In the IELTS listening test, you need a good vocabulary in order to succeed. However, it is tricky to develop this because there isn’t a set list of words you need to know. Instead, you need to be prepared for almost anything! So, considering that, how should you prepare to learn the right words and plan for your next IELTS test date?
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Why Vocabulary Matters in IELTS Listening
First of all, when preparing for IELTS listening, you should try to develop as wide of a vocabulary as possible. This means knowing lots of words and phrases. It is not good enough to just vaguely know the meaning of a word. You have to really understand it or else you may not be able to figure out the answer to a question. You also need to know how words relate to one another, so that you can unpick a clause or sentence.
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Common Topics and Predictable Patterns
Thankfully, we can focus on certain areas because IELTS listening has a degree of predictability. That means there are certain topics and features that regularly occur.
Think about the first section of the test. In this part, you regularly hear questions related to personal details and daily activities, so you need to have a good understanding of this sort of vocabulary. There are usually no tricky parts here but you should be ready to hear common words relating to names, locations, numbers, businesses, etc. I would strongly recommend looking at old tests to see the sorts of words that regularly appear in the questions and make sure you are totally comfortable with them.
Later, the test becomes harder because the topic could be almost anything. You might hear a lecture about butterflies, for example! However, don’t worry. You would never be expected to have expert knowledge in this scientific field. You would only be expected to have a wide enough vocabulary to understand the general meaning.
Developing a Broad Vocabulary
It can be useful to look back at old IELTS papers and see the structure of the test, then think about common topics and question types. This can help you to learn useful vocabulary. However, you must also expect the unexpected, which means you should constantly build a general vocabulary that will prepare you for every scenario.
To do this, the best approach is to read and listen in the English language to a wide variety of sources. Useful sources include:
- News websites
- Podcasts
- Current affairs magazines
- YouTube videos on culture and science
You can try to group your new vocabulary according to topics but for listening it really can be hard to predict.
Understanding Spatial Vocabulary
One common theme is that you might have to know spatial relationships. What does that mean? Well, sometimes in IELTS listening perhaps will describe a place. On the exam paper, you might be given a map and told to listen and complete the map. This requires you to have a good enough vocabulary to understand what has been said and how it relates to the map.
In such situations, you might encounter phrase like:
- Straight ahead
- Opposite
- In between
- Two doors down from
- Turn left and then proceed
- Cross the road and head north
There are obviously many possibilities here but this is the sort of language would absolutely would need to understand to have any chance of getting these questions right.
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Dealing with Difficult Words
You also need to be able to figure out difficult vocabulary. There are two things to know here:
- You don’t need to understand every word, and if you encounter a word that you don’t know and doesn’t appear to be necessary to understand the question, then you can just ignore it.
- Many words can be guessed from context and this is a skill that you can develop over time.
These are both very important things to know. It’s especially important that you don’t panic if you encounter an unfamiliar word because panicking can lower your chances of a good score. Instead, calmly guess at the meaning of the word and attempt to answer the question with a reasonable guess.
Let’s take the example of the word “radiologist.” If you heard this in the lecture part of the test, you might worry because it’s an unfamiliar term. However, you can do two things here:
- Pick the word apart to guess an approximate meaning. In this case, you can see the parts “radi-” and “-ologist.” The second part clearly relates to science. Think of other similar words like “biologist,” “cardiologist,” etc. You can tell that it refers to a person who does some kind of science, which can help you better understand that part of the listening passage.
- Listen for clues in the passage. Sometimes they will actually tell you what a word means if you listen closely. This is true for uncommon words. IELTS never uses specialist vocabulary that is hard to understand and if they use a rare word, it will probably be explained to some degree. Here, they might add “that’s a type of medical professional who deals with radiation. They do things like take X-rays.”
Smart Strategies for Success
Once you understand this, you are in a much better position and you have a good chance of finding the right answer. Even native speakers do this on a regular basis because of course we don’t know all the words in the English language. We guess the type of word, look for parts of a word that provide clues to its meaning, and then see if there’s some context that can help us infer the meaning.
Altogether, it’s really important to have a good vocabulary when you prepare to take the IELTS listening test. However, understand that you can’t realistically know all the words, so try to focus on one that will really help you find the answers. That means focusing on common topics and question types. You should also develop strategies for figuring out the meaning of words that you don’t already know.
