Understanding IELTS

Understanding IELTS © British Council 2015

WEEK 3 THE LISTENING TEST ROB: Hi. In the listening test you get a chance to show how well you can listen in a number of

ways. There’ll be questions to see that you can understand the main idea of what people say –

you get the gist – and there’ll also be questions asking you to listen for specific information.

You’ll be asked to recognise opinions and attitudes of speakers and to follow an argument. So

let’s see what the test looks like. The test lasts for around thirty minutes and at the end there’ll

be ten minutes to transfer your answers to the answer paper. There are forty questions and you

might see a number of different types of question – there could be multiple choice, matching,

putting labels on a diagram, completing a table ... a number of different question types.

In Section One you’ll hear conversation between two people. This will be in an everyday social

context. In Section Two, you’ll hear a monologue – just one person speaking – again in an

everyday social context. In Section Three you’ll hear another conversation between two, three

or four people. This time the conversation will be in an educational or a training context, for

example, a tutor talking to a student. Finally, in section four you’ll hear another monologue and

this one too will be on an academic subject, for example a university lecture.

One important thing to remember – you only hear each section once.