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Exam StrategyListeningReadingWriting Task 1Writing Task 2SpeakingVocabularyGrammar

Listening · session 2 of 8

Predict, Hold, Transcribe

GoalBy the end you can walk into any section knowing what shape each answer must take, hold a value until the speakers settle it, and land it on the answer sheet in a form the marker can accept.
How this session runs
flowchart TD
  A[Reading gap thirty seconds] --> B[Mark word type and limit]
  B --> C[Listen for the paraphrase]
  C --> D[Pencil the value do not commit]
  D --> E[Wait for repair or agreement]
  E --> F[Transfer then check limit and spelling]
Think of it likeA listening section is a single-pass event stream you cannot rewind: the reading gap is declaring your schema before the events arrive, a pencilled value is a write to a staging buffer, the speakers' correction is a later event with a newer timestamp that overwrites it, and the ten transfer minutes are the commit — nothing uncommitted is ever read by the marker.

Decide the shape of the answer before the audio starts

For exampleIn Dubai, Mohammad reads the New Insight gap Drive from Melbourne to Phillip Island approx 1, then simply listens for meaning. Two numbers arrive, 137 kilometres and 90 minutes, so he writes both and loses the mark. Thirty seconds earlier he could have pencilled number, distance, and taken only the first.
The ruleIn every reading gap, annotate each blank three ways before the audio starts — subject, is it a name, a date, a country, a number; grammar, is it a noun, a verb, an adjective, singular or plural; and function, is it a comparison, a list, an instruction, a label (Collins Listening for IELTS, p. 10). You are then listening for a shape rather than for meaning, which is the only workable strategy because it is very unusual for the words you read to be the words you hear on the recording (Collins, p. 12).
TrapYou did not mishear 137 — you arrived at that blank without having decided it wanted a distance, so both numbers looked equally like answers.

The first value you hear is a candidate, not an answer

For examplePractising Collins Unit 1 in Amman, Mohammad hears the tourist ask to fly out on 23 July and writes 23. The agent replies that the 24th is the Sunday, and the tourist agrees to the 24th. Two more seconds of pencil discipline would have banked July 24.
The ruleTreat every value you hear as a pencilled candidate, never as a committed answer — the recording often refers to a number of possible answers, but only one answers the question correctly (Collins, p. 14). Listen through the repair markers — no, actually, sorry, isn't it — and commit only to the last value the speakers agree on. The same discipline runs multiple choice, where the recording will usually refer to all three options and only the detail separates the answer from the distractors (Collins, p. 52).
TrapYou did not mishear the date — you committed at the first plausible value instead of holding the pencil for one turn, which is exactly where the correction lived.
flowchart TD
  A[Hear a value] --> B[Pencil it lightly]
  B --> C{Correction or agreement}
  C -->|Speakers repair it| D[Overwrite with the new value]
  C -->|Agreed and topic moves on| E[Commit in ink]
  D --> B

The answer sheet is marked, not your understanding

For exampleIn Riyadh, Mohammad submits Collins page 77 — two times a week for how often, 9.30 to 10.45 for what time, 7 p.m. for why the gym shuts early. He heard all three correctly and scored zero on all three. Correct: twice a week, 9.30, a reason.
The ruleBefore you transfer, audit every answer against its own instruction line: is it inside the stated limit, because three words where two were allowed is marked incorrect (Collins, p. 18); does it answer the question word actually asked, since why wants a reason and when wants a time (Collins, p. 36); is it the exact wording from the recording rather than your own paraphrase (Collins, pp. 29 and 77); and is it spelt correctly, because a misspelt non-technical word is marked incorrect outright (Collins, p. 24).
Trap7 p.m. answers when the gym closes, not why it closes early — the question word was the one thing you did not check before writing (Collins, p. 77).
flowchart TD
  A[Ten minutes start now] --> B[Transfer in blocks of ten]
  B --> C[Second pass limit and question word]
  C --> D[Third pass spelling and blanks]
  D --> E[A blank can only be wrong]

Situation

Section 3, question 27. Two students and a tutor are arguing about a fieldwork date. You hear the 14th, then the 16th, then the tutor saying the lab is closed that week. The tutor now starts on funding. Question 26 is still blank and its limit is two words.
Decide: Do you go back for 26, or drop it and set yourself up for 28?

Teach it back

Your English is better than mine and you still scored 24 out of 40 in Listening. Where do those sixteen marks actually go?

Check yourself

Answer, then see immediately whether you were right and why.

Section 2. Question 14 is still blank and the speaker has clearly moved on to opening hours, which is question 15. You have about four seconds. What do you do?
Why The questions always follow the order of the information in the recording, so once the speaker begins the next topic the answer to 14 is behind you, and hunting for it costs you 15 as well (Collins Listening for IELTS, p. 74). Reconstructing from memory is the tempting choice because it feels productive and your English is nearly strong enough to do it — but you cannot rebuild old speech and parse new speech at the same time, and a blank can only be marked wrong, so you fill 14 from context during the ten transfer minutes instead (New Insight into IELTS, p. 35).
Stem: The Final Chapter is based on… You hear that the director travelled around South America, that he heard there about a Peruvian book telling the story of the fight for gold, and that reading that story made him decide to make the film. Which option do you mark?
Why The film is based on the Peruvian book: the travels are only where he found the inspiration, and the story he heard is how he found the book, so the novel is the sole option whose detail matches the stem (Collins, p. 52). A story the director heard is the tempting wrong answer because the recording says almost that word for word — but the recording will usually refer to all answer options, and hearing an option is not evidence, only a matching detail is (Collins, p. 52).
During the recording you wrote two times a week. In the transfer minutes you notice the instruction says NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER. What goes on the answer sheet?
Why Two times a week is four words against a three-word limit, and if you write more words than the instruction allows your answer is marked incorrect even though you understood perfectly — the answer key's own correction for this exact item is twice a week (Collins, p. 18; error exercise p. 77 and key p. 142). Copying exactly as heard is tempting because it is the right rule somewhere else — on a diagram label you must write the words you hear and not your own (Collins, p. 29) — but that rule never overrides the word limit, and leaving it blank is worse still, since a blank space can only be marked wrong (New Insight, p. 35).
Section 2 asks you to match five family types to three districts — Eastgate, the Latin Quarter, Park Royal Gardens. You have thirty seconds of reading time. What do you do with the two lists?
Why Lists containing names of people, places and countries are very likely to remain the same, so Eastgate, the Latin Quarter and Park Royal Gardens will be spoken as written and can track your position, while the family types are the list that gets paraphrased — middle-class arrives as something like comfortable financially (Collins, p. 67). Paraphrasing the district names is the tempting move because paraphrase-hunting is the core listening skill, but you would be preparing synonyms for the one list that will not change; and writing the words instead of A, B or C is marked incorrect (Collins, p. 67).
Section 4 reading time is nearly over and you have read questions 31 to 35 only. What do you do with the remaining seconds?
Why There is no break in Section 4, so every question you have not read before the lecture starts must be read while it runs — and it is difficult to concentrate on making sense of what you hear while working out what a question requires (New Insight, pp. 30 and 35). Re-reading 31 to 35 is tempting because it is exactly right in Sections 1 to 3, where the recording is divided into parts with reading time before each (New Insight, p. 13); in Section 4 that safety net does not exist, so a rough pass over 36 to 40 buys more marks than a polished pass over 31 to 35.
Two minutes of transfer time left. Three answers are still only on the question booklet, you are unsure whether you wrote accommodation or accomodation at question 12, and question 39 is blank. What is the order?
Why Only the answers on the answer sheet are marked, so three answers still sitting in the booklet are three guaranteed zeros, and a guess at 39 is free because a blank space can only be marked wrong (Collins, p. 94; New Insight, p. 35). Fixing the spelling first is tempting because spelling genuinely decides marks — spell a word incorrectly and the answer is considered incorrect (Collins, p. 24) — but that is a repair to an answer that already exists on the sheet, while an untransferred answer does not exist at all.
Not started
In one sentence, now that you've seen itIn Listening your marks are won in the thirty seconds before the audio and the ten minutes after it, almost never while it is playing.

Collins, Listening for IELTS (Aish & Tomlinson, 2011) — pp. 5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 18, 24, 29, 35–36, 44, 52, 67, 74, 77, 94, and answer key p. 142. Cambridge, New Insight into IELTS (Jakeman & McDowell, 2008), Listening — pp. 7–9, 13, 17, 30, 35. Prior study notes: agents/ielts-complete-preparation/learned/listening.md.