Listening tips from high achiever, Band Score 8.5

I got to know Zulquar when he sent me his IELTS result to enroll in our December’s competition. When he told me that he didn’t have any help with exam preparation (he did it on his own and got Band score of 8.5 in the Listening test), I was surprised. Zulquar kindly agreed to share his best tips with all of us, here they are:

The Plan ( The Right Aspiration)

One must identify the key areas that could help one get a better overall band and one should be practical about it. Like one shouldn’t expect an 8 band score in writing module. Likewise one shouldn’t expect 6.0 in listening and reading if he is aspiring for a 7 band overall.

I am emphasizing upon listening and reading because these are the two areas where one could and one should easily expect 8 which I did and succeeded pretty well, and as far as speaking module is concerned one could easily tell by the way he leaves the interview table, the score he is getting. In my case I was damn sure about 8.0, but I eventually got 7.5, this is all due to the over aspiration considering the fact that I left the table very happy and fine.

Anyway, here is the plan that I devised to decode the IELTS, and believe me, it’s easy and enjoyable.

Listening test

This is the key module, that is, high scoring is quite easy in this module. So it is the key to all other modules and is the area which should be the beginning area for preparation.

To prepare for it, I had to identify the pattern of the examination which I did quite easily through a bit of Googling. There are two areas that I had to develop into myself,

1. Cognition of different accents.

I improved on this by watching three Hollywood movies a day, listening to western music ( hats off to Elton John and way with Avril!!!), watching you tube user videos and then doing a bit sort of internet research about the way words are pronounced differently in different countries

2. Improving short term retention

To improve this I had adopted a way, like if I am watching a movie, I paused after watching every five minutes and then tried to jot down the dialogue and all the happenings that went on the screen for this time duration. This was a two way method to improve both cognition and retention, and yes I had to put an effort at it but as more movies and songs went by, I was enjoying it.