IELTS Listening
Get your IELTS preparation off to the right start with our official preparation materials from Experts for the Listening test.
The IELTS Listening is the same for both the IELTS Academic test and General Training test. The Listening test assesses your ability to understand main ideas, detailed information, opinions, purpose and attitudes of the speakers, as well as your ability to follow the development of ideas.
You will listen to 4 recordings in your Listening test and need to answer 40 questions based on these recordings. The first two recordings deal with situations you might experience in an everyday context. The last two recordings, however, focus on situations that might occur in an education or training context.
In recordings 1 and 3 you will hear a conversation between two or more speakers, however in recordings 2 and 4 will hear a monologue. You will need to answer questions connected to the recordings ranging from multiple choice to matching information, headings, features and sentence endings, as well as sentence, summary, note, table, diagram or flow-chart completion.
How is IELTS scored?
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The Listening and Reading parts of the IELTS test are scored out of 40 and then converted to a band score which ranges from band 1 to band 9.
The Listening and Reading tests contain 40 questions and each correct question will be awarded 1 mark (so the maximum a test taker can score here is 40). Band scores, ranging from band 1 to band 9, are awarded based on the raw scores.
The Listening, Reading, and Writing parts of the test are completed immediately after each other on the same day. In some test centres, you will sit the Speaking test on the same day, or up to 7 days before or after your test date.
If you take IELTS on computer, the Speaking test will be taken on the same day, either before, or after the other three parts of the test.
If you take an IELTS on Computer test, the Reading, Writing and Listening parts of the IELTS test are completed on a computer, but the Speaking test is completed face-to-face with an IELTS examiner.
As IELTS is an international test, a variety of voices and native-speaker accents are used in both the General Training and Academic tests.
In the IELTS Listening test, the recording is played once only. It is important to concentrate from the beginning until the end for the whole 30 minutes.
Lectures follow a predictable pattern or structure. The more lectures you listen to, the more you understand that structure. Also, knowing more words can help you better understand.
No. In the IELTS Listening test, each recording is played once only.
