IELTS Listening 🎧 Ultimate Guide to a Band 8+

hey everyone chris here from ielts advantage with another mini course so what we're going to focus on this week is ielts listening many of you emailed me and said that you need a band 8 in listening a lot of you want to go to canada and that requires 8 seven with the eight being and listening so we're going to specifically focus on that this week we're going to give you three lessons so part one is today and we're going to look at the problem with getting an eight or above and it's really to do with what the test is actually testing how the test is put together and what you guys are actually used to doing when you are listening so we'll look at those reasons and this is really going to help you understand the test and we're going to give you some practice activities that you can do that are really going to help you improve your scores we're going to do part 2 which is keeping track during the test so many of you say that the reason why you are not getting a band 8 or above is because you are getting lost in the test so there might be one or two questions that you're unsure about and that kind of spills over into the rest of the test and means that you don't do as well as you can so we'll look specifically at how to make sure that you stay on track during the listening test we're going to give you a step-by-step strategy [Music] all right so first before thinking about why people are not getting an 8 or above for the listening test we need to think about what does the test get you to do how is the test built how is the test put together what are the things that they are actually testing well number one what they're doing is they're getting you to listen actively so what do i mean by that well they're getting you to do something while you are listening so instead of just you know listening passively and not really doing anything they're getting you to complete tasks and answer questions and decide what what the correct answer is or filling in the correct answer as you are doing things and that's very very important number two you're answering questions while you are listening so you're multitasking so you're listening you're reading the question you're thinking about the question you might be thinking about the correct spelling there's multiple things happening at the same time which is very very significant number three you're only listening once so unlike when you're listening in you know your english class or maybe you're listening to something and you can repeat it many many times you can only listen once number four focus for a long long period of time the number of students who have never listened to in english for you know really listened actively listen for more than 30 minutes and the ielts test is their first time ever doing that is shocking and number five you're listening to authentic english real english and we'll talk about the difference between inauthentic materials and authentic materials and number six you're listening with no help whatsoever so it's not like watching a movie where there's maybe subtitles or even watching like a ted talk or um you know a presentation where there's a powerpoint and there's images to really help you do that so these are the things that they are doing and those are the things that you need to do on test day and are you actually doing those things before test day so let's have a look at this it's very very important how do you listen when you're listening to english what are you doing so are you listen listening actively are you actually doing something while you are listening for the vast majority of people the vast majority of time you're not listening actively you're just listening on the bus or watching a movie and not really thinking about it just listening not doing anything while you are listening are you answering questions while you're listening again if you're listening to english most of the time 90 of the time you're not answering questions you're not multitasking so on test day when you have to not only listen but read and think and think about the question and the correct answer then you're going to be in trouble most of the time you're not only listening once especially when you're in a like a general english class and this is nothing there's nothing wrong with this but most of the time when you're doing a listening um a listening task in a general english class the teacher will play it maybe two three four times in the english and in the ielts test you can only listen once number four you have to focus for a long period of time so there's a big difference between listening for a long period of time and focusing for a long period of time you might say oh i listened to a podcast last night and it was two hours long but you might have only been 100 focused on that podcast for 15 minutes out of the two hours so for most of the time you're not doing that number five listening to authentic english again in the general english class if you're using like a you know a recording from a textbook the this is not how most people sound if you go and this is why when people move to like london or sydney or toronto even though they got a very high mark in their listening test they've no idea what people are saying it's not because your listening is bad but you just might have been listening to inauthentic materials even if you're watching you know a movie that is generally not how people speak to each other in real life so you're not doing this number six listening without any help most of the time students are using subtitles or if they're watching like a ted talk or something like that there's you know images and presentations to help them so the reason why you might be struggling with the ielts writing test is because the test is set up in one way and you are doing the opposite all right so if you you're doing the opposite to what they're looking for of course you're going to have problems and why are they getting you to do all of these things why do they want you to listen actively and only listen once and listen to authentic english and listen without help is it because they're really awful people and they want to be mean to you no because when you move to london or sydney or new york or wherever you're going you can only listen once to people they don't care if you're an english learner you have to listen actively you are not going to get any help you're going to be listening to authentic english so this is representing what it is like to live and work in an english-speaking country so if you're complaining about this you're really complaining that you know i can't understand real english and when i move to the country where i want to be so all of these problems are very fixable they're all we can solve all of these problems we need to just start doing these things so how can we start doing them that's what this the rest of this lesson is going to be about so first of all we can do something called active practice so there's a big difference between active practice and passive practice so many many students say to me you know i got a band 7 in my listening and i i listen to podcasts every day or i listen to ted talks every day or i watch movies movies all the time okay that's fine but you're not actually doing anything when you're listening to those podcasts or watching those movies or doing or watching those ted talks so instead of doing that practice with a purpose and in my opinion it's better to do like 10 or 15 minutes of active practice than it is to do two or three hours of practice where you're listening but you're really just you know watch looking out the window while you're on the bus or or you know listening to a movie or a song or something like that and you know looking at your phone at the same time do something with a purpose so this could be for example and these are all just examples there's lots and lots of ways that you can do this but for example you could try and focus on vocabulary when you're listening to something note down any new words and try and guess what those words mean from the context and then you're actively focusing on something and improving your language or you could focus on grammar you could set yourself a challenge like why are they how many tenses are they using and why are they using those tenses so you're thinking about the context you're thinking about the timelines or you could you know set yourself a task of why did they use superlatives instead of comparatives or why did they use the first conditional instead of the third conditional i'm thinking about those grammatical areas that you might need to work on and that's going to help you or thinking about the opinion of someone let's say it is a ted talk that you're listening to or a podcast what is the what are the differences of opinion or what does that person think about that topic or a really interesting one is pronunciation so you could listen and think about connected speech and intonation and sentence stress and word stress so you're actively doing something just like you will on test day on test day you're not going to be you know thinking about the the intonation or sentence stress or things like that but you are actually doing something and getting into the habit of doing something while you are listening this definitely will be tested on a test day and this might be tested so vocabulary is obviously very very important but they're all good to do next create your own questions so you probably are familiar with the different types of question on on the listening test so that might be short answer questions or maps questions or multiple choice questions or something like that if you have a partner or you're in a classroom what you can do is get a listing sample that can be anything and create your own questions this is very very powerful because in order to create your own questions you have to really really actively listen and understand their listening sample so if you don't you won't be able to create those questions and then you can swap with a partner or swap with other people if you're doing it in a group and then you can discuss the question so you can say oh that was the correct answer because of this or you got the wrong answer there because it was actually doing this so you're really really thinking deeply about the listening and you can do this as a collaborative activity if you're doing it with a partner or in a classroom you can also listen and summarize which is a very good activity and you can do this by yourself or with a partner but it's easy to do by yourself listen to a podcast for 10 to 15 minutes podcasts are excellent because they're genuine english especially when someone is you know you have multiple people speaking at the same time and they're just having a normal conversation there are podcasts which are you know just one guy or one girl talking about one topic and and it might not be the most natural way of speaking but for most podcasts they're very conversational and you know it rep is a very very good representation of what you will get when you're moving to a new country so listen to a podcast let's say for 10 or 15 minutes and then try and summarize the main points in one to two minutes so this forces you to actively listen for a long period of time and then you can summarize by speaking so you could just you know talk and record yourself if you're with you know if you're by yourself or in a classroom you could even have a competition of who can listen and then summarize the best and you can judge each other or you could write a report you know a 200 word report and work on your writing at the same time so that really does help it's a good activity to get you to do that another one is you use sign posting so if you're listening especially to a lecture like a ted talk or an academic lecture the person speaking will use signposting language to indicate where they are going next so you could listen to that and only note down the sign posts so you're noting down just the signposts and then you can use the signpost to talk and try and not memorize exactly what you're going to say because you know memorization is not a skill that's really being tested on the listening test but listen use the sign sign posting parts to then help you not regurgitate but summarize is a good way of doing it and that will really help you actively listen [Music] okay so keeping tracks there's three things that we're going to look at one is before the test during your preparation one is before you listen because you're going to have a little bit of time before the recording starts and that's really really important that will help you keep track and number three while you listen the things that you should be thinking about and that's going to really help you keep track and we're also going to look at at the end why many people struggle with the last few questions a common question that we get asked is i just have no idea how to answer the last few questions correctly and we're going to look at why that is and help you out with that okay so before the test so there's no point in giving you some tricks or strategies to help you keep track if the things that you need to do before the test aren't there one of the main reasons why you are struggling to keep track is because you're not doing these things before the test so you might be like oh just give me some little tricks or some little strategies that are going to help me but they're useful we're going to show you some of them but unless you do these things before the test you are always going to lose track and you're never going to be able to perform to the level that you really want so let's look at a few things you must do before the test number one improve your listening skills many of you say that i'm lost or i can't keep track but what you're really saying is your listening skills aren't up to the level that they need to be if your your listening skills are below the level that you're you need to be at then you're going to constantly get lost and look at lesson one on how to improve those listening skills and why it's really really important that you understand the different types of listening skills that are being tested because they're very very different from the ones that you maybe are used to or the ones that you've been practicing so check out lesson one for improving that area second thing is focus so think about your if your brain was a muscle so you know if you go to the gym and you're lifting weights and you're not used to lifting weights then you're you're going to struggle it's the same with focusing on listening focusing on listening in your own language is quite difficult for a long period of time focusing in a completely different language to your mother tongue is very very difficult and just like going to the gym or running or lifting weights or whatever you want to be whatever way you want to think about it you need to practice listening focusing on that for a long period of time and you will slowly build up as many of you talk about losing focus in the middle of the test or towards the end of the test that might have nothing to do with your grammar your vocabulary your listening skills it might be just you're not used to completely focusing on english for that length of time and you just build that up slowly slowly slowly and lesson one will help you out with that too third thing we also covered this in lesson one which is multitasking many of you are used to maybe listening to english but not listening and reading and writing and thinking all at the same time so this is quite difficult but like any skill if you practice this skill it becomes much much much easier so as you can see these are things that you need to be thinking about months and weeks before your test listening skills working on focus working on multitasking a tip or a trick is not going to help with these you're not going to be able to you know read top 10 tips on how to improve focus our top 10 tips on how to do this this is not really going to help you it's about putting in the work many of you don't want to hear that but you know i'm not going to lie to you and tell you that there's an easy way around that you need to start doing this months before your test range of accents so some of you might be very familiar with one or two accents but a straight a strange accent comes up so you will get a range of different accents from the english-speaking world so that could be canada america ireland scotland wales england south africa australia new zealand so you might be used to say the new zealand accent and then a scottish accent comes up or an irish accent or a canadian accent and you're just unfamiliar with that what is the solution to that listen to a range of different accents you're going to need to practice listening so listen to a range of accents so that could mean you know it's as easy as googling australian news or new zealand news or podcast or whatever and just you don't need to become like expertly tuned in to that accent just familiarize yourself with it so that it's not a shock on test day next vocabulary many of you talk about being lost in the test but what you're really saying is i don't understand that word so if you don't understand a word you're going to be like uh what does that mean and then you'll lose concentration or you might not be able to find the correct answer so improving your vocabulary is absolutely essential improving your vocabulary is going to improve your reading scores your speaking scores and your writing scores so always be improving your vocabulary and finally strategies if you have a step-by-step strategy for all of the different types of question you're going to be familiar with all of the different types of questions and you're going to know exactly what to do and most importantly if you use these to practice and you implement these then you're taking some of the thinking out of it so you're going to be doing lots of multitasking you don't want to be thinking you know where do i do what do i what what do i do here but if you have a strategy then that's one less thing to think about you're doing exactly what a proven strategy will help you with and we'll look at that in lesson three so preparing to listen so we've talked about what you need to be doing in the months and the weeks running up to the test and if you do those things it's really really going to help you but when you are preparing to listen so you're in the test the test has begun and before the listening starts you will have time to look at the question and think about the question and this is absolutely essential the students who use this time wisely will always get higher scores than the students who don't use this time wisely it's just a fact um lots of students are like just you know look out the window or look around at the other students but the students who have their head down and are actively doing things during this time and the key there is actively you you need to be doing certain things will have a higher score than the ones just looking at the window at the birds so there are a few things that you need to be thinking about one is familiarize yourself with the question because if you do if you're familiar with it you just want to have an easier time number two keywords depending on the on the question you might be highlighting or underlining or circling different types of keywords that doesn't mean just circling everything you see but strategically thinking about what the the how you are going to find the correct answer number three synonyms because as you know just because it says computers doesn't mean that you'll hear computers it might be laptops or desktops or ipads or something like that and number four try and predict what the correct answers are that's really going to help you during the listening test so let's have a look at this i know it's not the the quality um you might not be able to see it but i'll try my best to explain so this is a diagram or a map of a library and what's going to happen is the recording is going to take you through this map and you're going to have to label different things all right so the very first thing you need to do is familiarize yourself with the question okay this is a maps question all right so there's one two three four five answers that i need to answer and then familiarize yourself with the actual map so i'm going to be starting here and they might say you know to my left that's going to be this room to my right or next to the librarian's desk straight on to my left is fiction to my right is non-fiction here next to the seminar room beyond non-fiction or beside non-fiction fiction is this room this is probably going to be the name of a room this also is probably going to be the name of room fiction non-fiction so this is the main part of the library this is probably going to be another area of the library so it could be a different type of book so you are really really understanding what's going on and the people that do that are going to score much higher than the people that don't then let's think about keywords here so librarians desk so they might talk a little bit about that so that's very very important non-fiction and fiction so beside non-fiction is a seminar room beside non-fiction is this room the library area so thinking about the exact things that they're going to talk about and then we have this list of words so synonyms art collection so that could be paintings or drawings children's books that could be books for kids or books for young people computers desktops laptops ipads whatever local history collection history of the local area or history of our time or our time in the past because you need to be thinking about all of these because the the the correct answer might be a synonym so if you familiarize yourself with these before the recording starts you're at a huge advantage and number four predict what's going to happen so looking at this fiction non-fiction this one is probably another type of book so probably is children's books or reference books this could be a room so our collection computers meeting room tourist information so you're listening out for these things and you're predicting what is going to happen and that is really going to help you stay focused on what you need to do and you're not going to get lost because it's much easier like say you're predicting that this is children's books and they say walk straight on here you'll find fiction and non-fiction and you'll also find kids books you know exactly what's happening which is much much easier to do versus not doing it i'm sure you'll agree now you're not going to have a lot of time but you will have enough time and it's about using that time wisely and when you're practicing take it very very slow at the beginning you don't need to do everything at exam speed in the beginning when you're first learning how to do this take it slow and think about what you're doing and that will really really help you master this skill of preparing before you listen during listening so this is more tactical about thinking about the actual problem so let's say you have five questions one two three four five so what happens is you might get stuck on this question so this question no problem you get it straight away this question let's say it's a multiple choice and you're unsure if it's a b or c let's say they have three very very similar meanings the meanings all kind of sound the same to you you didn't really catch that that person what that person said or it was a strange accent or something was not right where you couldn't really understand what's happening so if you focus too much on this one then this question is going to come then this one then this one the recording is not going to stop the recording will not stop because you can't find the answer and remember you only be able to hear it once so if you focus too much on this one probably going to get that one wrong you're probably going to get that one wrong you're probably going to get that one wrong and these three might be quite easy for you but because you focused too much on this one you've kind of destroyed your chances with these so and these could be very very easy mark so you need to be a little bit tactical when it comes to a question that you find difficult so no question that you would normally get lost in and you would lose track you could just mark the answer that you think is most likely or you could put like an x beside it marking the fact that you need to come back to that later and you weren't 100 sure about it or you could just guess the answer and move on that is much much better to do one of those tactical things so mark the one that you think is probably the correct answer and then you can confirm it later just guess the answer you're not going to guess every answer we're talking about you know being tactical with ones that you're lost and you you find really really difficult or you could just market that you need to come back and think about it later or make some notes quickly and then move on and then that will mean that you have you know maybe a a 50 50 chance of only getting this one correct but you increase your chances of getting these three whereas if you focus too much on this one you have a 30 chance maybe of getting it right one out of three but then a zero percent chance for all of these because you've no idea what's going on so it's about being a little bit um tactical and strategic and at the end of the day most of you do not need to get every single question correct so when i give this advice to students they don't like it because they say no no i want to get this one correct it's like you don't need to get a hundred percent do you need a band nine no so why are you trying to get a bad nine obviously you want to get as many of them done as possible as many of them correct as possible but let's think about how the actual listening test is set up there are four parts part one part two part three part four ten questions in each part and they start off being quite easy and then they get more difficult and more difficult and more difficult and more difficult until we get to hear where you get the most difficult questions well why is that well here we have band zero so if you get none of them correct you get a zero but if you get all of them correct you get a band nine so these last questions are to separate out the band nines from the 8.5 these questions are to separate out the 8.5 from the eights these questions are to separate out the eights from the 7.5 so many of you are worrying about the last questions when they're you're never probably going to get them correct so my advice if you need a band-aid would be focus on getting as many of these as possible try and get a hundred percent in all of these areas which you're more than capable of doing if you're aiming for a band eight and then these ones try and get as many of them as you can but if you're not at a band nine level which most of you never will be and there's nothing wrong with that you know most students will be very very happy with an eight get as many of these as as you can but don't worry if you always get the last couple wrong because that's the way they're set up so what we're going to look at first are common problems when it comes to multiple choice questions so with my students what i like to do when it comes to reading questions and listening questions is identify the common reasons why people make mistakes so that they're aware of those and they can you know avoid those on test day so there's some very very common mistakes that people make on common problems that people have when it comes to multiple choice questions so the first one is that when you are looking at let's say you get a question like this and one could be a home one could be office one could be at a depot they might not they might talk about all three of these all right so the let's say for example the question is you're listening to someone making an order um so they want like a tv or delivered to to leverage somewhere and they first might say oh could you deliver to my house or my home and then they'll say actually i'm at work that day so i'll be in the office and could you actually just leave it in the depot so they've mentioned all three of these and you might hear all three of those and that might cause a lot of confusion because what a lot of people do is they will listen for the first one and the first one they hear they'll just tick that one because they know the recording is not going to stop they're under a lot of pressure a lot of stress and then they might hear office or depot later or a synonym of one of those and they're like oh they panic and they lose track so listen to the whole recording and be aware that they might talk about one but that is not necessarily the correct answer problem number two is related to synonyms so many of you will underline key words so let's say for example this is the question and you'll be underlining home and underlining office underlining depot and because you've underlined those or highlighted those you're really really focused on those words and you're listening for those words but in the recording it won't actually state those words it'll state a synonym or a paraphrase of that word so it might say could you deliver it to where i live or my house instead of home i'll i'll be at work could you deliver it there instead of office or they might talk about could you deliver it to the the company warehouse instead of the depot so they're not really mentioning these words they can mention these words you should always listen out for them but you should always be aware of synonyms and paraphrases as well and that's the reason why improving your vocabulary will really really help you improve your overall listening score common problems three and four so you might the first common problem when it comes to here imagine you're listening and it's talking about a dif a business and what the type of business is so it could be a manufacturing business an industrial business or an agricultural business the first problem is you might not understand what one of these words mean and many people would panic and be like oh i don't know what agricultural means and then you're going to panic and not really know what to do and you're going to get really really stressed out the other problem is let's say it's definitely not this one but it's maybe manufacturing or industrial and these look they're not the same but they look maybe quite similar to to you so with most multiple choice questions not only in in the realm of ielts but most you know proper multiple choice question there will normally be two or three that are very very similar so you have to understand the meaning so that's where vocabulary comes in again the wider your range of vocabulary the better your scores are going to be because you'll be able to differentiate between the two and then when you're listening it might talk about something that's very similar to manufacturing and very similar to industrial and you have to make up your mind and do and and choose the correct answer based on what you hear so those are four common problems and what we also do with our students is this the strategies that we give them help them overcome these common problems so we build in mechanisms and steps that help them avoid these common problems because if you avoid the common problems then you're well on your way to improving your score so now i'm going to give you this step-by-step strategy the first thing i'll say is there's no such thing as a super strategy or a magic strategy like you'll see on youtube and instagram and facebook like power strategy or band 9 strategy there's no strategy in the world that can take someone from like a band 6 to a band 9 overnight it's not going to magically improve your listening skills it's not going to magically improve your vocabulary your general english but it just helps you get into the habit of doing the right things and getting the best possible score for you so they're very very very useful and also what they do is we've mentioned habit if you were practicing these strategies what it does is when you practice over and over again using those strategies when you go into the test you know exactly what to do so you i don't like using the word like robotic you're not like a robot but nearly you see what i mean you're just you see the question and you follow a step-by-step system and that going to freeze up your brain to focus on thinking about the correct answer and thinking about the vocabulary and the synonyms on all of those things so they're very very useful but don't think that they are magic they are not magic they are not super um they're not going you can't just follow you know step by step strategy and immediately improve your score so let's look at number one number one sounds very boring but this is absolutely crucial read the instructions carefully if you do not read the instructions carefully you're going to lose marks many many many students come to me and they say i've done 20 vocabulary or listening tests or 200 reading tests and i keep getting the same score and we look at their their mistakes and often it's nothing to do with the fact that their level isn't high enough they're just not reading the instructions carefully if you don't follow the instructions you're not going to get the score that you need number two read and understand the question so the instructions and the questions are two separate things the instructions will be at the top and it's very very important for example even in the reading test where it'll say you do not write more than two words if you write more than two words and or a number all of these different instructions if you don't do those things correctly then you're going to lose the mark but the question is separate so understand the instructions and then understand the questions and many of you don't use that time period effectively between you seeing the questions on the recording start you're going to have a little bit of time use that time effectively if you don't understand the questions it's going to be really difficult like it doesn't matter how good your english is or how good your listening skills are if you don't follow those two simple steps you're going to be in trouble and many of you might think well that's obvious like i'm going to do that anyway most of your behavior is habit you do the same things over and over again whatever your habit is you will mostly do that so using these strategies is guaranteeing that you will check the instructions then look at the question and understand it because you're going to by practicing over and over again get into that habit step number three underline any keywords what are the keywords so it will differ from question to question but the words that you think are important in order for you to get the correct answer so you can underline them circle them whatever you do or you don't have to do that you can just look at them and understand these are the words that i need to be listening out for these are the important words that are going to determine whether i get the correct answer or not number four think of synonyms we've already talked about this you might hear the keyword so keywords are important but you might not hear the keywords you might hear a synonym or even you might hear a paraphrase of the keyword and then do not mark the first thing you hear as we've already discussed it might talk about one it might talk about another and then it might take that answer away and give you another answer listen to it all and then decide the correct answer not the whole tape script but that whole part of the recording that deals with that question don't mark the first answer think about it first and then mark the correct answer and pick the correct answer or the answer that you think based on you know take an educated guess if you're not sure but with multiple choice questions always pick an answer if you're unsure you can maybe put an x beside it and maybe you know for example if you're 100 sure put a circle around it and then you can go back and make a decision but with multiple choice even if you you know if a monkey did it and just picked randomly they would get more than if you don't do it at all so please just do check and put the best answer that you can and most importantly move on do not dwell on the answer if you can't think of a correct answer for the multiple choice one just make your best guess and move on and we talked about that in lesson two so again this strategy is not going to guarantee a band 9 or anything like that but what it does is it gives you the correct habit the correct system and the key is that you actually apply this strategy a huge number of students email me and say i used your strategy and i got a band six it's like what do you mean use oh well we read it and then we went into the test and we used the strategy it's like no no no no that's not how you you use a strategy you practice you implement it over and over and over again until it becomes habit until it becomes second nature and you don't even have to think about it as soon as you see the question it's like follow a system listen for the answer mark the correct answer hey chris here again hopefully you enjoyed that video if you want more videos here are some for you here on the screen and don't forget to like and subscribe hopefully see you again soon bye you

Channel: IELTS Advantage

Views: 164,755

Keywords: IELTS, IELTS Listening, IELTS Preparation, IELTS Advantage, Listening Test, IELTS Test

Id: 9-aME_V_NGs

Length: 39min 58sec (2398 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020