IELTS Energy 1480: Recent IELTS Forum Listening Questions and Expert Answers
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This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1480, Recent IELTS Forum Listening Questions and Expert Answers.

Welcome to the IELTS Energy Podcast from All Ears English, downloaded more than 22 million times with former IELTS examiner Jessica Beck and Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz. If you are stuck with a low score, our insider method will help you get the score you need to unlock your dreams. Get your estimated band score now with our two-minute quiz. Go to allearsenglish.com

forward slash my score. Have you ever been on an IELTS forum? We know there's a good chance you have. However, you cannot always trust those answers. So today we're going to focus on some popular forum questions about IELTS listening and give you answers you can trust.

Doing this podcast for all of you is one of the best parts of my job. We get to teach you high scoring native vocabulary that will help you stand out on the exam. We teach you strategies you need to get the right answers quickly on test day. And we have a lot of fun providing model sample speaking answers. I wonder though, is all of this enough for you to get the scores you need on test day?

Hello, my friend Aubrey. How's it going? I'm great. How are you, Jessica?

Good, we're doing an episode today. One that we have not done in a while where we look at questions on the most popular IELTS forums and we bring you real insider answers. 'Cause these are questions that a lot of you guys out there will have for sure. We can see how popular these questions are. And the answers on those forums are not always correct.

Exactly. We want to make sure you guys have accurate answers to these questions. I love that they're likely questions you have thought of. And if not, when you hear them today, you're going to think like, I should have thought of that question. I'm glad I have the answer now.

Totally, totally. So today, guys, we're focusing on listening questions. And I think we're going to turn this into a series, guys. So stay tuned in the next few episodes because we'll do other very popular IELTS forum questions for each section of the exam. So let's get into this first one. Aubrey, can you read this first listening question that we found?

Yes, says, I have a question about the listening section of the IELTS exam. I took the exam twice in 2015, once in the Middle East and once in England, and both exams have the same structure. All of them were multiple choice. I'm about to take my third exam in the United States.

and I bought some practice test books, but I was surprised to find out that the listening section in the practice tests were fill in the blanks as well as multiple choice. When I looked this up online, some said that is not true and that the exam is the same no matter what country you're taking it in. So now I'm

I'm confused. Has the listening section format changed from what the practice tests are, or is it still the same all multiple choice format? Can someone please give me any information regarding this topic? I feel that question at the end in my soul. It's like, can someone please help me? Right? Because if you just Google these things, like I don't think this information just pops up easily. And what keywords would you even Google for? This would be tough to figure out on your own.

All right, let's tackle this from beginning to end here.

First question, I think one essential question here is that are the tests the same no matter what country you take them in? What do you think, Aubrey? Yes. No matter where you take the listening and reading exams, they are the same. So that's one thing that's good. You don't need to look up a country and what is it else like there. It's not different in all of these different places. Yeah.

Exactly. So the IELTS test does change from week to week for sure. It has to, right? Or that would be a very invalid test because you could be like, oh, I remember this. I did this last week. But let's say, you know, one person is taking the test in Dubai this Saturday and another person is taking it in Taipei on the same day. Those two tests are exactly the same. Okay. Like on the one day, all the tests are going to be the same.

Having said that, I mean, this is true for listening, like we're talking about today, and for reading, like Aubrey said, and for writing. So all those questions around the world are the same on a given day. But for speaking, that is where the examiner has a choice of which questions to ask. So those will not necessarily be the same from country to country because the examiners will choose different questions. Right.

Right. So this is interesting to think about. You cannot know ahead of time on your listening exam, will they be all multiple choice? Will there be several fill in the blanks? There's no set rhyme or reason to that. And so that could be different one test date to the next.

So you kind of need to be prepared for anything. Exactly, exactly. And so this candidate's experience, I would say, is also rare. I don't think this happens that often. I mean, I know it doesn't happen that often. The fact that both listening tests that he took were all multiple choice. Now,

I mean, granted, I was an examiner, right? So it's not like I proctored the listening exam that often, but I did proctor the listening exam from time to time. And I never saw a listening exam that was all multiple choice questions. That would be very rare. Yeah, there are almost always fill in the blanks, map completions. They usually switch it up more than this. So it's unlikely that you'll get all multiple choice questions. Yes, exactly.

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slash f-l-u-e-n-c-y-s-c-o-r-e. All right, let's dive into question two. Aubrey, what do we have? All right, question two. In the listening test, are some answers have a word that is in brackets preceding the other word? Why is it important to put it in brackets?

Okay, I, you know, I've often wondered if this confuses students. So the student is looking at the answer key for a listening exam, right? That's what the student is saying. And then they're thinking, okay, so I have to have brackets, British English, parentheses, American English. I have to have parentheses around this word. Why? Why is that part of the answer? Aubrey, explain what the student is seeing.

Yeah, what this means is there are multiple options. There may be a possibility of having a noun with an adjective for your answer, or you may be able to just include that noun without the adjective describing it. So sometimes with listening answers, there are multiple options, and the word that could be excluded, could be left out, will be in brackets. Exactly. So...

I'll tell you guys, you're never going to have parentheses or brackets in your listening and reading answers. Okay? Never. You're not going to have to do that. Don't write them. You don't include those. But let's give an example. So the student did include an example in their forum post. What example did they give?

Yeah, their example was "strong" in parentheses or in brackets and then "tower" after that, not in parentheses. So in this case, the correct answer is "tower." That must be in your answer and you could include "strong." It could say "strong tower." Both of those are options. You could not just write "strong." You can't just have what's in the brackets. That's the optional addition to your answer.

Exactly, exactly. Great explanation. All right, moving on to our last listening forum question of today. And remember, guys, we are going to tackle the most popularly voted questions, the most viewed questions that we see on other IELTS forums for the rest of the exam. But let's stick to listening today. We have one more question. Aubrey, what is that question?

Yeah, I feel the time to look through the questions before the actual audio starts playing is not enough. And the questions that I couldn't look at at the start are the ones that I always end up answering wrong. Sure. Yeah. I'm sure you're not the only student that has felt that way. I remember when Aubrey and I planned this episode a couple days ago, guys, and as we were planning it, I remember Aubrey, you looked at this question and you're like,

Yeah, because it's not enough. It's not enough time. I know. I remember the first time I took an IELTS listening exam just to see what it was like. I couldn't believe how fast that time went. Like that is not enough time for me to read all of these questions and make the predictions I want. I want more time. Yeah. So first thing here to remember, guys, is just only look at the questions that you're told to look at because sometimes you're

students misunderstand and they think like they should look at all of the questions before the listening starts. So, for example, in Section 1 of the listening test, they might say, "Now you have some time to look at questions 1 to 5."

Well, if there are 10 questions there, right, some students might be like, oh, I have to look at all the questions for section one. No, that's the first thing. Only look at the questions they tell you. Having said that, if they are questions that are multiple choice, for example, there's more to read. There's more to look at before the audio starts. So how do we tackle that?

Yeah, this is really tricky. You need to be able to skim and this is a skill you're going to have to practice. You won't be able to carefully read every word of the multiple choice question and all of the options. So you're kind of quickly skimming looking for keywords. You need to get to where you can quickly identify the keywords that you're going to be listening for. That's a skill that must be practiced.

Exactly. That's all it is, guys. It's learning the strategies for these specific question types. And for listening, the basic strategy, and it sounds like the student knows what to do, the basic strategy is that you have to look at all of the questions and possible answers. You have to predict answers if it's like a fill in the blank or complete the notes. And that's a lot of...

active thinking to do. But the more you practice that process, the faster it gets. That's all it is. Yes, you have to do that for all the questions in order to be ready. And it doesn't seem like there's enough time to think about all of that. But there is if you practice these strategies enough.

Yes, absolutely. We see this a lot where students will learn strategies and then kind of feel like, okay, I'm ready. I could do this right away. A lot of the strategies you need to really boost your scores are going to take you some time to practice them, to get used to them so that you can then do them quickly in the time that you have on test day. Exactly, exactly. I do want to encourage you guys to scroll up to some recent episodes that we've done.

because there's been some things that we've never talked about on this podcast before. So if you missed these, that means maybe you're not subscribing or following us. So guys hit follow right now. So you never miss an episode. Yes. Awesome. Thanks, Jessica. Super fun. Thanks, Aubrey. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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