IELTS is a skill. Like any other skill, you can prepare for IELTS in a smart way. It can be deconstructed and learnt very quickly if you only focus on the critical elements.

In this post, I am going to share with you tips and strategies that will help you get 8+ Band in IELTS Listening.

In the Listening Test, these tips help you to score 8+ Band in your test while constantly yawning during the test. Well, at least that’s exactly what happened with me!

I got 8.5/9 band in IELTS Listening Test, and I lost half a band because I became so over-confident during the test that when the passage on tennis history was being played on the audio, I was thinking about the upcoming Federer Vs Nadal match (Oh! my stupid monkey-mind).

By the way, this post is from the full online video course, Ultimate Guide To Hacking IELTS, in which I share in-depth tips and strategies to prepare for IELTS. It is exclusively for Ultimate Academy subscribers.

You can access the course here:

Let’s now dive in:

Hacking IELTS Listening: Tips To Prepare For IELTS The Smart Way

Hack # 1: Never Make Notes

A common approach many people take is that they start taking notes as the audio is being played. They do it out of fear because they think they won’t be able to remember what is being said.

You might be thinking that Listening Test is the test of your memory. How well you can remember the information. That is totally not true! Instead, the Listening Test is your ability to listen for only the thing you want to listen.

For example, if I ask you a question: “How much did Virat Kohli score in the last match?”

Then I turn the volume on and you hear commenter speaking, “India has won the match with a splendid 3rd wicket partnership between Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. Together they put on 159 runs in just under 20 overs. Kohli was unbeaten at 89, while Sharma contributed 70 runs to the partnership before being caught at the boundary”.

If you were making notes of this entire commentary, you would jot down a lot of entirely useless technical information. And because you were busy writing, you might even end up confusing the scores of both the batsmen.

Instead, if you had just read the question and known exactly what you were listening for, you would have patiently listened until the commenter announced Kohli’s score. You would have listened and answered, “89”.

You will train yourself to only listen for the answer.

Remember in a pressure situation, your memory will be very less. By the time the audio has reached the third sentence, you will have forgotten what the first sentence was about.

Hack # 2: Tone Gives It Away

This might take some practice for you (I’ve given examples in the video course). The tone of the speakers helps you figure out the answer.

Answers are spoken loud and clear so everyone can understand them.

If the speaker in the audio speaks something very fast or swallows his words, that you find difficult to understand or keep up, the answer is never there.

For example:

If you have a question: ___________ will form the jury for the competition.

You will hear in the recording, “the writing competition will be judged by the famous authors from the literary club”.

The words famous authors will be emphasised in a way that they stand out in the entire sentence for your mind to process.

Hack # 3: Write-And-Scrap Strategy

Number one trick IELTS uses to confuse listeners is giving wrong information… and then correcting it.

For example, if you ask me about my mobile number, I will say “0123 456789“.

But in the IELTS recording, very often the speaker will say, “0123 768954. Oh sorry, I’ve changed my number recently. It’s actually 0123 456789”.

The speaker will intentionally give you wrong information, and then the correct one.

How do you answer such questions? The strategy you are going to use is called Write-And-Scrap Strategy.

At no point, you should be waiting for the correct answer and only write when you have that. That’s because you would not know if the first answer being given is correct or incorrect.

The moment you hear the first answer, you will write it at the same time. But as the narration goes on, and the speaker changes the answer, you will write the new answer and then scrap the previous one.

If you wait for the correct answer without writing the first one, you will have forgotten the first sentence by the time recording reaches the second or third sentence.

With these 3 hacks mastered, you will be able to increase your Listening Test score by 1 Band at least.

We will go into detail of actual strategy to solve questions, more hacks, tips, exercises, and live-demos when we prepare for IELTS in the video course to make sure you get 8+ in your Listening Test.

In the complete online video course, with 66 video lectures and assignments, I share with my students hacks, tips, strategy roadmaps, examples, and live-demos of implementing techniques to score 8+ Band in IELTS.