else listening.
G'day.
My name is Glen 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.
Welcome back to IELTS in the Sun, the podcast to help prepare for your English exam.
I'm Glenn Spearing.
This episode is all about the IELTS listening.
I hope you enjoyed the series on IELTS speaking and thanks for the positive feedback.
It's much appreciated.
And on the topic of speaking and listening, they are often paired together for language acquisition.
Listening being the receptive or passive skill and speaking being the productive or active skill out of these two.
Whilst improving any one language skill will improve any of the others.
There are some skills that are better promoted through integrating others.
And in particular, if you know that pronunciation is a weakness of your speaking.
More listening practice will definitely help that.
This is especially so with intonation and sentence and word stress.
And I'll have more to say about this later in the episode.
Music.
In this episode, I will give an overview of the listening exam, the different sections of the listening exam and strategies for improving your overall listening skills and score.
In following episodes I will go through each section of the exam individually and specific strategies for each part.
On a personal note, I find listening the most difficult skill to improve.
Being from Australia, I guess we just don't get to hear other languages very often owing to our isolation.
Whereas English learners are surrounded by English sounds, music and TV shows, whether they're actively studying English or not.
And this is probably why most students appear to generally score better in their listening than other parts of the IELTS exam.
However, I also find that it is specific faults rather than general faults that often limit people's scores in the listening exam.
So for those looking to improve their listening score specifically, this series will be a good exercise for targeted and detailed listening.
Find out what it is that you need to work on.
Some general notes with the listening exam. and for this podcast.
The order of the exam as I talk about it in this podcast is true for the paper exam, but the computer-based exam may vary, so check with your exam centre to avoid any surprises.
Although I've never had a student come back to me and say that something was a bit of a surprise or a shock to them in terms of the order in the listening.
So that may be something that is just a little bit of an oddity.
The other thing is that the listening part of the exam and the reading part of the exam are fairly similar in structure.
So a lot of the tips in these episodes for the listening are also practical for the reading part of the exam as well.
And speaking of which, and I've spoken about this in previous episodes, is the spelling.
Spelling is important.
If you recall back to previous episodes where I've spoken about getting writing to help you improve your spelling.
This is also an important point because in the listening part of the exam and in all parts of the exam, incorrect spelling will mean that you lose marks.
Your answer will be marked wrong if the spelling is incorrect.
The other important point is that you do not lose marks for an incorrect answer in the listening exam, so make sure you provide a response for each question, even if you do not know the answer to the question you're being asked.
Your listening task for today is how many conversations will you hear in the listening exam?
And speaking of which, in terms of listening tasks, do use these tasks as practice.
I do create them in a similar format to the actual exam, as far as the format in the show notes allows.
So do get involved on social media or on Spotify in the show notes, in the polls, if you can.
I guarantee you that it will help with your listening.
Anyway, on with the episode.
The IELTS listening exam is often the first one that you will have if you haven't already done the speaking exam prior to this.
In a paper-based test you will have your question paper and answer sheet.
It is best to write your answers on the question paper first, because at the end of the recording you will have 10 minutes to check and transfer your answers over to the answer sheet.
Only your answer sheet will be marked.
Overall you have 40 minutes for this.
The recordings last for 30 minutes.
There are four recordings and at the end of that 30 minutes with the full recordings you will be asked to transfer and check your answers on the answer sheet.
In a computer-based exam you'll only have two minutes to check your answer.
There are 40 questions in all with 40 possible marks, 40 possible points.
30 correct answers will give you a band score of 7.
8 will be 35 and 9 will be 40 correct answers.
You will have a short amount of time to read the questions before the recording starts, but you'll have to be quick with this.
You'll have to invoke your speed reading skills to be able to identify keywords if you have the time.
You can only listen to the recording once it's not repeated and you can't pause the recording.
You will hear many different accents.
They will generally be of the neutral variety, but you will notice some slight variations from north american accents, british accents, irish accents, Australian and New Zealand and possibly even Indian accents as well, but they will be more in the neutral field.
So for a lot of people, they won't necessarily notice any difference.
There are 10 different types of questions that you will get in the listening exam.
They could be either sentence completion, summary completion, form completion, note completion, multiple choice, short answer questions, table completion, diagram labeling, map or plan completion, or flow chart or diagram completion.
It's often the case that some of the sections will more or less naturally align with these different types of sections and question types.
Over the next couple of episodes we'll go through them and have a look at which ones you're likely to get, or more likely to get, in which part of the listening exam.
There are four parts of the listening exam with listening test, and there may be specific instructions within each of these sections, so follow those instructions closely.
Sections one and two are based on social situations.
So often you will hear either a meeting between two people where they're arranging to go to an event, or maybe a coffee or anything like this, and also in this part of the exam, you're likely to get something involving directions or maybe even a phone call to a business that's asking about a quote or something like this.
You're quite likely to get numbers and dates and times in this part of the exam.
Sections three and four are much more targeted at an academic setting.
So you're likely to hear an excerpt from what might be something like a lecture or students discussing a particular academic task at university and how they're going to arrange that.
So sections one and two are generally non-academic stuff, what you might consider real world examples, and sections three and four are much more aligned to what you might hear in a tertiary education setting.
In the exam you are going to have your questions in chronological order, so one will follow the other.
So if you miss a question or you think you miss a question, don't get stuck on that question.
Go on to the next one and see if you get an idea of what the answer might be for that question by listening to the other questions.
Don't get ultra focused on one and lose track of where you are in the recording.
You are likely to hear two conversations in your listening test.
One in the first two sections and the second in the second two sections.
I've mentioned previously on the podcast about how to improve your general listening skills.
And I'll reiterate those again with some more in-depth examples advice on how to improve your specific listening skills.
Obviously you're listening to this podcast, which is a great way of improving your listening skills, And I'm sure that if you are listening to this podcast, you probably listen to other podcasts as well.
So that really is the easiest way that you can improve your listening skills.
There are some caveats to that, as I've mentioned before.
It really is important that you listen to podcasts with a specific topic.
And in that way, you are getting what we call comprehensible input.
So you know what the topic is about and therefore the vocabulary and the words and the frames to listen to.
And that is the case with the IELTS listening exam is that you will know what the topic is about.
So it's not just random chatter.
The other thing is to listen to a balance of different types of podcasts, either a conversational podcast, like my other one, and a monologue podcast, such as this one.
But it is definitely important that you listen to a wide variety of different podcasts, not just English learning or language learning podcasts, specifically looking at scientific podcasts and other academic podcasts, because one of the challenges for a lot of students is is listening to numbers and measurements, which aren't usually in most podcasts and it's not something that a lot of teachers will generally teach in lessons and certainly i know in my lessons numbers aren't terribly common.
So when we get to an exam situation, this is often a challenge listening to big numbers or even small numbers or distinguishing between different numbers, for example, 15 and 50.
So different science podcasts are great for that.
So astronomy podcasts, science podcasts they will generally have a high proportion of numbers in those podcasts, so that's a great way to start getting a variety of accents, or exposure to different accents, is also really important.
It's one of the philosophies behind my other podcast, the australians teach english podcast, and the one of my philosophies is to get as many different accents as possible on the show so that any listeners will get exposure to those different accents.
So if you're listening to this podcast and my other podcast, then you're getting a whole variety of different accents, and if you are listening to this podcast and the australians teach english podcast, then you're probably getting enough overall conversational exposure.
The trick then, is to find some science-related podcasts specifically that are conversational as well.
I have some that I listen to, but it's really up to you as to what you listen to and what you want to listen to and what you enjoy listening to.
But it's also important to keep in mind that you're not necessarily going to get a topic that you enjoy listening to in your exam.
You might get something that you really find quite boring, so this can be another challenge for you as well.
In terms of some of my favorite podcasts in english that i think might be beneficial for listeners, my favorite overall podcast is one called the history of english, and this is.
This is fantastic.
It will help you think about words differently, as well as give you some understanding of why some words are spelt in crazy ways that don't make sense and all the rest.
My other favorite one is one called Lingthusiasm.
That is more about linguistics and probably less beneficial for English learners, but it's great for me as a teacher.
Another one is called lexic texture and this is a little bit more of an etymology type podcast, but when it comes to looking at words, what i would call word study, or what in the literature is called word study actually breaking down parts of words, thinking about them, making connections This is also a really important part of language acquisition, and especially with vocabulary and meaning and so on.
And at the same time.
So if you listen to my podcast, if you listen to Lingthusiasm, if you listen to the History of English podcast, if you listen to Lexitecture, what you're going to be exposed to is Australian neutral accents.
I have a neutral accent.
One of the hosts of Lingthusiasm has a neutral accent.
The History of English podcast with Kevin Stroud.
He has what I would consider a fairly neutral American accent.
And then also there's a Canadian accent as the co-host of Lingthusiasm.
In the Lexi texture you're going to get a Canadian or a North American accent and also a Scottish accent.
So that will cover the vast majority of your accent exposure requirements.
The other thing that students can do is get the transcripts for particular podcasts.
I have transcripts on my Patreon, for example, and they are hand edited by me.
So you know that they are correct.
Whereas if you get subtitles, for example on YouTube or the automatic ones on Spotify, they're not necessarily correct.
And so this can present a few challenges with your listening accuracy as well, because one of the big challenges with English generally is that it's not a phonetic language, so things aren't necessarily spelled the way that they sound.
And on a similar topic, there often is an issue that I find with students that have generally been self-taught at the B2C1 type level, either being self-taught or taught by a non-native speaker.
I generally am fully supportive of non-native English teachers, but this is certainly one area that I find is a little bit of a detriment is that often the sound letter correspondence is not quite there.
So often when I have a student at a B2 level that is struggling to get to the next level, particularly with their speaking or their listening, I often have to take them back to fundamentals and have a look at the sounds of the alphabet and how many different sounds particular letters can make.
So if you know that this is a challenge for you, then there really is no harm in going back and actually looking at the very, very low level, the fundamental sounds, and this will also tune your ear to the particular sounds as well.
For example, and also listening to what we call minimal pairs, which is when sounds or words, sorry are only one sound away from a different word.
So, for example, or even a little bit more than that.
So, for example, a classic example for students is struggling with the word thorough or through.
So getting your ear tuned to hearing these small differences is also quite important, and there are lots of youtube videos on this one as well.
So knock yourself out, but it is a really important thing to do, and listening to these small differences in sound will also help your speaking as well.
So when you are doing this listening practice, it is a good idea to recreate those sounds as well.
The more you listen to, the more you will be able to replicate.
And so your pronunciation and your speaking accuracy will also improve at the same time.
Being aware of what we call homophones.
These are words that sound the same, but might be written in a different way or have a different meaning.
For example, rose and rose, rose being the flower row being what you do in a boat.
Having good knowledge of these types of words is also really important in the listening part of the exam, because it's a classic way that they will trip you up in the exam.
So get on top of your homophones, and these will also be readily available on youtube as well.
Generally, improving your vocabulary is is going to be important in increasing your mark in all areas of the exam, But if you want to do this through reading or through listening, it doesn't really matter.
But if you want to, in particular, improve your listening mark, then I would also recommend exploring things like audiobooks and music.
Although for an exam, I'm not as big a fan of listening to music compared to say, general English.
Improving your general level, I would say using audio books and these sorts of things are probably actually a better way of going about it.
At the end of the day, a big part of your general English improvement, your general language acquisition and improvement, is simply a matter of volume and exposure.
So the more you can listen to, the more that you can read, the more that you can speak, the more that you can write, the better off you are going to be.
So any opportunity that you get to listen to something in english, then do it, whether that's in the shower, whether that's when you're getting ready for bed or when that's when you're cooking or when you're in the car, when you're traveling in the train, it doesn't matter.
Just use any opportunity that you can to get exposure to the language.
When it comes to lessons specifically for listening, they are quite difficult to make.
They are much more time consuming than any other type of lesson.
So you will find a lot of english teachers generally don't do a lot of listening lessons unless they are in a group class, unless they are straight from a textbook, for example.
So this can be a bit of a challenge for students.
So if you do know your listening is weak, then make sure you actually let your teacher know that this is what you want to work on and that this is something that is really important to you, and press the point, because otherwise a lot of teachers just won't create the lessons for you.
The other challenge with doing listening practice having listening lessons for the exam is that the way that we often teach listening skills in a lesson setting or in a class setting is quite different to the exam setting.
So often we will get students to listen to gist, get the idea of the concept, scaffold in front of the listening activity with particular vocabulary and then listen for detail.
After we've done this in the exam, you don't get a chance to do this.
You listen to it once.
So this is a big challenge so often.
Often, what is recommended is doing a lot of dummy tests.
This can get you familiar with what is actually required in the exam rather than listening for other particular purposes.
So this is one thing that you can definitely do on your own.
There are quite a few good places out there for the listening part of the exam.
You can discover them yourself and see which one works for you.
But I think getting that side of things down pat in terms of being comfortable with it is important and you can work on the vocabulary and your other listening skills, your targeted listening skills, away from that as a separate thing and and in that way you're getting the vocabulary, you're getting the listening to detail, all of these sorts of things before you go into the exam, but you're also trained with your ear for what is going to happen in the exam.
I think that's basically it from me here for this particular episode of the IELTS listing.
In the next couple of episodes we're going to be going through the individual parts of the listening exam.
And then, in the future, what we will do is we will have an individual episode for each particular question type.
But if you want something created before then, if there's something that you really struggle with, then we can do that on Patreon and I can create content for you specifically how you want it or the questions that you generally have for that task, or if there's something that you are struggling with in particular.
A reminder that your listening question for this episode is how many conversations are you going to hear in your listening exam?
But from me, Glenn Spearing at IELTS in the Sun, it's me saying goodbye.
If you like this podcast, don't forget to rate, review and share it with anyone who might benefit from listening.
If you'd like to improve your general listening skills, get tips on language learning and get exposure to topics that regularly appear on the IELTS exam, check out the Australians Teach English podcast.
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