In listening section, you will face 40 questions which are divided
into four sections. The first and second section is about social needs.
In the first section, you will listen to conversation between two
speakers while in the second section you will hear speech by a speaker.
The next two sessions will be about educational or training. It covers
conversation between up to four speakers and speech by a speaker.
In
order to answer forty questions in IELTS well, there are some things
that you need to highlight. The first is main idea. Frequently,
important words and main idea are ones that are come up again and again
in the recording. You need to listen carefully then try to catch the
main idea to get the big picture on the topic that is discussed in the
recording. For example in a conversation about drama musical
performance, the term of ‘drama musical performance’ will be mentioned
several times.
The second thing is about voice changes. In this
test, you should be able to recognize and interpret nuances of speech.
Understanding the nuances means that you get a supportive idea on the
thing which is mainly discussed in the listening. There will be some
clues that you will get when you are able to analyze the intonation and
pitch used in the recording. For example, when you hear someone who
speaks in a normal monotone voice suddenly raises her voice in a high
pitch, it means that there is something critical which is being stated.
For example,
- Man: Let’s go to Riska house to see her condition.
- Woman: Is something bad happened to her?
The
third thing that you should pay attention on is specific pieces of
information. In IELTS, adjective is commonly asked. So, you can try to
memorize main adjective mentioned in the recording. The adjective can be
in form of number, color, or size. For example,
- Man: I am starving. Let’s buy some cakes in supermarket.
- Woman: I don’t have any money.
- Man: Don’t worry I am going to let you pick five cakes that you like and pay for it.
The question that follows this recording might ask about the number of cakes that the man gives to the woman.
Reference: IELTS Secrets, copyright 2002 by MO Media
