Ielts course

IELTS course


IELTS Listening Test

Overview of the listening test

1	The listening test has four sections.
2	There are 40 questions.
3	Candidates hear each section once .
4	The speakers have different accents.
5	Candidates have time to transfer their answers after the recording has finished.
6	Spelling is important.

Section 1

a conversation in an everyday social context between two people
correct
Section 2
a monologue on a topic relating to general social needs
correct
Section 3
a conversation in an academic context between two or more people
correct
Section 4
a lecture or talk on a topic of general academic interest

Predicting

Predicting involves using the context and your knowledge of the topic to guess what people are speaking about. For instance, if you were watching TV and you saw an advertisement for a car, you could guess that the purpose of the advert would be to sell the car and that there was likely to be vocabulary related to cars.

Predicting is an important listening skill because we can make more sense of what we hear if we use what we know already about the topic.