ترفند ها و استراتژی های کلی

General Tips and Strategies

Here are some general tips and strategies to help you on the listening section. Let’s start with some very basic tips. So one of the most important things you can do to avoid losing easy points on the listening paper is to make sure you always read the directions. The directions provide important information such as word limits, right, on your short answer questions, you always have a limit to the number of words and numbers you should use.

So, can you use one word, or two, or three? Maybe on different questions you’re supposed to answer with letters, or numbers or numerals. This information is always supplied in the directions. You need to make a habit of looking to the directions quickly before each listening passage and its questions.

Also, reading the directions helps you to understand each question fully. So in our lessons on the listening section we’re going to look at each type of listening question. So even though you’ll understand each question type, each time you face a new set of questions on the IELTS, the directions will be slightly different. They will ask you to do something new with the listening passage.

So you have to look to the directions to know exactly what you’re supposed to do for each set of questions. Also in addition to reading the directions, it’s very important that you go to the questions that you’re about to answer and analyze them a little bit before you listen to a passage. So one part of the IELTS listening exam is that there are pauses in between each section of the test.

So there will be four listening passages for you to listen to. And you will have some time in between each one to read the directions for the next section and to look at the questions before you listen to the next section. We will have a whole lesson where we look at how to do this, how to analyze questions before you listen to a passage.

For now, I just wanna point out that this is a key strategy for the listening paper on the IELTS. Okay, the reason it’s important is because it’s the best way and really the only way that you can keep up with the speaker as he or she is speaking and answer all the questions well on the listening paper. The reason for that is, you’re only going to hear each passage one time.

The expectation is that you will answer questions as you’re listening to the passage, so you need to be answering as you listen to this difficult material for the first time, it’s not easy. So a key strategy that we will discuss in detail in a future lesson is to find landmarks within each question before you listen. A landmark is something that you find within a question to let you know what you should be listening for within the passage.

This works because on IELTS passages, answers always come in order. That means, you will hear the answer to question one before you hear the answer to question two. And you will hear the answer to question two before you will hear the answer to question three. All of the answers come in order as you listen.

So finding landmarks relates to this fact as you look at the questions that relate to the passage you are just about to listen to, you find the landmarks to let you know when you should expect certain kinds of information. For example, let’s imagine you have a listening passage where you can tell from the questions that you are going to have to find locations in a city. So, let’s just say that question one, you notice is something about City Hall.

And the next question, question two, you notice is something about a statue, okay, so you’re looking and analyzing the questions before you listen to the passage. You know that you’re going to hear something about City Hall first, before you hear something about a statue. If you were hearing somethings about City Hall as you listen to the passage and suddenly the speaker has stopped talking about City Hall and is now discussing a statue, there’s a good chance that you missed the answer to question one.

If you didn’t hear the answer but they’re already talking about statues, you know that because you found a landmark within the question. The landmark lets you know what to look for and in what order the question should come. If you believe you missed a question like we saw just now, if you believe that like our previous example, some question about City Hall already happened and you missed it, then what you do on the IELTS listening section is you just guess and move on.

You can guess by marking an answer in your question booklet and coming back to it later at the end of the exam. They give you ten minutes to write in answers and maybe you can make a good guess during that time period at the end of the test. The point is, though, you don’t wanna lose your place in a passage because you’re worrying about missing something that you think you should have heard.

If you missed it, you missed it, move on and make sure you answered the next questions well. Just be ready because answers on this test can come really quickly, you could get three answers in a short amount of time within the passage or they can be more spread out. Just remember they will come in order, and if you have a good sense of the landmarks, the things you’re planning to listen for, you will then know what to expect from the questions that are coming next.

Okay, so how to manage your answer sheet and question sheet for the listening paper. So you want to use your question paper for notes. So in this section you will have a question paper, the paper that explains the questions. And then you will have an answer sheet where you mark your answers.

Don’t put any notes or answer guesses on your answer sheet until the very end of the test. Use your question paper to take any kinds of notes that you might take. You should not try to memorize answers as you take the test. So you really do need to answer questions as you hear them. This takes a lot of practice and in other lessons in this about the listening paper, we will discuss strategies about how to do this.

But some students think they can listen to the whole passage all the way through and then answer the questions after the passage is done. This does not work well on the IELTS exam. You will lose points because it’s too difficult to remember all the information. Remember that spelling counts and this is tough for the listening paper, because you are listening to things, not necessarily reading them on a page.

Maybe some of the words you need to fill in for your short answers are not written somewhere within the questions. So spelling is important as you’re studying vocabulary, preparing for the IELTS exam, make sure that you are studying spelling as well. If you’re not sure about the spelling of a word, then practice it on your question sheet, all right?

So you have the ten-minute period after all of the listening passages are done. You can write the word down a couple times, look at it, see if it looks right to you. And then put your final answer on the answer sheet. Hopefully, you can figure it out by the time you need to write it on the page. One tip that really can help you to avoid loosing points is to write all your answers in capital letters.

So as you’re writing an answer on the page, you write like this. The reason this can help you, is that some words that you write for your short answer, may be proper nouns. They maybe nouns that you are supposed to capitalize, such as first names or the names of locations. If you capitalize all the letters of every answer on your answer sheet, you will not lose points because you forgot to capitalize a proper noun.

So for example, if I’m supposed to write the answer let’s say richmond, which is a city. Okay, if I forget to capitalize the r, I am going to lose the point for that question because it’s not capitalized. It is perfectly fine to just capitalize all of the letters of richmond in your answer and then you won’t lose any points for capitalization.

It’s a really good way to avoid missing easy points. Just make sure you capitalize every word on your answer sheet for your short answers. Okay, a last tip for managing your answer sheet is to just spend some time looking at common English names. Names come up often on IELTS exam, names like Mary, John, Kate, etc.

Learn how to spell basic names in English. Go to word name list that you could find on the Internet and just spend a little time getting familiar with English names. Your suppose to know how to spell them. And sometimes, they do test you on that on the listening exam. Okay, keep in mind that this is a difficult section of the test.

For many students the listening exam is really the most difficult part of the whole IELTS exam. Speakers can change their minds. Okay, so as you’re listening, you may think you heard an answer to a question. And then a few seconds later the speaker changes his or her mind and said something completely new.

That’s something to keep in mind and to watch for as you’re listening to each passage. Speakers also hedge statements often. Hedging is where you say things like most people, or some people. Okay, so this is a hedge because you’re not really giving a strong answer, as strong as it could be, right?

When you don’t hedge you say all, okay, instead of most, all people believe this. So hedging is where people say something that qualifies that takes an answer or makes a statement that sounds like a strong statement but then they make it weaker by adding, well, most or some people believe this or some people believe that.

This is important because some questions will test you on whether you heard that the speaker hedged a statement. So they will have an answer choice that says, all people in this country believe whatever. But the speaker didn’t say all. The speaker said most or some people.

And they’re testing you to see if you caught that. That can be a difficult thing to listen for on the speaking exam. Also, as in every section of the IELTS exam, correct answers are almost always paraphrases, okay? You can expect that all answers to each question will be a little bit tempting. So they will include language that you heard in the passage.

Even though the answer is wrong, it will include words and information but you did here is just incorrect for the question that they are asking you. Doing well on the IELTS listening section takes a lot of practice and you will really need to do many listening practice questions in order to really learn how the IELTS test your listening in these difficult ways. Okay, so to recap our lesson here.

Make sure you read the directions every time for every question carefully. You also need to analyze questions before you listen, okay? Next, it’s important to answer questions as you listen to a passage. So you would analyze them before you listen in that pause before the passage starts but then when you are listening to a speaker speaking, you are trying to answer your questions as you listen to that person.

Answers come in order on the IELTS exam so that helps you to find landmarks with your question. These landmarks are things that tell you what you should be listening for. And if you don’t hear an answer, if you’ve passed one of your landmarks and you don’t know an answer, you just move on and try to focus on the next question so you don’t lose extra points.

Remember that spelling counts on the IELTS listening section. And to avoid losing easy points, you can capitalize answers, so you don’t miss answers that should be capitalized but you didn’t know they should be capitalized. If you capitalize every letter, you don’t miss those points. And the last suggestion is to just be on your toes. That’s an expression we use to mean just be ready.

The IELTS listening section is tricky and you will have to listen closely and get very good at answering the different types of questions on this exam in order to feel comfortable for the real test you take.