Hey everybody, this is Shelley.
I hope you are well.
Sadly, as I'm sure you can hear from my voice, I am not feeling very well this week, which means that Nick and I have not been able to record a new episode for you.
The only good news is that I keep testing negative for COVID.
So hopefully this is just a nasty cold and I will be back fit and well with a new episode next week.
But until then, that does not mean you get a week off.
You should still be studying.
So I thought that we would replay our most popular ever episode.
That's an episode Nick and I recorded well over two years ago for listening.
Part three, or in other words, how you can tackle listening multiple choice questions.
Enjoy the episode and i'll be back next week, hopefully with a voice that sounds much clearer than this.
Take care until then.
Welcome to My IELTS Classroom, the podcast where two ex-examiners talk all things IELTS.
I'm Shelley Cornick and I'm Nick Long and today we're going to look at listening part three.
What does this part of the listening exam test?
What skills will you need to do well?
And what are four tricks that the exam writers use to make you choose the wrong answer?
Welcome everybody to my IELTS classroom and welcome to you, Shelley.
Hello.
How are you doing today?
Do you know what?
I'm doing pretty good.
I decided a couple of days ago that what my house was missing was greenery.
So I went online and I ordered six kind of I don't even know what they are, but they're houseplants
They're green.
Mm-hmm.
And I have to say it was really simple and cheap thing to do but it's really made a massive difference to my mood.
Yeah, they do help.
I've got like seven or eight houseplants that I've cured over the last half year.
And yeah, definitely makes you smile a bit more.
Really?
It's like crazy.
And the cat loves them.
She hasn't eaten them yet.
So yeah, I am in a very, very good mood.
To be honest.
Right.
So before we start today's episode, I just quickly.
I got an email this week from a student, a lovely lady called Zina.
And she says, let me read it.
She says Dear Nick and Shelley, thank you very much for your episode about the IELTS indicator test.
You're very welcome, Zina.
I don't personally need the test because I'm a dentist, but I went to the website out of interest.
And here in the UK, the exam does not cost $223.
It costs $157.
I just wanted to let you know, keep up the good work, Zena.
So I thought that was interesting, Nick.
So is it different prizes in different countries then?
Well, this is what I'm assuming.
So the kind of strange thing is that because it's not offered, I'm in St.
Petersburg now.
And because the test isn't offered in Russia.
When I went to the website and tried to open a book, it just said you know it's not available in your country.
So...
I contacted Juliet, who's one of our teachers who lives in Spain.
And I said, Juliet, just have a quick look.
And so that $223 was the price in Spain, which I just assumed... Would be the global price.
Well, yeah, because it's an online test.
I don't really understand what... why it costs more to administer that test in different countries.
Very strange.
So yeah, so I thought that was a really great comment and I'm really, really grateful for Zina to writing in and telling us that.
So I would just maybe add to our episode last week that...
Check how much it costs.
Maybe it's not quite as expensive in your country.
And maybe just let us know.
Maybe we could find out the cheapest country and the most expensive country.
The only reason I can think of for the difference is maybe the people who are monitoring the test.
Maybe they get paid more in certain countries.
That is possible, actually.
But you would have thought they would have been paid more in the UK.
So it's kind of strange that it's less expensive there.
So I don't know.
It's a mystery.
It is.
All right.
So that was last week.
Obviously, if you haven't listened, you can go back and download.
And if you're enjoying our episodes, please, please, please subscribe.
Like us, review us, rate us, all of that stuff really helps us.
So today we're going to look at listening part three.
This is going to be an interactive episode.
So get ready to do some work.
Please, if you can, grab a piece of paper and a pen.
You'll need that.
If you're in your car, obviously you can't do that.
But if you want to train or something, then maybe just open the notes app on your phone, right?
So you've got a place to make some notes.
But before we start doing all of the exercises and looking at part three Nick, why don't you remind us of the types of conversations that we hear in this part of the test and what makes them so tricky?
Well, as we discussed in our Listening 101 episode, parts one and two of the listening exam focus more on everyday interactions.
But in part three we move on from sort of this sort of common everyday stuff into more academic stuff.
Listening examples
For part three.
That means we need to listen to two or three people having a conversation in an academic context, which makes it much harder.
Maybe the reason students struggle here is because they hear so many voices at one time especially, especially if there are three speakers, because then, for example, you might have two male speakers and one female speaker, and when you have the two different male speakers, it can be a little bit tricky to understand who actually is speaking Right.
Especially because a lot of the time the questions ask you for one person's view.
Yeah.
So it might say, you know, what does George think about the project?
And then you've got to remember which one of the speakers is.
George, you know if there are two guys.
Because you probably only hear that once, won't you?
Yeah, you will only understand right at the beginning of the conversation exactly which voice is which person.
So, you know, often there's a tutor and two students.
So it's kind of obvious because you normally have a boy student, a girl student and the teacher.
But, you know, for me, the names look clearly male and female.
Mm-hmm.
But I know, you know, I've got students in a lot of countries.
When they send me their names, I have no idea.
So for me, it's obvious it's male or female.
But maybe for some students, it's not obvious at all what's a male name and a female name.
That is true.
That could be true.
Yeah.
I think another problem as well is that their questions often ask you what a person thinks or feels about a topic.
And that in itself means that you have to sort of extract that information, not necessarily through the words exactly that they use.
Yeah, people rarely say I'm happy.
Yeah, you know, you have to understand from like other words, that they use their feelings.
And also what happens very often um, in this part of the test, is that people's opinions or feelings change throughout a conversation.
Yep, so somebody may say that they agree at the beginning, but then actually after you know, four or five sentences later, they've changed their mind and they disagree.
So your job is to understand their final thoughts or opinions, not the ones they give at the beginning.
Yeah Right,
So what I thought we'd do today then is I work as an exam writer.
We've discussed this quite a few times now.
So, you know, I'm employed by a university to create tests very much like the IELTS test.
So what I thought I'd do today is I want to train you to think like an IELTS exam writer.
Because I think if you start to understand what the examiners or what the exam writers are thinking when they create these listening tests, it should actually make it easier for you to find the right answers.
Because actually, as an exam writer, I have, let's call them, well, I want to say a lot of tricks.
So there are some tricks that I can use to make it difficult for students to find an answer.
But actually, they're not really tricks.
They're kind of like genuine academic tools that I'm using to really check.
Different type of listening skills.
So I thought what we do then is we're going to look at one section three, one part three from one exam in one Cambridge book.
Nick, that's for copyright reasons.
I really hope Cambridge are happy for us to look at one part of one test and we're going to look at that test and we're going to look at four tricks that the exam writers have used in that part to try and guide students to choose the wrong answers.
So there are 14 cambridge books.
Each book has got four tests.
So that is my math is not very good 56 tests.
Of those 56 tests nick, which one do you think i chose for us to look at today?
I'm going to say it's something that's later than book six or seven.
So something fairly recent.
Okay, that is very good.
Yes, it's book nine.
Okay.
And do you remember in our listening 101 episode when we were talking about the different accents that you can have and we spent a lot of time like you did your Scottish accent and I did my Australian accent?
Do you remember we talked about in one test? there are two students who are supposedly from Greece.
The foreign students.
The foreign students.
So one is supposed, there's Spiros, who's from Greece, and there's Hiroko, who's from Japan.
But really, it's just like Paul and Janet from London who are doing the voices.
That's the test we're going to listen to today.
Oh, wow.
Exciting.
So I thought that would be quite fun.
So this is part three from Cambridge Isle's Book nine, test one.
If you've got that book, you could open that now so you could look at the questions.
If you haven't, don't worry.
I've put the questions that we're looking at.
So we're not looking at every question.
We're just looking at four questions.
I've put those on our blog page for today's episode.
So you can just go to blog.myioxclassroom.com.
And actually, we're gonna do something different, right?
So when you're training for IELTS, What you don't want to do is just practice exam task after exam task.
That's not going to help you understand how to improve.
So we're not actually just going to answer the questions today.
We're going to do some different stuff.
So even if you've got the book, some of the times I don't want you to look at the answers.
So it might be better to go to the blog page anyway.
All right.
So in this part three, we've got.
Three speakers.
We have a teacher.
And as I said, we've got Hiroko and... What's his name?
Spirios or something.
Spirios.
Thank you.
I was going to say Stavros.
We've got Spirios.
All right.
And they are discussing how useful they found the academic English course that they took before they started their real university course.
And all of the questions that we're going to look at today are multiple choice questions.
So you're given the beginning of a sentence and then you need to choose the correct end.
And there are three options, right?
There's the answer and what we call two distractors.
Why do you think we call those distractors, Nick?
Because those words will very likely be mentioned in this in the speech.
And it's your job not to listen for.
So you're not just listening for one piece of information because you'll hear them all.
So you need to listen to the context around the information, I assume.
Yeah, exactly.
We call them distractors, because when I'm writing a test, There's the answer, but then I need to invent two more answers which will trick students right?
They're going to distract students or guide them away from the correct answer.
So for me as a test writer, a good distractor is one that weaker students choose.
Right.
Yeah, so I'm trying to get the weaker students to choose the distractor.
That is my job.
Sorry, students.
So, and as you just said, I think you've just actually covered.
So my first trick, this is trick number one.
As an exam writer, I'm going to call it the rapid fire trick.
Like a gun firing, right?
So what I do for the rapid fire trick, this is for students who are just looking at the key words in the multiple choice options.
And they are just listening for those key words to choose their answers.
So they're not really able to really follow the conversation.
All they can do is just hear and match particular words.
So that's maybe, I mean, my first job as a teacher was in Austria.
We might talk about this next week, right?
And it was like 20 years ago, so there was no internet.
So in the evening, All I could watch was German MTV.
Right.
Because that was it.
And now my German is like bad, like A1 elementary.
But strangely I could kind of always understand what was happening on MTV, because there are some words in English that are the same in German.
Yeah.
So I understood like everything.
20th word.
But looking at the pictures and understanding that word, I was more or less able to follow what was happening.
So that would be called what we call listening for gist.
So listening for gist is just the main idea of a conversation, But very often in an IELTS test we want to check you can really understand the specific details.
Yeah.
So in this rapid fire trick, I'm going to give you, for your multiple choice options, three options.
And each option will have one keyword.
And as you said, I'm going to give you every keyword...
In the listening.
Right.
So as you're listening, you're going to hear keyword one, keyword two, keyword three.
And so it's absolutely impossible to use those keywords to find the answer.
Because you have to actually understand the overall meaning, right?
Yep.
All right.
So to show you this, we're going to look at the first question for this section.
Right.
So it's question 21.
And this question just says one reason why Spiros felt happy about his marketing presentation.
Was that something?
All right.
Now, I'm not going to tell you what the options are.
I want you to listen to this short part of the text.
And I just want you to write down everything you hear that may be an answer.
So basically, I want you to write down every single reason you hear why Spiros might be happy with his marketing presentation.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
So Nick, what do you have to do?
I need to listen and I need to write down any reason why Spiros felt happy about his marketing presentation, exactly all right.
So at the end, i think when i listened, i found three or four, so you should have three or four different things reasons why he was happy.
All right, let's play, let's play it and let's write them down.
Spiros, if i could start with you, what parts of the program have now proved to be particularly valuable to you?
Um, i think that having to do a seminar presentation really helped me.
For example, a couple of weeks ago in our marketing subject, when it was my turn to give a presentation, i felt quite confident.
Of course, i was still nervous, but because i had done one before, i knew what to expect.
Also, i know i was well prepared and i had practiced my timing.
In fact, I think that, in relation to some of the other people in my group, I did quite a good job because my overall style was quite professional.
All right.
Do you think Spiros is really Greek?
Absolutely not.
Definitely.
It's definitely a British person doing a bad accent.
It's definitely Dave from London.
All right.
So if you want to listen to that again, you can just go back.
All right.
There's no rush.
You don't need to listen once, because I just want you to write down, you know, as many reasons as you can.
Why Spiros?
Spiros was happy with this presentation.
So Nick, what have you got on your list?
Why was he happy?
He said that before the presentation he felt confident.
Yeah, that's the first thing.
He said that he was well prepared.
Yeah.
That he had practiced his timing before.
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
And he feels like he did a very good job.
That his presentation was professional.
Exactly.
Well done.
Good student, Nick.
That's exactly the same things which I had on my list.
Yeah.
So he was confident.
He was well prepared.
He practiced his timing.
And overall, his style is professional.
So can you see there that we've got like four different reasons why he was, four different reasons why and all four things he mentions, right.
So if we now look at the actual question, the actual question says one reason why spiros felt happy about his marketing presentation was that, a he was not nervous.
B his style was good Or, C the presentation was the best in his group.
Okay.
So which answer would you pick having listened to that now?
Well, I think it's definitely not C.
Right.
So that's quite interesting because he didn't say he was the best in his group, did he?
No, he definitely didn't.
He said he did a very good job.
He said he'd done a very good job.
And we heard the word group.
He does talk about his group.
He does.
But he doesn't say he was the best.
So that is one of the distractors.
So what about then if we've got A, he was not nervous or B, his style was good.
See, I'm a little bit torn here because he did say that he felt quite confident.
Right, exactly.
And I remember hearing the word nervous.
He did say, he said.
But I think he said he was nervous, didn't he?
Not, not, not, not, not.
Yeah, not nervous.
Not, not nervous.
Right.
He said, I felt quite confident.
Of course, I was still nervous.
So it's definitely B then.
So the answer is B, his style was good.
And he says at the end, my overall style was quite professional.
But can you see what IELTS have done here?
They've made it really difficult.
They've given you, you know, A, he was not nervous.
We heard nervous.
Yeah.
B, his style was good.
We heard style.
That was the answer.
But we still heard the key word.
And C, the presentation was the best in his group.
We heard the word.
Group.
Group.
So we heard one key word from each of the options.
And that is actually quite important, because if, as an exam writer, I put key words for the answers that were wrong,
Mm-hmm, but not for the correct answer.
Clever students will understand.
Oh, I didn't hear a keyword.
That's the answer.
So it's important that I have a keyword for each of the distractors.
Right.
And also, you know, that first one, Was he nervous?
Well, if you only hear, I felt quite confident you could choose A Yeah, because I honestly didn't remember 100 whether he was nervous.
I remember hearing the word nervous, but I also remember him saying I was quite confident, so...
Which you know, which is why, in the test is absolutely vital that you answer the questions as you listen.
Like it's impossible.
You're a native speaker, right?
But it's impossible to remember all of the conversations.
Exactly.
To remember every single word.
Yeah.
So I think this is a really great example of the rapid fire trick.
Yeah, we had.
Every single choice in the multiple choice had a keyword which we heard, but only one was correct.
Yeah.
Good job, Nick.
Thanks.
I sometimes think of answering multiple choice questions a bit like...
You know, I don't know, like it's often in some sort of like thriller or police drama, right?
Where they're trying to catch a robber and everyone's like waiting like they can see them, and they're waiting to go and catch them right.
But everyone's like, wait, wait, wait, go.
I think with these multiple choice questions, it's really important that you just keep waiting.
Yeah.
You know, because I think it would be really easy to say, I'm confident.
Okay A, But you've got to keep listening right the way until the end of that section to be 100 sure.
Everything needs to be put into context, basically.
Yeah.
The answers and the entire short section of the speech.
Yeah, definitely.
All right.
So trick number one, lots and lots of keywords very quickly.
Rapid fire.
All right.
So let's move on then to trick number two, which for me is the opposite of the rapid fire trick.
And this is what I call the synonyms trick.
So, rather than giving the student a lot of key words from the answers in the multiple choice, can you guess what we're going to do this time?
We're not going to have any probably.
We're not going to give them any keywords, right?
So you're just going to hear something and none of the words are going to match the multiple choice answers or the possible answers.
Because again, we are checking that you can understand everything.
Meaning, right?
So to do this one, what we're going to do now, we're going to listen to the second question, right?
And the second question is, what surprised Hiroko about the other students' presentations?
What surprised her about the other students' presentations?
So again, I just want you to listen and I want you to write down exactly what you hear.
What surprised Hiroko?
Right.
All right, so let's play track number two.
What about you, Hiroko?
That's interesting.
In my group, I was really surprised by the way the students did their presentations.
They just read their notes aloud.
Can you believe that?
They didn't worry about their presentation style or keeping eye contact with their audience.
And I remember that these things were really stressed to us in the course here.
I'm sure Nick doesn't need to listen again, though.
I don't think so.
So, Nick, I think, again, there was more than one thing that surprised them.
There was quite a few things, yeah, actually.
Yeah, so what surprised Hiroko?
Right.
Let me see if I can remember.
So she was surprised at the sort of lack of effort that the students had made.
Yeah.
I haven't written down the exact words.
I do apologize.
One of the things that surprised her was that the students were just reading their notes from the from the page.
That they didn't worry about the style and that they didn't keep eye contact with the audience.
Exactly.
So very similar to one of my presentations.
I was going to say when I was teaching at the university in Australia, one of the things the students had to do was give a presentation.
And those notes are what I had to say to almost every student.
I'd be like, stop reading your notes.
You've got to give eye contact.
All right.
So let's imagine that.
So we are the exam writers, right?
So that's the information in the text, right?
They read their notes.
They didn't worry about the style and they didn't keep eye contact.
So we're not going to use any of those words in our answer.
So we're going to need to paraphrase.
Okay.
So, you know, again, I'm training you to think like the exam writers.
Mm-hmm.
They read their notes.
How could we paraphrase that?
We could say something like they stuck to the script.
Maybe.
Well, actually, maybe.
That's not bad.
I mean, I think it's quite hard to think of a paraphrase for that particular thing.
I mean, you wouldn't really say script, I guess, for presentation, would you?
I think it's almost impossible to say they read their notes without using the word notes.
Yeah.
So for me as an exam writer, I'm like okay, I don't think I can use that one, because I don't think I can paraphrase it.
They didn't worry about their style.
Hmm.
I think, again, that's tricky.
Yeah, I would say, instead of worry, maybe they weren't concerned about.
But again, style is kind of hard.
Style is hard to find like a simple, nice distractor.
So I think I'm again, like, I don't think I can use that.
But the last one.
They didn't keep eye contact, they didn't look at their audience.
That is oh nick sorry, is that what?
No nick, that is exactly.
Do you want to come and work with me at the university?
That is yeah.
Is that is the answer?
Okay exactly, word for word.
The answer is they didn't look at the audience enough.
So if we look at then all of the options here right, we've got A.
Their presentations were not interesting.
Yeah, which she didn't mention at all really, did she?
She didn't mention that at all, right?
Now that's really interesting.
You say that because when I was working in Australia, they paid for me once to go to a conference for exam writers.
And one of the women there was a lady called Claire McDowell.
You might know her because she wrote New Insight into IELTS.
She's one of the authors.
Okay.
I don't know her.
She's very high up in the IELTS world.
She's probably retired now, actually.
And she was giving a lecture about how they create the exams.
It was quite interesting because the most important question was how do you know which question is for each level, right?
How do you know if it's a good upper intermediate question or advanced question?
And her answer was just, I have no idea.
I just give them to the people to test and they come back and tell me.
But she told me something very interesting.
She said that for many of the multiple choice questions in IELTS, there's one which is just not mentioned.
Okay.
And I think for this one, A, their presentations were not interesting.
There was nothing about that.
There wasn't.
Yeah.
I think I mean you could make an argument that the way they presented by just reading the text from the notes.
Maybe, but also actually, if you look at the tape script, she does start by saying that's interesting.
So maybe it's just throwing the word in there.
For somebody who is just listening for those keywords.
But the reason you didn't hear that, Nick, is because you realized that was nothing.
That had no connection at all to the answer, right?
So you didn't even remember that word.
Yeah.
They found their presentation stressful.
I think this is really clever, this one.
Do you know why they may have had that option?
They found their presentation stressful.
I think it's because at the end Yeah, she said that they didn't do what was stressed to them before presentations.
Right, was stressed to us in the course.
So here, the word stressed, what does that mean?
It's completely different from stressful.
Yeah.
Stressed to us in the course means like emphasised.
Emphasised, yeah.
Yeah, so they've taken that word stressed and they're like okay, again we're going to paraphrase it to stressful, to make it more attractive.
Yeah.
But it has still got completely nothing to do with the actual answer, really, right?
It's good, but it's not right.
Exactly.
So the answer is they didn't look at the audience enough, right?
So it is a complete paraphrase of they didn't keep eye contact.
Although they do use the word audience.
They do.
So, but the key thing here is, what we're doing is we're not just listening for word for word answers, right?
We're listening to the general meaning of the text.
Yeah.
One thing is, if you find multiple choice questions really difficult, you may find it useful to listen to a section without looking at the questions.
And just to make notes and then have a look at the questions and see if you can answer them from your notes.
It's a good idea, actually.
Because if you can, that means that your listening is absolutely perfect.
You're just becoming confused by the multiple choice questions.
Yeah, you're just falling for some of these tricks.
So that can be quite a useful thing to do.
So that's our second trick.
That's the synonym trick, right?
So we don't hear the exact same words.
We just hear synonyms in the text and there are less key words, right?
Hi everyone, this is Anika.
This is my IELTS classroom.
I study with my IELTS classroom because of Shaili's amazing teaching style.
In all the videos, whatever she explains is really simple and yet fun.
It doesn't make you feel bored.
At the same time, the practice activities helps you to test yourself, identify your mistakes and rectify them.
So it's really worth it.
All right.
Trick number three, I'm going to say it's a very, very, very simple trick.
Okay.
But it's also a very, very, very effective trick, right?
And this is just the has the student read the question properly trick, right?
And this is really aiming students who probably have got really good listening skills.
Mm-hmm.
And they understand everything and they think they found the answer, but actually they get tricked because they don't read the question properly.
All right.
So let me give you a simple example of what I mean when students just don't read the question carefully.
Let's imagine we have a question that is, what does John like about his cat?
Right?
So maybe he likes its size, its color, or its behavior, right?
So for this trick, what we would do is we would talk about two things in the text, right?
So when John speaks, he's going to talk about his cat and his dog.
Mm-hmm.
And some of the things he likes about his dog, but we're trying to find the answer about the cat, right.
So John might say, oh, I have so many animals that I love so much.
My dog is a really lovely dark chestnut brown, which I love, although it doesn't behave as well as my cat.
Oh.
So what some students will do is they will just start listening.
And it's, you know, what does John like?
They'll hear my dog is a really lovely dark chestnut brown.
So they will choose its color.
Because they didn't hear cat.
Because they just forgot that they were listening for cat.
Not dog.
Not dog.
So that is a really simple example.
But you will find this very often.
This trick is that they'll give you information about something else which matches one of the answers.
Right, but they're talking about something different.
So you just have to make sure that you're finding the right answer for the right thing.
So We're going to have a look then, at question 24 for this.
All right.
So question 24 says, how does Spiros feel about his performance in tutorials?
So the key thing here is, what's the key word in that question there?
I would say performance and tutorials, obviously, as well.
Tutorials, right.
So we've got three options here.
We've got not very happy, really pleased.
So they're sort of opposites, right?
So not happy, very happy, or confident, fairly confident.
So let's listen.
Mm-hmm to this part of the text and try to just find the answer of how Spiros feels about his performance in tutorials.
Yes.
Right, okay, here we go.
So how did you approach your presentation, Hiroko?
Well, to speak frankly, I read my notes too.
At the time it was a relief to do it this way, but actually when I had finished, I didn't feel any real sense of satisfaction.
I didn't feel positive about the experience at all.
That's a pity.
You know, although I was pleased with my presentation, I am not so pleased with my actual performance right now in the tutorials.
During the whole semester...
I've not said anything in our tutorial discussions.
Not a word.
Okay.
Yeah.
How'd you get on?
I think that one's quite easy, to be honest.
Because we spent a long time at the beginning?
Tutorials tutorials, tutorials.
It should be obvious that the answer is A, Exactly.
The answer is A. He's not very...
Right.
He says, I didn't feel any real sense of satisfaction.
And he clearly says, I'm not so pleased with my actual performance right now in the tutorial.
So he clearly says he's not happy with tutorials.
However, that was quite easy because we, before you listen, said we are listening for tutorials tutorials, tutorials.
Some students though, because he says you know, although I was pleased with my presentation, some students will probably say choose B.
Yeah,
Because they will just hear oh pleased and circle it and forget that that's the presentation, not the tutorial.
And then he said actually about his tutorial that he felt not so pleased.
So the word happy, actually, they didn't use at all.
No, they don't.
Exactly.
Right.
So again, like, so that, you know, number one, they've got the presentation.
So they're trying to get you to choose pleased.
Interestingly, option C, fairly confident.
Doesn't make sense.
I'm not sure why they've included that.
Except maybe, no, I can't think of any reason.
Yeah.
If you chose fairly confident, could you please email me and tell me why?
Because I can't understand why a student would do that, to be honest.
But that is a very, very simple trick, which is you know when we're listening to just one question is quite easy.
But when you've got you know six or seven questions bang bang, bang bang.
It can be very easy not to read the question carefully, which is why I recommend, before anything, the tape script starts in the 30 seconds you have to check the question.
Underline the keywords.
I would have definitely underlined tutorials, just to keep make sure that I'm definitely focusing on that.
Okay, so that is the have you read the question properly trick.
Our final trick is what I would call the multiple speaker trick.
Right.
Right, so I can only use this as an exam writer in part three. where we've got like three speakers.
And what happens here is that we're going to give the answer to the question, but it's not going to be just one speaker who gives the answer.
So to get the answer, you're going to have to actually, sort of like, follow the chain of a conversation and understand really where the conversation ends.
So very often in IELTS they'll start with one student offering an answer like where should we go to dinner tonight?
And one student goes, hey, why don't we go to McDonald's?
McDonald's is one of the options.
But then the next speaker, what are they going to say, Nick?
They're going to say, I don't really like McDonald's, to be honest.
Let's go somewhere else.
I don't like fast food.
Yeah.
How about Pizza Hut?
Right.
So then they're going to recommend the next answer.
Mm hmm.
And it goes on like that.
So, you know, again, this is just, are you listening only for those keywords?
If you are, you're going to be really confused because you're going to hear all of them.
Yeah.
So for this one, it's really interesting.
So I don't think really in this particular part three the exam writers use that trick particularly well.
Right.
So there wasn't a fantastic example of this.
But I do think that in question 30.
You really do see that.
You know, I think, to find the answer you're going to have to listen to, like Hiroko the teacher, and Spiros.
So it does, you do need to listen to three speakers.
Right.
And so what I want you to do this time is, I want you to just listen.
And one of the speakers does this thing where they offer one of the answers right.
So a little bit like what about mcdonald's?
Yeah, they're gonna sort of like offer the speaker one of the choices.
I just want you to listen and tell me which speaker offers one of the choices right, and which of the multiple choice options do they offer.
Does that make sense?
Okay.
And what are the multiple choice options?
So what are the options?
Good question, Nick.
So the question is Hiroko thinks that in the reading classes the students should A learn more vocabulary.
B, read more in their own subject areas.
Or C, develop better reading strategies.
So you've got more vocabulary.
Read more in their own subject areas or develop better reading strategies.
Now, you're welcome to listen for the answer.
But what I'm interested in is...
Which speaker offers Hirako one of these options and which option is it?
OK, so let's play track four.
Also in class, we regularly had speed reading tasks to do and we kept a record of our reading speed.
So the teachers were encouraging us to work on that.
That's true, Spiros, but what we read could have been different.
Sometimes in the English class I felt frustrated when I had to read articles about the environment or health or education, because I wanted to concentrate on my own field, but we didn't read anything about engineering.
So I think I wasted some time learning vocabulary I didn't need.
But surely the strategies you were taught for dealing with that vocabulary were helpful?
Yes, but psychologically speaking, I would have felt much better working on reading from my own field.
What do you think, Spiros?
Oh, I agree.
That would have helped my confidence, too.
And I would have been more motivated.
So, let's just start by, what was the answer?
Read more in their own subject area.
It was she wants to read more in her own subject area.
And I think, interestingly, she kind of gave this in a couple of ways.
You know, I want to concentrate on my own field.
I would have felt much better working on reading from my own field.
She kind of had two chances to find that answer.
Yeah.
But.
Who was it that gave her like who was it that sort of asked her one of these multiple choice options?
It was the teacher, wasn't it?
Yeah, the teacher.
And which option?
Was it A, B or C?
It was about vocabulary, I think, wasn't it?
Yeah, vocabulary.
Well, yeah, it was about vocabulary and interesting.
It was also about strategies.
Because they said but surely the strategies you were taught for dealing with that vocabulary were helpful.
So it's clever.
So the exam writers are like, hello, please choose C. But did you find the strategies helpful?
And she says, yes.
But.
But psychologically speaking, I would have felt much better working on reading from my own field.
Yeah.
So on subject area is definitely the correct answer.
Yeah, definitely the answer is B, But I wanted to play this so you can see what are they doing here, right?
They're getting one of the speakers to say, is this the answer, essentially?
Mm-hmm.
Was it the strategies that were helpful?
No.
So you have to understand that is not the answer.
Sometimes they say, yes, it was, or I agree.
But definitely be aware that some of the answers are not going to be given just by one speaker.
It's basically you've just got to listen to the whole thing and put it into context, don't you?
Exactly.
Which in a strange way, Nick, I think we could summarize all of this lesson.
It could have been 15 seconds.
It could just be Nick going, just listen to it all and put it into context.
Actually, it's been really interesting because I had no idea about these strategies, and it's actually very clever how you can distinguish between a lower level student and a higher level student.
It is very clever, actually.
Yeah.
And, you know, as an exam writer, you know, I also edit a lot of other people's exams.
And I spend my whole time saying, you know, for multiple choice questions I'll say C is not attractive.
And by that, I would mean no student is going to be tricked into choosing C, right?
We have to find a better way of getting students to choose the wrong answer.
So usually I try and go back to one of these four strategies, which is one with rapid fire.
We're going to throw all of the key questions words at the student.
Or two synonyms let's change the word, so we're going to hide it.
The right answer by changing the words.
Or three, we're going to trick the weaker students by giving the correct answer, but for something else.
Right, so for cats, not dogs.
Or we'll stretch the answer over two or three people speaking.
This is my IELTS classroom.
This is my IELTS classroom.
This is my IELTS classroom.
So...
That is listening part three.
I hope you found this useful.
I would say moving forward.
If you find this part of the test difficult now when you take a practice exam,
Now you might be able to start to understand why you got some questions wrong.
I think it's really important, if you're going to be doing these practice exams, to practice.
It's not enough just to say correct, not correct correct, not correct.
You should be spending time trying to understand why you got the questions wrong that you got wrong.
So maybe now you know when you do your next test and you get the question wrong, you can look at the tape script and say I got tricked by the rapid fire trick.
I just listened for the keywords.
I wasn't listening for the meaning.
Or I was a bit lazy for this question.
I heard that about the presentation, but he was actually asking about the tutorial.
Start analyzing your results.
When you do that, you start improving your listening.
And all of the books have the tape script in them anyway, so you can go back and look, can't you?
Yeah, and unlike reading, they have the answer underlined.
They actually show you why the answer was the answer, which is absolutely invaluable.
So if nothing else, you should be reading those tape scripts, looking at where the answer was.
And also, even if you got the answer correct, to double check...
You know, for multiple choice that you really got it correct and it wasn't just a lucky guess.
Because I love a lucky guess.
All right.
So I think that is it for today.
That was listening part three.
If you enjoyed this lesson, please, please, please.
Like, subscribe, rate us, review us.
That would be absolutely fantastic.
And then come back in the next episode where finally I'm going to tell Nick about a mystery.
I am obviously a good golfer.
I'm in the top 1%.
In IELTS, that's not quite a 9.
Maybe it is a 9, actually.
Maybe it would be an 8.5.
So in the golf world, I'm an 8.5.
Would I offer myself as a golf teacher?
So that's what we'll be discussing in the next episode.
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