Download Listening for IELTS

Listening for IELTS:
The key to listening is to train your ear as much as possible. This basically means listening to as much
English as you can by watching films, listening to music*, talking to native English speakers and
practising your listening in your IELTS classes or at home.
The reason why you should do lots of listening is to tune or fine tune your ear to the sound of English.
The best way I can explain this is by comparing your ear to a radio. When listening to a foreign language
it sounds like an untuned radio with lots of hissing. To get a clear sound you need to turn the tuner. This
is what you are doing when you listen a lot to a foreign language; your ear is getting accustomed to the
sounds. Also, if it is available, try to find the script to the song, film or recording and read while you are
listening. This is important as English is a time-stressed language basically meaning that some of the
words are ‘swallowed’, leading to misunderstanding.
For example:
A person says: “I went into a shop and bought a pair of trousers”.
What you hear: I wenintoashop an bor apai rov trousers.
A person says: “I do not know what you are on about.”
What you hear: I dunno wo yeron nabou.
In the first example you will probably have a problem with ‘an bor’. As the ‘d’ of ‘and’ and the ‘t’ of
‘bought’ are not stressed the words will become unrecognisable. The reason why they are not stressed
is that it is easier for the mouth to go from an ‘r’ to an ‘a’ than from an ‘r’ to a ‘t’ to an ‘a’. In other
words native English speakers are ‘lazy’ in articulating.
This is what I mean by ‘fine tuning’ your ear to be able to understand words such as dunno (don’t
know), gonna (going to), wonna (want to), gotta (got to). Reading while you listen will help you to fine
tune your ear.
For the IELTS it is also important to read the questions before you listen. What you are meant to do is
look for key words in the question, think of possible synonyms and think about what type of answer you
need.
Example:
The building was constructed in _______.
The key words are ‘building’ and ‘constructed’. The preposition also indicates what type of information
could come after. In this case ‘in’ could be followed by: a year, a place or a noun.
Possible answers:
The building was constructed in: 1997 (year)
The business zone, France (place)
a hurry, a gothic style (noun)
These are the basics of what you need to improve your listening skill. The next part is about
understanding stress and intonation, which I will address in another document.
*When choosing music to listen to, find songs where the words are understandable. Groups such as: The
Beatles, Tracy Chapman, Louis Armstrong, Sade, Pink Floyd and many more are very good as the words
are clearly sung.