What the exam asks
IELTS Listening is the same for Academic and General Training: four parts, 40 questions, about 30 minutes of recordings, each played once. On the computer-delivered test you type your answers while you listen, and you get 2 minutes at the end to check them. The old paper test gave 10 minutes to transfer answers instead.
| Part | Situation | Speakers | What makes it hard |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Everyday transaction (booking, enquiry, registration) | 2 | Spelled names, numbers, self-corrections |
| 2 | Everyday monologue (tour, talk, radio notice) | 1 | Long turns; options mentioned and then rejected |
| 3 | Education or training discussion | 2–4 | Opinions change; tracking who thinks what |
| 4 | Academic lecture | 1 | No pause in the middle; dense academic vocabulary |
Before each part, and halfway through Parts 1–3, you get time to read the questions. Part 4 plays straight through, so you preview all ten questions at the start. Answers come in the same order as the questions. You will hear a range of accents, including British, Australian, New Zealand and North American.
The question paper paraphrases what is said, and most answers are preceded by a distractor: a word or number that fits the gap but is then corrected, rejected or overturned.
Core ideas
1. Prediction: use the preview time
For every gap or question, decide two things before the audio starts:
- Form: what kind of word or number fits the grammar?
- Meaning: what is it likely to be, given the heading and context?
| Clue on the page | Predict |
|---|---|
| a / an ______ | singular noun ( → vowel sound) |