Episode 10 IELTS Listening, Section 3 G'day.
My name is Glenn Spearing and I've been teaching English as a second language and English as a foreign language for nearly 10 years, both in Australia and overseas.
I've prepared exam students throughout that time and have taught communication skills at university level to students who have entered through the IELTS and English as a second language pathway.
Some of my students have scored extremely highly in their IELTS exams and, as a result, have been able to work for internationally renowned organisations such as the United Nations.
This podcast is a combination of strategies, tips and tricks that I've learned over that time to make sure that you have the best chance possible to achieve your maximum score.
Are you ready?
Let's go.
G'day and welcome back to IELTS in the Sun, the podcast to help you prepare for your English exam.
I'm your host, Glenn Spearing.
Episode 10 is all about listening section three.
You're probably a little bit over my tips at this stage, which is okay, because sections three and four will demand a lot of the skills and language features that I've emphasized over the previous nine episodes.
It's in these two sections where you will really begin to notice an improvement, if you have been working on the various skills and tips.
If you don't believe me, do a few dummy listening tests now and then again in the next few weeks, and you will notice that these are the two sections where you will often get your biggest improvement in the listening.
In this episode I'll give an overview of the recording type, the question types and the tasks for this section of the listening exam that you're likely to get.
I'll talk about the language elements you should be listening out for and some of the tricks exam makers use to trip you up in this part of the exam in particular.
We'll then talk about what to study and how best to prepare for this section of the exam.
Going back to the last episode, I spoke about history podcasts.
One of my favorites is called Weird Crap in Australia, and I've had both of the hosts on my other podcasts as well.
I didn't recommend this one for test preparation because the hosts have quite strong accents.
But after you do complete your exam, it is a great one to listen to, especially if you plan on moving to Australia.
And this is an important point.
People often neglect their language learning after doing their exam.
But I can assure you it will make everything a lot easier if you keep working on your English.
Particularly if you use resources relevant to where you're going or what you are studying.
If you're coming to Australia, Weird Crap in Australia or my other podcast is ideal for example.
But there are sure to be a whole host of things for you to explore and engage with.
When I was in Argentina, for example, there was a channel called Canal Encuentro, which was amazing for my language learning and also helped me to understand a lot of Argentine history and a lot of Argentine culture as well.
The reason I say this and emphasize this is because often people arrive in a country without having done any preparation work on their language, aside from their exam studies.
And I frequently get students a year later struggling with their language in different ways, especially with students who are at university and people who are working in office environments and are having difficulty with their professional writing.
And that is irrelevant compared to their overall level or how they scored in their exams or whichever exam it is.
It seems to be something that is quite common.
And, of course, the other difficulty is that once you are studying or once you're working, you just don't have the time and the energy to focus on studying English.
So I guess the key thing here is just don't stop learning.
It's always something that you can improve and it's always something that's going to make your life easier in the future.
Your listening question for today is, how does student A feel about their mark?
Although listening section three should be the second most difficult out of the listening sections, many students find this to be the most difficult of the four.
This is because you're likely to hear a conversation between two to four people, so it could be two, it could be three or it could be four people.
It's often not as clear what the purpose of the conversation is, and many students get lost thinking about what type of subject matter they are listening to rather than responding to what they're actually hearing.
On that note, there are a few types of conversations you are likely to hear in this section.
Sections three and four are in an academic setting.
You're likely to hear a conversation between students or with a teacher or lecturer.
Students might be organizing a group activity such as a presentation, or a teacher might be giving feedback on an assignment or answering questions about an upcoming assignment or exam, or so on.
Anything along these lines is possible.
You can see why it's easy for students to get lost trying to find the overall purpose of the conversation.
That's a deliberate trick from the exam makers.
But as compared to other sections, it's not as important to understand the overall purpose of this conversation.
As in other sections, use your time wisely to think about the kind of conversation you are going to hear before the recording starts.
The recording will last between four to six minutes overall.
You're likely to get a wide variety of question types and tasks in this section.
You could get multiple choice matching, different completion activities in the form of a table, notes or sentence completion, and even other variations of multiple choice tasks.
For example, choose two research methods that you hear from this following list In this conversation, you're likely to hear people's opinions and in your questions, you're likely to be asked about these opinions as well.
You'll also notice more discourse markers in this section.
I've spoken about both of these in the speaking series.
These discourse markers are often little clues for you to place or locate yourself in the recording and in the questions.
You're also likely to hear agreements and disagreements as well.
So if you remember back to IELTS listening part one, then this is also a skill that you can focus on and something that you need to listen to in the recording.
In listening sections three and four.
One of the ways exam makers trick people is by asking a question that is answered with a synonym.
That is, you won't necessarily hear the words that are in the question or amongst the answers.
For example, the question might be, how does student A feel about their mark?
The possible answers might be thrilled, ecstatic, unhappy or happy.
And in the recording, student A might say something like I studied a lot, so I'm displeased with my mark.
Displeased being a synonym of unhappy.
In sections three and four of the listening and also in the reading sections.
They love topics that facilitate the use of suffixes and prefixes, which in turn means more possible synonyms and also antonyms.
You might be getting used to me saying what to study now seems obvious.
But yes, each of these elements demands its own episode in the future.
But you can work on these different elements now.
Learning set phrases for opinions and how they can be used in conversation will help you throughout the exam.
Basic set phrases like i think that, or even more advanced structures like from my perspective, will help you in different parts of the overall ielts exam.
Alongside that, different discourse markers, like we've spoken about in the speaking series, and also confirmation yes, i agree with that.
I i, i would except that all these sorts of agreement and disagreement markers also will help you in this part of the exam as well.
But the big one is developing a large vocabulary and in turn working on suffixes and prefixes.
They kind of go hand in hand.
Once you start getting the hang of using prefixes and suffixes, you'll realize one word can easily generate three or four more and your vocabulary will expand quite quickly.
One of the unique features of English is the amount of synonyms and therefore antonyms, or words that mean a similar thing or words that mean the opposite thing.
There are some historical reasons for this that I'll flesh out in a future episode.
But at this stage, what you can do is, whenever you come across or discover a new word, is look for similar words.
Look for words that mean something similar.
And then do the opposite in terms of looking for its opposite word, looking for its antonym.
The best way to do this is by reading, but we've got a few more weeks before we get into the reading section of the exam.
So I'll hold off on more about that, but it is really the best way that you're going to increase your vocabulary.
The second best way of increasing your vocabulary is to listen to a lot of different things, such as podcasts.
And by this stage you should be listening to a variety of topics and accents and with a variety of styles as well monologues and conversations.
This will give you enough exposure to the different language elements discussed in this episode.
Well, that's it for this week's episode of IELTS in the sun, looking at IELTS listening, section three, and remember focusing on the different conversation elements and also thinking about what we've spoken about previously.
But also, let's look towards the future of of how we can expand our vocabulary as well, because this will lead on nicely into the reading section and then later into the writing section as well.
But I think that's probably enough for now.
Remember your listening task for this week, or your listening question for this week is how does student A feel about their mark?
So that's me, Glenn Spearing, signing off for another week of IELTS in the sun.
So have a good one, guys.
Hooroo.
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