IELTS Listening passage 1

Welcome back after the festive season, wishing you all a very healthy and prosperous 2013.

Before I start with the details, a word of warning: The recordings are only played ONCE.

What is in Listening section 1?

It is normally a conversation between two people on a subject of general interest such as renting a car, joining a fitness centre or a course.  There could be up to 3 question types e.g. table completion, multiple choice, note completion etc.  There is an example given first and then the questions start.

What does the Listening section test?

This section tests your ability to understand specific information e.g. dates, addresses, phone numbers, objects and so on.

1. The recording is only played ONCE.  Sometimes the answers can be given twice.
2. Read ahead: At the beginning of each section, you are given some time to read the questions, use this time to read ahead and familiarize yourself with the question types and the topic.
3. Read the questions carefully and underline any key words.
4. Take some quick notes if you miss an answer and when the listening section finishes make the best educated guess you can, the following questions in the listening passage may also help you. 
   
5. Ignore missed questions: If you miss a question, don’t sit there thinking about it – move on to the next question.  Make a note, and then move on to the other questions.
6. Numbers: Some numbers are easy to mix up, for example:  

The part of the word in bold is stressed:

13 – thirteen	30 – thirty
14 – fourteen	40 – forty
15 – fifteen	50 – fifty
16 -  sixteen	60 – sixty
17 – seventeen	70 – seventy
18 – eighteen	80 – eighty
19 – nineteen	90 – ninety

Make sure you are familiar with how these numbers are pronounced.   

Although numbers 1-10 everyone knows, but believe it or not they can cause problems, like: 6, 8; 3, 4; 8,9.  Also make sure you are totally familiar with longer numbers in hundreds (00s) and thousands (000s).  It may sound easy but in reality students generally write a different number to what they hear.

7. Alphabet: in passage one, you will be given a name, street, address to spell so practice the alphabet paying particular attention to the ones which tend to cause confusion: C, S / G, J / V, W / Y, U / A, E, I.