IELTS Energy 1443: 3 Top Tips for a Listening 9
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This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1443, Three Top Tips for a Listening Nine.

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

Hear about another listener today who got an overall 7.5 and get our three best tips for how you could get a nine on IELTS listening as well.

Treading water is an English idiom that means you are working at something but getting nowhere. Are you treading water with your English? Get your personalized English fluency level with our free eight question quiz.

Find out why you're stuck and how you can stop treading water. Take our free English level quiz at allearsenglish.com slash fluency score. That's allearsenglish.com slash fluency score. Aubrey, we had another amazing letter or email from a listener of this podcast.

This email made my month, made my year. It was so delightful. Again, full of amazing vocabulary. I love this. This is one of my favorite thing about IELTS students is you guys know you need impressive vocabulary. So you're learning a ton. And when you email us, you use a lot of it. And it's so fun.

It's so great. So we actually reported on another student who got amazing scores last week, and we have another amazing report today. So we're going to share this student's story with you, point out some amazing vocabulary, and then we're going to give you three tips to get a band nine in listening.

Yes. Awesome. Let's dive in here. We're going to read parts of this letter and highlight this amazing vocab, which you could totally use on your IELTS exam. Yes. So first I'll start us off. Dear Aubrey and Jessica. Hey, two of my absolute favorite gals on YouTube, Spotify, and in the whole IELTS world. Thank you. Amazing. We'll take it. First off a massive thank you for all your hard work. You're so generous with

with your time and energy and it shines through in everything you do. You're inspiring way beyond just teaching English. You don't just teach the language, you bring it to life. First of all, this is a huge compliment. Thank you so much. But also impressive vocabulary. Massive to mean really big. Use that on both IELTS speaking and writing. And then this idiom to bring something to life, right? Just means to make it more interesting and exciting. Great vocabulary. To make it more real.

right? So this is contrasted with learning vocabulary by looking in a dictionary or going to thesaurus.com, right? That vocab is dead. It has no life, right? It's not going to stick in your brain. You're not going to be able to use it. But when we teach you vocabulary, we show you how to use it on the IELTS exam, right? What it means, what the context,

should be. So we bring it to life. Thank you so much for saying all of these things. All right.

Then she goes on to say, honestly, I'm falling in love with English now. God knows how much I hated it back in my teen years. Ugh. Don't even get me started on those teachers who had no clue how to make learning fun. One of my IELTS teachers even said it would be hard for me to get a BAN 7 in speaking. Can you imagine a teacher saying that to you? That's

awful no that's so mean and discouraging right like you need to have confidence your teacher should be building you up and anyone can get a nine in speaking if you know the scoring system if you have strategies it really shouldn't be hard yes it's difficult it's a lot of work but tell someone specifically like you're not going to be able to get yeah just true a seven nine is you can get a seven even some native speakers can't get a nine but we're

it's a good point we're talking about a seven like no you can get a seven yeah guys we are here to motivate you right you can get at least a seven in speaking for sure um and i love this because

It reflects that when you enjoy what you're learning and you can enjoy studying for IELTS, right? Learning English for the exam and for the rest of your life, but also learning all of the testing strategies and stuff. You should enjoy it. And that is the best way your brain will actually learn.

That's such a good point. If it is drudgery, you're probably doing something wrong, right? You want what you're reading, what you're using for practice to be fun and engaging. We try to be fun and engaging here. You should be enjoying your IELTS preparation journey. Totally. And then she says, "Well, guess what? I smashed it. I got an overall band 7.5 with a band 9 in listening and drum roll please, a band 7 in speaking."

Okay, incredible. So we are going to sort of pick out this band nine in listening and give you three tips here in just a minute. But here's another vocab phrase you guys can steal from the student and use on your IELTS exam. The slang smashed it. So anything that you did very well or very successfully, you say I smashed it. So this is slang informal. Great for speaking part one and part two.

Yeah, you could use it if you're talking about your job, something you had to do or studying. Anytime you have to describe your performance, this is a band nine way of saying you did a really good job. I smashed it means I succeeded. I did really well, but in such a native natural way. It's so awesome. All right. We have just two more little tiny paragraphs here, guys, and then we'll get to the listening tips. But we have a

couple more vocab words to teach you first. Aubrey, what is the next paragraph? Yeah, she said, "Even though I got my score back in July, yep, four months ago, I'm still hooked on your podcast, like religiously. My morning routine is like roll out of bed, press play and let your voices invigorate me."

I know. Amazing. Those wanting a band nine and listening, take notes and follow my lead. Seriously, your podcast is gold. And you know what else is gold? All of the vocabulary in this paragraph. So many great words. First of all, religiously. What an exaggeration, but a really amazing one. Anytime you want to say you like something a lot or you do something a lot, you can say you do it religiously. This has nothing to do with religion. It means you do it a lot.

Yes. It means like you, like this is a solid, yes, this is a solid habit or routine for you. Right. I go to the gym religiously. It's like I go five days a week. I don't. So I couldn't use religiously to describe that.

Yeah, because this does imply like real dedication, devotion, something you're really doing. If you say like, oh, yeah, I go to the gym once a year, so I do it religiously. That doesn't make sense. It definitely means regularly, often. Exactly. And then she said, follow my lead, right? That is, that is,

a great phrase that you can use on the exam, especially in part two, if you're like telling a story or describing a friend that you helped out, right? If you say, you know, my friend really followed my lead and decided to also take IELTS and move to Canada. So anyone that like does the same thing you're doing, right? They could be like, ah,

Yeah, she followed my lead or I followed her lead. Yes. And then a band nine verb, which I know you've heard on the podcast before, but a good reminder, invigorate, which means to give someone energy, positive energy, especially. We are definitely trying to invigorate you guys here. And this is great for IELTS answers. Think of all the different things, sports, again, gym attendance, all of the things that can invigorate you. Definitely use that word.

Okay. So good. And then at the end, she says, wishing you both all the best, Aubrey and Jessica. Keep being amazing. Okay. We'll try. And then I love this. So before we say her name, I want to read the PS, right? She says her name is pronounced like C-E-E. Let's admit your occasional awkwardness with pronouncing names is both relatable and absolutely adorable. Okay.

I'm glad she finds it adorable. I hope you guys out there do because I know a lot of you, if you send in questions or we read these letters, there's a good chance we get your name wrong. So sorry about that. It's funny. Our awkwardness is relatable. We try our best. And so thank you, C.E., for sending that amazing message. And congratulations on your...

your scores. All right. So let's get to these listening steps. Aubrey, what is the first step to get a band nine on IELTS listening?

Yes, first of all, follow C's example, subscribe and follow the podcast on YouTube if you're more of a visual learner like she was saying. She mentioned that she watches the episodes on YouTube or on the podcast, whatever works best for you. Or both. And go back and listen. Yeah, both, right? Because you can go back and listen to live listening practice that we've done. If you've missed those, we have...

provided several episodes where we give you actual IELTS practice to listen to audio, questions to answer, and we walk you through the strategies you should be using. This practice is gold. It's super useful. Yeah. Anytime you can have the answers explained to you. As an adult learner, you really have to

Understand why. Why is this the answer? Why is that not the answer? To have us walk you through those things is really, really helpful. The last time we did a listening practice on this podcast, it was IELTS Energy 1434 called...

Hugs and Listening Part 4 Practice. It's so great. It's about this New Zealand news airport story. It's so great. So scroll up and listen to IELTS Energy 1434 or find it on YouTube. And make sure to follow and subscribe, guys, so you don't miss any other golden episodes.

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All right, Aubrey, what is the next step?

All right. Step two is you want to make sure that you are listening and watching shows, watching things made for natives. You don't just want to listen to like podcasts for English learners. You know, if you don't understand everything yet, you can use transcripts and subtitles. Then you can turn off subtitles halfway through the TV show or movie to challenge yourself. But you need to be taking in vocabulary for lots of different topics that won't be present

in some of the English learning resources. - Yeah, exactly. And we do speak at a normal pace on this show, right? Like we don't speak more slowly like a lot of teachers might do. However, it still is not enough, right? You can't only listen to stuff made for students because that means you'll never break past

being a student and through to being more native, right? You have to immerse yourself as much as possible in English made for native speakers, okay? Because remember, IELTS isn't just a test where you can memorize steps and strategies. It is an English exam. You do have to have a very high level of English to get a band seven or higher, right? Learning the testing strategies and just practicing the test is not enough, right?

Exactly. The best way to improve your overall fluency is really to immerse yourself in English. Read books and news and articles in English and then your favorite TV shows, you know, watch them in English. And it's going to really make a difference for how you're able to start thinking in English and how you're able to access that active vocabulary. A hundred percent. I'll make a little recommendation here of something I haven't seen yet, but I'm excited to see. Aubrey, do you remember the show The Good Place?

Yes, loved it. So funny. It's so funny. One of my favorite sitcoms of all time. And it's relatively new, right? A few years ago. Anyway, the creator Mike Schur, he also did Parks and Rec, which is another one of my favorite sitcoms. He has a new show on Netflix, and it's called Man on the Inside. And I cannot wait to dive into that sitcom. Oh, that's very exciting. I love both of those. I love that type of humor. So that's fun. I want to recommend

all of those shows to you guys. All right. What is step three to getting a nine on listening? All right. So step three is you need strategies for the IELTS listening exam. It's not enough to just improve your fluency, your listening. You have to be strategic about these questions. So for example, in the last episode, we shared some other episodes that will help you raise all of your scores. Scroll back, make sure you didn't miss that. But we have some

listening strategies that we've shared in lots of different episodes. Give us some examples of some of these strategies, Jess. Yeah. So being able to identify and listen for key words, right? This is

The number one thing that you have to be able to do on IELTS listening. So you have time before you listen to look at the questions. So you have to practice choosing the keywords in the questions and answers so you know what to listen for because the answer you need is always around the keywords from the question.

So you have to be able to identify the keywords that will be special, that will be unique, that you will be able to hear and understand when you listen so you know when the answer is coming. All right. So that's just one example. But again, guys, make sure to follow us wherever you're listening. Subscribe on YouTube if that's where you're watching and go ahead and look just right

Search for past listening strategy episodes, guys, because we've talked about keywords. We've talked about predicting. We've talked about distractors. And I'm sure we'll talk about these things again, right? But all of this stuff is there.

Yes, absolutely. And then you just have to practice, practice as much as possible so that all of these strategies are really second nature so that on test day, you don't even really need to think about it. You're so used to making predictions, looking for keywords, proofreading, checking for mistakes, all of the things you need to do in order to get as many answers correct as possible on the IELTS listening exam. Yes, totally. All right. So

Thank you, C, so much. And congratulations. We loved reading that letter. Guys, if you want to report on your success, tell us how we've helped you or ask us an IELTS question. We could feature you on the show right at support at allearsenglish.com. And we'll give you a shout out.

Awesome. Love it. Can't wait to see your emails. Congratulations again, Sian, on the amazing scores. And we're excited for all of you to use these tips and this vocabulary to get the score you need on test day. Yes, 100%. All right, Aubrey, I'll see you back here on Friday. See you Friday. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for listening to IELTS Energy. Hit subscribe now and don't forget to find your estimated band score at allearsenglish.com slash myscore.

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