Listening – a skill, not a gift!

Often Listening can be your biggest problem. I know it because almost all my IELTS-taking friends had trouble there. Your Listening ability in many cases is not developed enough. But the good news is that Listening is a skill, not a gift, which means anyone can learn how to listen and understand (almost :)) every word. My friends and I came up with this technique that worked for us.

What usually happens:

You listen and hear a “Blablablablabla”, which you can’t to break into words, and for that reason it makes no sense to you. There is a big difference between seeing a word printed on paper when you read and hearing it. If you saw a word, it doesn’t mean you will recognize it when you hear it. Every word you have read, you need to hear at least once.

What can be done about it:

You need to teach yourself the words

How do you do it:

When training, take a recording of the news, a lecture, a television program, a movie or an actual IELTS Listening test and work with it.

Listening Tip # 1 – use a transcript.

Use an IELTS Listening test – just choose from all the links in the right sidebar. You need a test that has a transcript, so I suggest Listening test # 1 (be patient, their site is slow).
First try just listening, to get used to the accent. Then start working with a recording and a transcript: go over the recording, stop it after every sentence and use the transcript to make sure you understand every word.

Listening Tip # 2 – repeat phrases

You can use any recording. First, listen, remember what you heard and stop the recording after each phrase. Even if you didn’t understand the phrase, play it in your head a couple of times, like a broken record “Tonight we have a special guest”, “Tonight we have a special guest”, “Tonight we have a special guest”.
Then say it out loud. If you understood that phrase at first, this exercise will improve your pronunciation. If you didn’t understand the phrase for the first time, this repetition will give you more time to hear it better, break it into words and make sense out of them. And if it is still difficult, you can always rewind and hear the phrase again.