Hello. I'm Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English,
IELTS preparation. The focus of today's lesson is the IELTS Listening
Test. In the IELTS Listening Test, you will be tested
on your ability to understand spoken English in a variety of contexts, so it's important
to develop a range of skills that will help you with your listening. A good way to prepare for the test is to develop
your previewing and predicting skills. These strategies will help improve your listening
comprehension. Let's imagine this graphic is a written part
of a listening test – a fact sheet. You are always given 30 seconds to familiarise
yourself with the questions before the listening section is played. This is when you'll need to use your previewing
and predicting skills. They will help you learn as much as possible before you listen,
so you will know what you will be listening to and what you need to listen for. Let's start previewing and predicting. Look
at the section again. Think about the following questions: What is the topic? Who is speaking? Where are they? Why are they talking? OK.
Let's think about the first question you
should ask: What is the topic? We know from the title of the fact sheet that
this section will be about 'health and well-being. Next: Who is speaking? Because this is a section3 of an IELTS Listening
Test, we know that it will be a conversation between 2 to 4 speakers about an educational
topic. The speakers could be teachers or students. Where are they? We could guess they are at university.
Why are they talking? We know from the fact sheet that they are
discussing a health study. These previewing and predicting skills are
very important. You should go through these steps before the actual listening test begins,
so you are properly prepared. It's important to look at the key words in
the questions to determine what kind of information you need to listen for. The key words are highlighted: How many children are being tracked? We need to listen for a number. What are the researchers checking? We need to listen for something about the
children's health. How old are the participants? We're listening for age.
Another skill the listening test assesses
is your ability to follow instructions correctly. If we look again at the written part of the
test, what does the question ask us to do? To answer using no more than 3 words or a
number. You must read and follow this instruction exactly. Remember that the listening test is played
once only, so it is important to prepare yourself well. Let's listen now. The announcer would start
off by saying something like: You are going to hear a passage about a study
on the health and well-being of children.
Listen to the talk, and complete the notes. For the past two decades, scientists have
been tracking the health and well being of 7,500 Queensland children in a unique long-term
study. It's rather like a scientific version of the documentary series '7 Up'. Every few
years, researchers revisit the participants to check their growth and record their thoughts
on life. Now, those chosen to take part in the study as babies are coming of age, turning
21 and the data they've provided is giving valuable insights into just why some children
are healthier than others. Well done! Now let's move on. Now we're going to talk about listening for
main ideas and supporting information. This is important to test your ability to
identify and understand the relationship between ideas, such as: comparisons, examples, facts,
opinions, cause and effect. Here's an example. I'm going to give some
information about sport. Identify what my main idea is, and what information I provided
to support my main idea. Sport provides numerous benefits. Participation
in sport can have a positive effect on a person's well being, and at the same time improve their
coordination.
Also, it has been proven to help fight disease. One way your comprehension might be tested
is with a summary completion test. Let's imagine this next graphic is part of
a listening test where you have to complete the summary. Here's our three-step strategy: Skim the summary to get a general understanding While skimming highlight the key words in
the sentences Then, think about the word form that is needed
for each answer. Having skimmed the question, we know that
it is about a scientific study on the health of young people. The key words are: young people, alcohol,
drugs, data, things, happened, how.
What is the word form we need in Question
1? The study focused on young people who have
a _____ on alcohol. Before the blank we have a determiner, a,
while the preposition on follows the blank. We need a noun. What word form do we need in Question 2? After the pronoun she/he, which also functions
as a subject, we need a verb. Look at the other verbs – The verbs pointed
and happened in the sentence are in the past tense. We need a past tense verb. We have now prepared ourselves for this section
of the listening test. Let's listen now. The announcer would start
off by saying something like: You are going to hear a Professor talking
about his investigation into the mental and physical health of young people. Listen to
the talk, and complete the summary. For me, it's compelling. It's totally compelling.
You look at someone at 21 who, say, has a dependence on alcohol or is using illicit
drugs or has a serious mental illness or is violent and perhaps already in prison, and
you look back through 21 years of that person's life; you've collected data periodically,
and you look at the range of things that have happened to that person and the ways that
person's responded.
Well done! If you practise your listening
skills and strategies you will be better prepared for the IELTS Listening Test! Always remember our three-step strategy for
summary completion tasks. Skim the summary to get a general understanding.
Remember a summary is a short presentation of what you hear. While skimming, highlight the keywords in
the sentences. Choose the correct word from noun, adjective,
verb, adverb that's needed. Remember look before and after the blank space.
The strategies for answering questions that test this skill are covered on our Study English
website. Just go to abcasiapacific.com/studyenglish. That's all for today. I'll see you next time.
Bye bye..
