, Google Translate, or Eleven Labs.
Okay, cool, cool.
So, depending on whether you want to spend a little bit of money, if you already have a paid version of ChatGPT maybe you have one for work already then use that and you'll just have it spoken by ChatGPT, or use one of these resources.
Right and you would paste the text in there.
Press play to hear it like an IELTS listening exercise.
You can see how working with a speaking partner is much more flexible because they can take any audio and pull parallel expressions from that.
Might be a little more limiting what you're going to be able to do with AI, but you can make it work.
Right is to be able to listen to audio, not knowing what's going to be in that audio, but having keywords, parallel expressions that would be in the questions to simulate, to create this experience where you're listening for certain expressions.
And then if you miss one, that feeling of, oh no, I missed one.
Now I'm not going to panic.
I'm going to get back on track and look for the next parallel expression or synonym.
I think this is why it's so important to learn about the listening test, learn the strategy, because someone could walk into the listening test assuming you're just going to get the same words back.
We're not going to need these parallel expressions.
It's not that easy, right?
Exactly.
Every now and then it will be the same word and the question.
And in the audio, but rarely, often.
It's a synonym.
It's a parallel expression, which is such a harder skill.
It's so important to practice that that you can listen, hear one thing that means the same but is actually different words.
Love that.
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Okay, Aubrey, let's go through an example with an AI prompt how this would work.
Can you guide us through this here?
Yes.
Yeah.
So the AI prompt I provided to ChatGPT was please provide a paragraph about trees that might be in IELTS listening audio and four parallel expressions to listen for that might be in IELTS.
Questions about this audio.
That was the prompt that ended up working really well.
If you don't provide a topic like just trees here, AI will often have the topic be IELTS study.
Like they'll read you an audio about IELTS preparation.
Right.
So if you provide a topic, any topic, then it's going to be more similar to what you would hear on the IELTS exam.
Right.
You're unlikely to get a blurb about IELTS study on IELTS, right?
Exactly.
That's not what we're looking for, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So now it's interesting because what you'll be returned, they're likely going to show you the actual phrases that occur in the audio and possible parallel expressions.
And this is where it's a little trickier with AI.
Your speaking partner, of course, wouldn't provide you those phrases that are in the audio.
So you want to cover that?
Keep yourself from seeing that and just pay attention to those possible parallel expressions.
OK, so.
All right.
So then we have a list of possible parallel expressions in questions, Aubrey.
Exactly.
So for this audio that I returned to us, the possible parallel expressions it gave us were protecting natural systems.
Offer shelter for wildlife.
Keep the ground firm and secure and reduce soil loss.
So none of those actual words are in the audio that we're about to read to you, right?
We're going to give you this whole exercise.
But parallel expressions for these phrases are right.
Synonyms, different ways of saying those.
And then we're going to read the audio to you and then we'll come back and help make sure you know were you able to catch them.
Why are these synonyms?
You know, so recognizing what you'll actually hear in the audio.
All right.
I'll go ahead and read the audio.
Should I read the whole thing through or should we stop when we see a keyword?
All right.
Trees play a crucial role in maintaining healthy ecosystems.
One of their most important functions is absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and releasing oxygen through a process called photosynthesis.
This helps reduce the impact of climate change.
Trees also provide habitats for many species of birds, insects and small mammals, making them essential for biodiversity.
In addition, their roots stabilize the soil, which helps prevent erosion during heavy rain.
Because of these environmental benefits, governments and environmental organizations around the world are increasingly encouraging large scale tree planting projects.
All right.
True to form, as we mentioned in the last episode, not always the most interesting content.
If you're not super excited about trees, you could find your mind wandering.
A little dry.
And often it'll be much longer, right?
This is sort of a short snippet.
So it's vital that you practice with this type of audio so that you can stay focused even if you're not super engaged.
So should we go ahead and match the parallel expressions, Aubrey?
Yes.
So you had first protecting natural systems.
And you know these are in order, so that helps.
So this is the first one you would hear.
What was our parallel expression, Lindsay?
The parallel expression here was maintaining healthy ecosystems.
So those basically mean the same thing.
And it's just another way of saying it, right?
Protecting, you know, maintaining.
It's often going to be either a similar verb, but just with a different meaning.
And then healthy ecosystems. means the same as natural systems, right?
A little different, right?
But it's never going to be word for word, exact same meaning.
It's going to be a question where you're looking for an answer that's a similar enough meaning that you know that.
Okay, this is the keyword.
This is where they're talking about this information.
Okay.
And the next piece from the audio is trees also provide habitats for many species of birds, insects and small mammals.
So another way of saying that would be offer shelter for wildlife.
Yes, and it does help that you know they're in order, right?
As soon as you heard maintaining healthy ecosystems, which is that first one.
Now your brain can move on and you're listening for something that means the same as offer shelter for wildlife.
And then you would hear that provide habitats for species means the same thing.
Shelter, habitat, homes, these are synonyms. offer shelter, provide habitat.
So then you've heard that one and you can move on to the next one.
Yep.
And then stabilize the soil.
Another way to say that would be keep the ground firm and secure.
Exactly.
So you're listening for that.
Okay, keep the ground firm and secure.
And you hear their roots stabilize the soil.
That means the same, right?
So even though...
Ground is nowhere there.
This is helping you realize these exact words aren't going to be there.
You can't just listen for the word ground the whole time and realize I never heard it.
It doesn't work that way.
It's going to be a parallel, a synonym.
Yes.
And then last one, prevent erosion.
And the parallel expression that we got from ChatGPT here from AI is reduce soil loss.
So you're listening for that.
You're listening for something that means reduce soil loss.
And then you would hear in the audio, you know, which helps prevent erosion during heavy rain.
As you can see, you do need a lot of vocabulary.
If you've never heard the word erosion before.
You have no idea what that means.
You wouldn't know that it's a parallel expression for reducing soil loss.
And if the question asks what steps are being taken to reduce soil loss, you might not recognize when you hear erosion in the audio that the answer is right there.
That's a good point.
So we already need a good wealth of vocabulary in our minds.
And then we need on top of that, these additional parallel expressions, right?
Yes.
And so as you are doing this activity, let's say that you miss provide habitats for many species.
And you're still listening, still listening, and you hear stabilize the soil.
And because you've done, you know the strategies that we teach to predict, to read ahead of time.
You know that's the same as keep the ground firm and secure.
So you might have that sinking feeling of I missed one.
I didn't catch the offer shelter for wildlife.
I see the audio has moved to the next one.
This is where you practice not panicking, just getting back on track looking for the next answers, and then you would go back and make your best guess.
Perfect.
Really good strategy.
This is the template for a really good practice session, guys.
Multiple practice sessions.
You have to practice getting lost multiple times before test day so you know what to do.
That's the bottom line.
That's kind of our takeaway for today, Aubrey.
Exactly right.
You want this to have happened so many times that it feels like second nature.
You don't panic.
You quickly and easily find yourself in the audio. so that you don't miss more answers.
Yeah, what was that part one that our listeners can now go back and listen to part one for this?
Yes, it was 1587.
Scroll up if you missed it.
What if I get lost on IELTS listening?
So we shared a lot of strategies for what you can do to make sure you don't get lost, but also what do you do.
How can you avoid panicking?
How can you get back on track?
So scroll up if you missed that episode.
Perfect.
Great one today, Aubrey.
And I'll see you back here on the show very soon.
You have a good day.
Awesome.
See you next time.
Bye.
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