It has 40 questions and four parts, and each part has 10 questions. The total duration of Listening is about 30 minutes. You will solve all the questions while you are listening. Let’s talk about each part in detail. At the end of the Listening test, you will get 10 minutes to transfer your answers from question booklet to answer sheet.
Part 1:
In part 1, there is a conversation between two people who talk about everyday social situations, for example, booking a hotel, complaining lost items, renting a house, seeing a doctor or something like that. This part is generally divided into two parts like first you will do questions 1 to 5 questions then after a few seconds the recording will start again to do questions 6 to 10. Same goes for part 2. At the end each Listening part you will be given 30 seconds to review what you have done.
Part 2:
In part 2 of the Listening test, you will hear only one speaker talking about general and social topics. Most of the talks are divided into two parts.
Part 3:
In part 3, there is a conversation between 2 to 3 or 4 speakers on a topic related to academic work or study by doing some discussion. It may have two parts with a short break.
Part 4:
Part 4 is always a talk or a mini lecture related to academic work or study. This section may be divided into two parts. Before the part 4 starts, you usually have 45 second to look at the questions.
Types of question:
- Completing Notes/Forms
- Table/Map/Flow Chart/Summary/Sentence Completion
- Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)
- Matching Questions
- Short Answer Questions
- Labeling a Diagram
- Recognizing Pictures
- Classification
IELTS Listening Test Tips By Sir SM Imran
- You will hear the recording once only.
- Listening test is played by Headset not Speakers.
- You will be asked to check your headset before the test starts, if you face any technical issue with your headset so contact the Invigilator immediately.
- Once the Listening test begins, it cannot be stopped no matter what happens.
- Usually we are doing practice from the Cambridge IELTS course, there is an example in the Listening test at the start, but from 2020, there will not be any example, so your test will start directly.
- You will use a pencil in the entire test.
- You are not allowed to open the booklet unless are asked to do.
- You can underline the key words on the question booklet.
- The spelling of every word should be correct, otherwise your answer will be wrong.
- Both American and British spellings are accepted.
- All the questions in the Listening test will follow the order.
- You will never need to write more than three words for each answer.
- Before the recording begins, read the question carefully and try to predict the type of words you will need to look for.
- At the end of Listening Part 1, you will have 30 second to review your answers 1 to 10, if you have done 1 to 10 questions correctly, you’d better utilize your 30 second checking time on reading questions 11 to 20. When the part 2 starts, you will get 30 second to read it, so in this way, you will get 60 second to read Part 2 questions. Same method goes for questions 21 to 30 and 31 to 40.
- If you miss a question, ignore it and move onto the next question. Do not waste your time worrying about the question you miss.
- After the listening test is over, write all the answers correctly when you transfer your answer on the answer sheet and check the order as well for example, the answer of question number 10 in the question booklet should be written in the same number of the answer sheet.
- A capital letter will be used for every first word such as person’s name, place name etc while short abbreviation will be written in complete capital letters such as WHO.
- Do not leave any answer blank, just guess the answer because it can be correct.
- In most of the MCQs, you will not hear the same words so you need to recognize the similar meaning. You’d better improve the synonyms as much as you can.
- Read the instruction very carefully because most of the MCQs have more choices to choose from.
- 99% you will hear all the answers on the recording so do not write any thing that you do not hear on the recording even if you think you are right. However, it happens very rarely that we have to change a word and write the answers grammatically correct or according to the sentence.
- Note the feelings, expressions and views of a speaker, listen out for signals like, i think that, in my opinion, to me, i believe that, as far as my knowledge is concerned, in my view, it seems to me that, i would argue that. They tell you that a speaker is about to express a view point. This tip mostly works on MCQs.
- When you do MCQs, you come across Distractors. A Distreactor is a wrong answer which seems like a right answer. If you identify the distractor, it will help you find the correct answer.
- You always have some time to read the questions before you listen, make sure you use this time wisely and rephrase the questions in your own mind and underline the key words that tell you what to listen for.
- Try to practice by listening to accent from a variety of different English speaking countries.
- While practicing listening at home, if you make a mistake, you must listening it again in order to clear it.
- Some students write the $ sign after the amount like 25$, it is wrong, you should write before such as $25.
How is IELTS Listening Test Scored? As you already know that the total number of questions in Listening are 40. Secondly, in Listening there is a band scale of 0 to 9 band and by doing each answer correct you get one mark. The following is the table which shows that on how many correct answers you get the band.
- If 15 questions are correct out of 40 you get 5.0 band
- If 23 questions are correct you get 6.0 band.
- If 30 questions are correct you get 7.0 band.
- If 35 questions are correct you get 8.0 band.
- If 40 questions are correct you get 9.0 band.
How to Calculate .5 Score?
What if your 29 questions are correct? so you need to find out the medium, add 23 with 30 you get 53 then divide it by 2 = 26.5, it means that between 27 to 29 your Listening score would be 6.5 Band.