1. Pronunciation – Alphabets/Numbers or Singular/Plural Words

The most common penalty area that leads to incorrect answers in Section 1 of IELTS Listening is related to pronunciation. You may be facing difficulties in correctly understanding the pronunciation of carefully such as alphabets (when a speaker is spelling the name or addres) or numbers (when speaker talks about phone number).
Another type of pronunciation issue one can find in IELTS Listening in other Sections as well is related to singular or plural words. Many a times, it is seen that candidates do not hear it clearly whether the word is singular or plural, for example, if the speaker says “admission forms”, candidates do not concentrate properly or not able to recognize whether they need to write the word “form” with or without “s”.

Useful Tip:

To overcome this, you should listen to foreign accent stuff such as group discussions, radio shows, talk shows etc. and also get used to the foreign accent pronunciation of every alphabet and number by listening to it again and again. Just Google for the pronunciation of alphabet/number in the UK/US foreign accent and keep on hearing it till you absorb the right pronunciation well.

2. Spelling Errors

One of the major issues you may face in IELTS listening section is to write the correct spelling of words spoken in the audio. While candidates are not sure about spelling of words and hence they go wrong in writing them correctly. It is also seen that there are some candidates who know the correct spelling but hurriedly, they may write them incorrectly or when they do not review properly what they have written.

For example, “accommodation” is often written mistakenly as “accommodation”

Useful Tip:

To deal with this hurdle, practice reading and writing more to learn the correct spelling. You can also practice online spelling exercises by searching in Google.

3. Grammar

Apart from the above penalty areas, grammar is another problem candidates face while giving IELTS Listening test. It may usually happen when you are more concentrating on the information only and do not see the nearby words to predict the answer grammatically. For example,
All the college students are required to submit all the …………for applying to the contest.
If you see, in the above question, “all” is the word that indicates that your answer in the blank should be a plural word, not singular.

Useful Tip:

Do check your answer grammatically or predict it within the given 1 minute before the audio starts.

4. Choosing Word Instruction

Another thing is to  write your answer according to the word instruction. If instruction is “NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS”, it implies that your answer should be of one word or two words. It does not imply that you have to write only two words. For example,

Question:

Write answer in NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

Parents willing to enjoy the…………….. with the students can register soon.

Audio:

Parents who are waiting to join the most-awaited holiday trip with the students can register soon.

Answer:

Holiday Trip

*Answer should be holiday trip, not most-awaited holiday trip

Useful Tip:

Focus on understanding too, apart from matching the words in the question with the words in the audio.

5. Understanding Paraphrasing

In some of the IELTS Listening questions, especially the MCQs, you may miss out a question or skip the audio when there’s paraphrasing used in the audio. You are likely to lose confidence in choosing the right answer and may go lost in the audio.

Useful Tip:

In this case, underline keywords and focus on understanding the conversation and relate it with the underlined keywords.

Thank you for reading this article and I hope you like my article, for more articles please subscribe to your email and get updates from every IELTS articles.

Let us now discuss how to crack Section 2 of IELTS Listening, considering the example of a table completion question:

In the 1 minute given to you for reading questions, underline some keywords you can concentrate on while listening to the audio. In the above question, let us see how to underline the important keywords in this table.

As you can see, the major keywords are “simple”, “not have”(or simply “not”), “convenient”, “problems”, “improved” and “lacks” which serve the main purpose behind the question, focusing on which you can find the appropriate word as your answer from the audio.

The main key point here is that main words such as nouns, verbs, etc. are important, not the prepositions or so.

Another important thing to be kept in mind is that if you do not lose your focus or in other words, do not skip any part of the audio in these questions, you can get all the correct answers in this section.

Essential Tips on Cracking Section 2 of IELTS Listening:

1. Following up well the order of information in the audio is crucial here because if you do not go with the flow, you would get lost in the middle and it would be difficult to come back on the track again.
2. You should recognize the transition point between two rows in the question while listening so that you can keep yourself aligned with the audio to avoid skipping any part of it.
3. Always go through the questions completely including the statements as well as blanks, in the one minute given to you, to get an understanding of the topic. Familiarizing yourself with the question helps you to gain confidence.
4. Always keep in mind that you are required to write the exact word that you listen to in the audio. Since you do not have sufficient time, to analyze the information and scan the answer the way you get in the reading, exact words are expected as the answers in IELTS listening.
5. Be careful about the word instruction given at the top of every question and stick to it. For this purpose, prefer underlining the instruction like a keyword so that you may not forget it while writing down your answer. It would really be a silly mistake if you understood the audio, got the answer also but did not write it as per the instruction.

Thank you for reading this article and I hope you like my article, for more articles please subscribe to your email and get updates from every IELTS articles.

Let us now discuss in detail how to crack Section 3 of IELTS listening test:

In IELTS Listening Section 3, you can commonly find any of the questions such as table completion, MCQs (Multiple Choice Questions), matching headings, flow chart or diagram. However, form filling and sentence completion are not usually seen in this section.

To approach the above type of questions, there are some unique tips to be kept in mind, while the basic things that you can concentrate on while attempting Section 3 in IELTS Listening test remain the same for all kinds of questions. Let us discuss the approach you can adopt for IELTS Listening test Section 3 by taking example of MCQs types of question:

Underline Keywords

Underlining important keywords in question is the most effective strategy for solving IELTS Listening Section 3. For this, you can utilize 1 minute, given to you prior to listening the audio conversation. Let us see how to underline keywords:

Simple MCQ

Joy has been working in the hospital for

1. Three years
2. One year
3. Four years

In the above question, the main keywords you can focus upon are “Joy”, “working” and “hospital”. Hence, you can highlight these keywords by underlining them. Afterwards, when the audio starts, just keep these underlined keywords in your mind to get the gist of question while have your eyes on the three options; “three”, “one” and “four” and just avoid the common word “years”.

So, you have to choose the answer out of those three numbers only and this is how you are able to solve this type of question easily. Similarly, you can use the same strategy for a bit difficult question as well:

Difficult MCQ

John was successful in his business because he

• recruited hundred more employees
• was the highly skilled professional
• could reach out to maximum customers

Essential Tips for IELTS Listening Section 3:

1. Listen to the introduction and example audio properly to be able to recognize different voices well.
2. While focusing on the underlined keywords in the question, it is also important to understand the question because some of the keywords in the options or the complete option itself may be paraphrased in the audio.
3. Using 1 minute to get an overview of the section would help you to familiarize yourself with the questions.
4. Remember that while listening to the audio, you have to be quick enough to move your eyes over all the questions as well as options so that you are aligned up well with the audio and there is no chance of skipping a question.
5. Lastly, do remember that information in the audio always flows in the same order as the order of question. So, you have to be continuously going on by immediately moving to the next question instead of looking back for any skipped question or unsurely marked answer.

Keep listening until the recording stops, looking only at the questions that relate to the part being played.

There are often pauses in the recording between different sections. Use these to prepare for the next set of questions.

Answer Listening questions in the order they appear on the Question Paper. Remember that they normally follow the order of the information in the recording.

At the end of the recording, you have some time to transfer your answers to the Answer Sheet. Check your grammar and spelling as you do so.