Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[teacherdominic]

Listening is a paper that needs to be practised, but it also needs to be practised in the right way. It really isn't a case of practise, practise, practise:

One tip is to do each practice test at least 3 times:

1. test yourself
2. read through with the transcript to see where the correct answers were and why you were wrong
3. A week or so later retest yourself

Phase 2 is the really important part: that's where you will do your learning. Sadly, it's also the part many candidates forget to do.

Another basic tip is not to focus just on a few words in the question: this is probably what causes most of the avoidable mistakes. Rather what you need to do is to focus on the whole question as you listen. To show what I mean by this I have prepared a short video tutorial that you can find here
http://www.dcielts.com/?p=429
_________________
Dominic Cole
Dominic Cole's IELTS Blog