How to improve your IELTS Listening score?

Listening is the section where preparation pays back most predictably, because it is marked by an answer key. The question is whether your marks are lost through understanding or through avoidable habits.

What the test rewards

IELTS.org gives the Listening test as about 30 minutes, with 40 questions in four parts. Parts 1 and 2 are set in everyday social situations, and Parts 3 and 4 in educational and training contexts. The recordings are heard once only, so what is rewarded is the ability to follow the speaker while you read and write. The question types include multiple choice, matching, labelling a plan or map, completing forms, notes and tables, sentence completion and short answers.

Practise with the official sample tests

IELTS’s sample test questions cover IELTS Academic and IELTS General Training. Use them in full, hear each recording once, and do not pause or rewind. Then mark yourself and look at every lost answer. Ask three questions: did I miss the information, did I hear it and write it wrongly, or did I hear it and misread the instruction?

Remove the marks that were never about listening

IELTS.org states that in completion tasks you must keep to the word limit: for example, “no more than two words and/or a number”, and you lose the mark for writing more. It also states that contracted words such as “they’re” will not be tested, and that a hyphenated word such as “check-in” counts as one word. IDP adds that a misspelt answer is marked wrong, and that writing “the bus” where the instruction asks for one word is marked incorrect, even though “bus” is the right word.

The official pages consulted here do not say how a singular or plural answer is judged, and they give no list of accepted spellings. So check every answer against the recording and against the question. The most common failure is not a shortage of English but a habit, such as dropping the ending of a word or ignoring the instruction line.

Read the questions before the recording

IDP notes that it is hard to concentrate on what you hear while reading the questions at the same time. Use whatever time you are given to read the questions and predict the kind of answer, such as a name, a number or a place.

Track your raw score

Keep a record of your marks out of 40 for each practice test and compare it with the conversion points IELTS.org publishes. Because IELTS states that the marks needed vary slightly between test versions, a run of results is a better guide than one score.