 Hi everyone, Chris here from aislesadvantages.com with another lesson and today what we're going to focus on is how to practice aisles listening. So what we're going to do is look at why doing lots of practice tests is a terrible idea. In fact this is the worst thing you could do. If you think that just doing lots and lots and lots of practice tests is going to help you get a higher score, you are wrong. But what then I'm going to show you is three better ways to practice that will actually improve your scores because at the end of the day what are we doing? We're helping you improve your scores. So we're only going to teach you the things that work and make you aware of the things that don't work. And these three ways are totally free and you can do them at home by yourself without a teacher. So they're absolutely brilliant. So number one, why doing lots of practice tests is a terrible idea. Well the first thing is they're boring. So our brains like to do things that they enjoy and if they're doing things that they find pleasurable then our brains are going to be able to absorb that information and learn from it. Also we're human beings. If we're doing something that is really really boring it is a very low likelihood that we are going to continue doing that thing and consistently doing it. And really the key for all aspects of IELTS is doing things consistently over a relatively long period of time. You cannot cram for the IELTS test the week before or a month before. What you need to be doing is doing a little bit of work every single day over a long period of time because listening is a skill and we want to improve that skill and that will help us improve our scores. Number two, no improvement. The analogy I always use for this is could you learn how to drive a car and pass your driving test by going on a racetrack and just going around and around and around and around and around in a car? No, you would pick up really bad habits and you wouldn't really learn what you're doing wrong and what you're doing right. Just practicing is not actually going to help you improve especially when it comes to the IELTS listening test. You might be doing test after test after test and spending a lot of time doing that but not seeing any improvement. So we obviously want to spend time on things that enable us to improve our scores and ignore things that don't actually lead to improvement and it's a really strange thing and it's a really attractive thing to think that you're working hard so you're doing all of these tests and you're telling yourself I'm doing all this hard work and doing something that is helping me when really in the back of your mind you know that it's not really helping. Number three is really really important. You're not getting any feedback. You're just doing practice tests. You're not actually learning from your mistakes and the only way to learn is for someone to help you with that and I'm going to show you a way that you can learn from your own mistakes without even the need of a teacher. It's great if you have a teacher with you but obviously you know due to money and due to the fact that you might live in a place that doesn't have great teachers you want to be able to give yourself feedback and learn from your own mistakes and all of this is going to lead to frustration. You wouldn't believe the number of emails that people send me saying you know I've done every single practice test in the world and I keep getting 6.5. We get those every single day and what happens when you are frustrated because it's boring, you're not improving, you're not seeing any progression, you're going to get frustrated, you're going to give up. If you give up you are guaranteeing a low score because you're just not going to do the test or you're going to go into the test not prepared and you're going to get nervous and stressed out because you know you're going to fail so we don't want to do this. We don't want to do practice test after practice test. Let's look at three ways that actually do help you improve your listening skills and help you improve your IELTS test performance and help you improve your scores. So there are three better ways. Number one, listen for pleasure. Number two, listen actively. And number three, listen reflectively. So let's go into detail on each of these and find out how you can practically do these at home by yourself for free without a teacher. So number one, listen for pleasure. As we've already talked about you need to do something that you enjoy so that you will do it consistently. Listening is a skill the more you do it the better you're going to become at it. So if you are listening to things that you enjoy then you're going to do this consistently. It seems pretty obvious but not many students think of it that way. I think maybe because it's studying and a lot of people think that studying should be boring and studying should be laborious. It doesn't have to be. And the great thing about all of these so podcasts, TV, movies, radio, TED Talks, YouTube, real people apart from real people all of these are in the palm of your hand. They're on your phone. You can listen to podcasts on anything in the world or YouTube or TED Talks or radio or movies or TV even on your phone. There is an unlimited supply of listening material out there for you. And the great thing about all this choice and the fact that we can get everything at the touch of a button is that whatever you are interested in there's a podcast on it. Whatever you are interested in there's a YouTube channel or multiple hundreds of YouTube channels on that. There's probably a radio show about it. There's probably TED Talks on it. So I've dealt with students who were really into cricket. Listen to cricket matches and commentators discussing the match. I've had students who were really into cookery programs. Listen to a cookery podcast. I've had students who really loved sci-fi movies. Listen to the sci-fi movie or listen to a sci-fi podcast or listen to a sci-fi YouTube channel where they discuss the movies. It doesn't matter what you're into. There's something there for you. And also the great thing about having everything on your phone is you can do it at any time. So that 10 minutes before you know you get out of bed or those 30 minutes on the bus on the way to work or the 20 minutes you have during your lunch break or you're not doing anything, there are unlimited number of options and there are a huge number of opportunities for you to practice that. None of these are IELTS related but remember they're not testing your ability to answer IELTS questions. They're testing your ability. Does this person have a requisite skill level to get a band 7 or a band 8 or a band 9? In other words, when you go to live in England or live in America or Canada, will you be able to understand what is going on? Will you be able to understand what people are saying? And also real people, if you are around native English speakers, listen to them if you want to improve your listening. Number two, listen actively. Okay so listen there's a difference between listening passively. So listening passively is you know just sitting on the bus looking at the window listening to a podcast and not really thinking about it. Now that's better than nothing but it is better to actively focus on one maximum two things while you're listening to that podcast or that TV show or that movie or that YouTube video. Focus on one thing at a time, for example vocabulary, accent, intonation, multiple speakers and normally focus on the thing that you really need help with. So let's say that you find out that you really need help with your vocabulary. Then when you're listening to a podcast and you hear a new word, note that new word down. Guess what that word means from the context. Note down all the information you need to remember that word such as meaning synonyms, antonyms, collocations, sentences, pronunciation, all of these things and then in a few weeks, a few months you will have a vocabulary book just full of new words that you have learned. You should be doing that with reading as well or let's say you have a problem with the Scottish accent or the Irish accent or the Australian accent. Listen to a podcast where there are those accents and listen for words that you don't really understand. Listen again, listen again until you figure out what that word is or intonation. What you can do is let's say you're watching a movie and look at the movie script or look at the subtitles and guess what the intonation is going to be like and then compare it with how the actor says it and then mimic what they say or listening to multiple speakers and how they take turns and interrupt each other and how they give signposting language on what they're doing. There are multiple things that you can focus on and you should just focus on on your weaknesses really. So you can see the difference between that and just sitting on the bus looking at the window listening to whatever actively do something and that again is going to give you a lot more bang for your buck in terms of you know if you spend 20 minutes actively listening to a podcast focusing on vocabulary you might get 10 or 20 words out of that and that's going to help you in not only your listening test but your speaking test your reading test your writing test or just look at the window for 20 minutes and think that you're improving when really you're not and so active listening is really really important. This is probably the most important one in terms of improving your IELTS scores is listen reflectively. So this is when you do practice tests so you get a practice test make sure it's a real genuine practice test do not use these fake tests that you'll find online they're only there so that they can they can get clicks on their website 90 percent over 90 percent of practice tests you'll find online are fake tests they're not made by Cambridge the only tests you should use are the Cambridge tests and because they're created by the people who create the test and they know what they're doing so what you do is you do the test under exam conditions and then honestly honestly evaluate your mistakes where did you go wrong and think about why did you get each question wrong so was it spelling was it timing was it meaning was it vocabulary was it strategy was it spelling what was it and right down beside each one the the key reason why you got that question wrong and don't just look at it and be like I don't know why I got it wrong actually think about it if you think about it you will figure out why you got that question wrong was it because you're unfamiliar with the question types or maybe you're getting a certain question type wrong every single time and what you'll see if you do let's say three or four practice tests you'll start to see patterns emerging normally students are getting a lower score not because they're bad at everything but because there's one or two things that they need to work on so I was working with a student recently who was great their listening was amazing but they kept getting 6.5 and the only reason for that was their spelling because if you spell the quit you know if you spell the answer wrong it's wrong it doesn't and they kept saying oh but it's nearly right I'm like no they're not going to see it that way so they worked on their spelling and they improved and they got the score they needed I've worked with multiple students who had difficulties with particular types of questions for example on the reading test and a lot of students have problems with true false not given and matching headings questions so if you see a pattern emerging there focus on that question learn how to do that question and get a strategy for that question and then you're going to improve the key here is you need to take action so once you see this pattern emerging let's say you notice that vocabulary is your problem and you keep messing up because you just don't understand what the words mean and you don't understand the synonyms of the words that you're looking for if you just say okay better luck next time then you've just wasted your time and you're going to fail next time but if you take action on that and improve that then you are really really going to see results so don't do lots of practice listen to something you enjoy focus on particular things when you're listening and reflect on your mistakes notice patterns and take action on that and that goes around in that feedback loop so let's say for example you again focused on this and realized that vocabulary was a problem actively listen and focus on vocabulary and get yourself a podcast or a youtube channel on something you enjoy and try and improve your vocabulary through listening to something you enjoy and therefore you're really going to enjoy what you're doing you're going to improve and then get the score you need sound simple but it actually does really really work thank you very much guys hope that you enjoyed that video