 Hi everyone, Chris here from IELTS Advantage with day two of our IELTS Listing mini course. So on Monday we looked at why many of you struggle, specifically why many of you struggle to get a band eight or above in the listing test and we gave you some really good exercises that you could complete at home. So check that out, that'll be on our Facebook page or our YouTube channel. Today we're going to look at how to keep track during the test. So one of the big problems that many of you have emailed me about and I'm working with my students, one of the big worries is what happens if I get lost in the test. So normally what happens is you can't focus on one question or you can't think of the correct answer and then the questions keep coming and you just lose track. So we're going to give you three ways that you can make sure that you can keep track and we're going to look at real questions and show you how I would keep track during the test. And not tomorrow Friday, we're going to look at a step-by-step strategy. In the comments tell me which question you would like me to focus on on Friday. So there's lots of different types of question when it comes to the IELTS Listing Test. Let me know which one you struggle with the most on Friday. I'll give you a complete rundown, a complete step-by-step strategy. But let's focus on day two now. Okay, so keeping track, there's three things that we're going to look at. One is before the test, during your preparation. One is before you listen, so you're going to have a little bit of time before the recording starts and that's really, really important that will help you keep track. Number three, while you listen. The things that you should be thinking about and that's going to really help you keep track. And we're also going to look at, at the end, why many people struggle with the last few questions. A common question that we get asked is, I just have no idea how to answer the last few questions correctly and we're going to look at why that is and help you out with that. Okay, so before the test, so there's no point in giving you some tricks or strategies to help you keep track if the things that you need to do before the test aren't there. One of the main reasons why you are struggling to keep track is because you're not doing these things before the test. So you might be like, oh, just give me some little tricks or some little strategies that are going to help me, but they're useful and we're going to show you some of them. But unless you do these things before the test, you are always going to lose track and you're never going to be able to perform to the level that you really want. So let's look at a few things that you must do before the test. Number one, improve your listening skills. Many of you say that I'm lost or I can't keep track, but what you're really saying is your listening skills aren't up to the level that they need to be. If your listening skills are below the level that you need to be at, then you're going to constantly get lost and look at lesson one on how to improve those listening skills and why it's really, really important that you understand the different types of listening skills that are being tested because they're very, very different from the ones that you maybe are used to or the ones that you have been practicing. So check out lesson one for improving that area. Second thing is focus. So think about your, if your brain was a muscle, so, you know, if you go to the gym and you're lifting weights and you're not used to lifting weights, then you're, you're going to struggle. It's the same with focusing on listening. You know, focusing on listening in your own language is quite difficult for a long period of time. Focusing in a completely different language to your mother tongue is very, very difficult and just like going to the gym or running or lifting weights or whatever you want to be, whatever way you want to think about it, you need to practice listening and focusing on that for a long period of time. And you will slowly build up as many of you talk about losing focus in the middle of the test or towards the end of the test. That might have nothing to do with your grammar, your vocabulary, your listening skills. It might be just you're not used to completely focusing on English for that length of time and you just build that up slowly, slowly, slowly, and lesson one will help you out with that too. Third thing, we also covered this in lesson one, which is multitasking. Many of you are used to maybe listening to English, but not listening and reading and writing and thinking all at the same time. So this is quite difficult, but like any skill, if you practice this skill, it becomes much, much, much easier. So as you can see, these are things that you need to be thinking about months and weeks before your test. Listening skills, working on focus, working on multitasking, a tip or a trick is not going to help with these. You're not going to be able to, you know, read top 10 tips on how to improve focus or top 10 tips on how to do this. This is not really going to help you. It's about putting in the work. Many of you don't want to hear that, but, you know, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that there's an easy way around that. You need to start doing this months before your test. Range of accents. So some of you might be very familiar with one or two accents, but a strange, a strange accent comes up. So you will get a range of different accents from the English-speaking world. So that could be Canada, America, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand. So you might be used to say the New Zealand accent and then a Scottish accent comes up or an Irish accent or a Canadian accent and you're just unfamiliar with that. What is the solution to that? Listen to a range of different accents. You're going to need to practice listening. So listen to a range of accents. So that could mean, you know, it's as easy as Googling Australian news or New Zealand news or podcast or whatever. And just, you don't need to become like expertly tuned in to that accent. Just familiarize yourself with it so that it's not a shock on test day. Next vocabulary. Many of you talk about being lost in the test, but what you're really saying is, I don't understand that word. So if you don't understand a word, you're going to be like, Oh, what does that mean? And then you'll lose concentration or you might not be able to find the correct answer. So improving your vocabulary is absolutely essential. Improving your vocabulary is going to improve your reading scores, your speaking scores and your writing scores. So always be improving your vocabulary. And finally, strategies. If you have a step-by-step strategy for all of the different types of questions, you're going to be familiar with all of the different types of questions and you're going to know exactly what to do. And most importantly, if you use these to practice and you implement these, then you're taking some of the thinking out of it. So you're going to be doing lots of multitasking. You don't want to be thinking, you know, where do I do? What do I, what, what do I do here? But if you have a strategy, then that's one less thing to think about. You're doing exactly what a proven strategy will help you with. And we'll look at that in lesson three, which is on Friday. So check that out if you want a little bit more information about that. So preparing to listen. So we've talked about what you need to be doing in the months and the weeks running up to the test. And if you do those things, it's really, really going to help you. But when you are preparing to listen, so you're in the test, the test has begun and before the listening starts, you will have time to look at the question and think about the question. And this is absolutely essential. The students who use this time wisely will always get higher scores than the students who don't use this time wisely. It's just a fact. Lots of students are like, just, you know, look out the window or look around at the other students, but the students who have their head down and are actively doing things during this time. And the key there is actively, you need to be doing certain things will have a higher score than the ones just looking at the window at the birds. So there are a few things that you need to be thinking about. One is familiarize yourself with the question because if you do, if you're familiar with it, you just want to have an easier time. Number two, keywords depending on that on the question, you might be highlighting or underlining or circling different types of keywords. That doesn't mean just circling everything you see, but strategically thinking about what the how you are going to find the correct answer. Number three, synonyms, because as you know, just because it says computers doesn't mean that you'll hear computers. It might be laptops or desktops or iPads or something like that. And number four, try and predict what the correct answers are that's really going to help you during the listening test. So let's have a look at this. I know it's not the quality. You might not be able to see it, but I'll try my best to explain. So this is a diagram or a map of a library. And what's going to happen is the recording is going to take you through this map and you're going to have to label different things. All right. So the very first thing you need to do is familiarize yourself with the question. Okay. This is a maps question. All right. So there's one, two, three, four, five answers that I need to answer and then familiarize yourself with the actual map. So I'm going to be starting here and they might say, you know, to my left, that's going to be this room to my right or next to the librarians desk. Straight on to my left is fiction to my right is nonfiction here next to the seminar room beyond nonfiction or beside nonfiction is this room. This is probably going to be the name of a room. This also is probably going to be the name of a room fiction nonfiction. So this is the main part of the library. This is probably going to be another area of the library. So it could be a different type of book. So you are really, really understanding what's going on and the people that do that are going to score much higher than the people that don't. Then let's think about keywords here. So librarians desk. So they might talk a little bit about that. So that's very, very important. Nonfiction and fiction. So beside nonfiction is a seminar room. Beside nonfiction is this room. The library area. So thinking about the exact things that they're going to talk about. And then we have this list of words. So synonyms, art collection. So that could be paintings or drawings. Children's books. That could be books for kids or books for young people, computers, desktops, laptops, iPads, whatever, local history collection, history of the local area or history of our town or our town in the past. Because you need to be thinking about all of these because the the the correct answer might be a synonym. So if you familiarize yourself with these before the recording starts, you're at a huge advantage. And number four, predict what is going to happen. So looking at this fiction, nonfiction, this one is probably another type of book. So probably is children's books or reference books. This could be a room. So our collection, computers, meeting room, tourist information. So you're listening out for these things and you're predicting what is going to happen. And that is really going to help you stay focused on what you need to do and you're not going to get lost. Because it's much easier, like say, you're predicting that this is children's books and they say, walk straight on. Here you'll find fiction and nonfiction. And you'll also find kids books. You know exactly what's happening, which is much, much easier to do versus not doing it. I'm sure you'll agree. Now, you're not going to have a lot of time, but you will have enough time and it's about using that time wisely. And when you're practicing, take it very, very slow at the beginning. You don't need to do everything at exam speed in the beginning. When you're first learning how to do this, take it slow and think about what you're doing. And that will really, really help you master this skill of preparing before you listen during listening. So this is more tactical about thinking about the actual problem. So let's say you have five questions. One, two, three, four, five. So what happens is you might get stuck on this question. So this question, no problem, you get a straightaway. This question, let's say it's a multiple choice and you're unsure if it's A, B or C. Let's say they have three very, very similar meanings. The meanings all kind of sound the same to you. You didn't really catch that person said or it was a strange accent or something was not right where you couldn't really understand what's happening. So if you focus too much on this one, then this question is going to come. Then this one, then this one. The recording is not going to stop. The recording will not stop because you can't find the answer. And remember, you'll only be able to hear it once. So if you focus too much on this one, probably going to get that one wrong, you're probably going to get that one wrong. You're probably going to get that one wrong. And these three might be quite easy for you. But because you focus too much on this one, you've kind of destroyed your chances with these. And these could be very, very easy marks. So you need to be a little bit tactical when it comes to a question that you find difficult. So a question that you would normally get lost in and you would lose track. You could just mark the answer that you think is most likely or you could put like an X beside it, marking the fact that you need to come back to that later and you weren't 100 percent sure about it. Or you could just guess the answer and move on. That is much, much better to do one of those tactical things. So mark the one that you think is probably the correct answer. And then you can confirm it later. Just guess the answer. You're not going to guess every answer. We're talking about being tactical with ones that you're lost. You find really, really difficult. Or you could just mark it that you need to come back and think about it later or make some notes quickly and then move on. And then that will mean that you have maybe a 50-50 chance of only getting this one correct. But you increase your chances of getting these three. Whereas if you focus too much on this one, you have a 30 percent chance maybe of getting it right, one out of three, but then a zero percent chance for all of these because you have no idea what's going on. So it's about being a little bit tactical and strategic. And at the end of the day, most of you do not need to get every single question correct. So when I give this advice to students, they don't like it. They say, no, no, I want to get this one correct. It's like, you don't need to get 100 percent. Do you need a bad nine? No. So why are you trying to get a bad nine? Obviously, you want to get as many of them done as possible as many of them correct as possible. But let's think about how the actual listening test is set up. There are four parts, part one, part two, part three, part four, 10 questions in each part. And they start off being quite easy. And then they get more difficult and more difficult and more difficult until we get to here where you get the most difficult questions. Well, why is that? Well, here we have band zero. So if you get none of them correct, you get a zero. But if you get all of them correct, you get a band nine. So these last questions are to separate out the band nines from the 8.5s. These questions are to separate out the 8.5s from the 8s. These questions are to separate out the 8s from the 7.5s. So many of you are worrying about the last questions when you're never probably going to get them correct. So my advice if you need a band eight would be focus on getting as many of these as possible, try and get 100% in all of these areas, which you're more than capable of doing if you're aiming for a band eight. And then these ones, try and get as many of them as you can, but if you're not at a band nine level, which most of you never will be, and there's nothing wrong with that, most students will be very, very happy with an eight. Get as many of these as you can, but don't worry if you always get the last couple wrong because that's the way they're set up. So check out day one to work on the skills. Hopefully you enjoyed that one. And check out day three on Friday where we'll look step by step at a strategy. Let me know in the comments which question you would like me to do. And I'll do that. If you would like to look at our listening fundamentals course, which covers absolutely everything and it's free and it also includes speaking, reading and writing, click the link either above or below this video and you can get that absolutely for free. Or if you need my help in any other way, feel free to email me chris at isletadvantage.com. Either myself or one of my team will get back to you. We always reply to our emails. And if you need something else related to IELTS, you'll find everything you need on our website, IELTSAdvantage.com. Just Google IELTSAdvantage. We'll take you here. We cover absolutely everything. You can check out our success stories. You can check out our courses and all the free information there that you need. Thanks very much guys. Hope that you find that useful. Let me know what you think about it in the comments or if you have any questions about that. And thank you, bye bye.