Listen out for words that can indicate what stage of the recording you are listening to, e.g. words such as ’to start off with’, ‘my next point’, ‘to summarise’. By caching these words, you can establish what part of the tape you’ve reached if you become confused, and that will match with the order of questions.

Remember also not to simply listen for the set of words that appear in the questions- the test is designed to test your overall understanding of the context and so it’s not possible to get a good score doing this.

Focusing your attention on specifics.

The IELTS listening has a special format that is a little unusual but has great benefits for the candidate. First, as you might expect, you hear instructions and a sample question to get you into the flow of the test. Then you have time to read the questions in section 1, listen to section 1 and answer the questions.

This allows you time to really be listening without worrying about structuring a perfect answer on the test sheet. You can then do the same for sections 2, 3 and 4. Lastly, there are 10 minutes in which you will be able transfer your answers onto the answer sheet and feel proud of what you have achieved!

If you need an experienced IELTS teacher please contact me for private lessons.