The IELTS Listening test comes first, and many candidates find it a hard, sometime even discouraging, way to get started. The IELTS Listening task tests a diverse range of skills, and many people find it challenging.

There are many ways to prepare for this portion of the IELTS exam. There are, for example, many practice tapes and CD sets on the commercial market. While all of them are helpful to some degree, the one thing you can be sure is that none of them will be the IELTS Listening test you take.

The good news is that the best forms of IELTS Listening practice are available free, or at least readily and at low cost. They’re also more fun. They are radio, TV, and movies!

If you have access to an English-language radio or TV station, listen to it as often as possible. The benefits are many.

- You become familiar with a wide variety of accents and individual ways of speaking

- You get the rhythms of spoken English sentences in your ear

- You become more familiar with the way native speakers pronounce English words

- You start to hear word patterns and notice the way English sentences are put together

- You begin to learn new vocabulary by hearing it in context

- You simply become accustomed to the sound of spoken English, which may be the single most important thing of all

English radio and TV talk shows give you good exposure to the way native speakers – not English teacher – actually use the language. They familiarize you with slang and other colloquialisms.

English radio and TV news programmes give you great background for the multiple-voice, nonacademic setting section of the IELTS Listening test, which often uses a mock radio broadcast. Hearing up to four different individuals talk about the same incident from different personal perspectives, in different acoustical situations, and in a variety of accents (including those of second-language speakers) is exactly the kind of training you need to perform well on this portion of the test, which some candidates find the hardest.

Watching English, Australian, American, and other movies in English – in any format – is also highly useful in giving you exposure to the way “real peopleâ€