How to improve your Listening skills for IELTS Exam ?

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In this section we are required to first listen a conversation and then answer.
Though thats the basic idea, but…..

In reality, it is, how well you understand a conversation.

Example ( Extreme Condition ) :
I played a Rap song on youtube which was in English. ( I donot understand Rap ).
Result : Though I listened but had no idea what they were trying to convey.

Therefore, if you want to gain a good understanding of English language then you must watch English Sitcoms i.e. Situational Comedy, a Comedy Play or drama based on different situations .

You may ask Why ? . The reason is;

Usually, Listening Module of IELTS is divided in three or four different conversations.
These conversations may be a dialogue between two or more persons having different pronunciations or just a single person delivering a speech. Example : The situations maybe between a Japanese guy arriving at a hotel in France and having a conversation with the reservation officer in English Language. Both of them may have different accents, which may trouble you.

Solution to this is that you start watching English Sitcoms, because they always have different situations with different characters plus they also try to involve an element of satire comedy by introducing characters having British or Indian accent.
Chinese, Japanese, Russian and even characters having Australian accent, were also introduced in the past.

Few of my favourite sitcoms are :
Friends ( a famous American Sitcom )
The Simpsons

Other than these I also use to watch :

Whose line is it anyway
The Kumars at No.42
and many more……….

These Television shows improved my ability to understand a situation more quickly, moreover, I gained a lot of vocabulary, slangs and understanding of various accents.
I will call this technique, Passive Learning .
Watching TV is always a nice time pass so why not utilize it and improve  your skills by passive learning.

Give it a try and then test yourself, you’ll certainly find some improvement.

One more benefit you’ll gain is that you will save a lot of time which you might spend in search of free ielts tests.

How to practice this learning technique ?
Let us suppose you have 04 listening tests with you, instead of practicing the test try watching English Dramas or Sitcoms for the whole week and then at weekend attempt a listening test, repeat the cycle until you are through with all the tests, it will take you about a month to complete. You will certainly find your bands improved in both listening and speaking modules.

How will this help in improving my Speaking Skills ?

It is said that, what you listen is what you speak, so it will also improve your speaking skills.

Hope this kind of passive learning works for you also.