1. What Does the ielts listening Test Consist of?

1. What Does the IELTS Listening Test Consist of?

Overview
The IELTS Listening test is the same for both General Training and Academic IELTS and is designed to assess a wide range of listening skills that are needed to live, work, or study in an English-speaking environment. This means that students need to be able to understand different types of spoken English in a range of formal and informal contexts.

Format
The Listening test is in four sections each containing 10 questions, giving a total of 40 questions. Students will only listen ONE time to each of the listening texts. The texts may contain a range of accents e.g. UK, North American, Australian, and New Zealand. 
Timing
The students must listen to instructions, read the questions, listen to the texts and answer 40 questions all in 30 minutes. Students will get an extra 10 minutes at the end to transfer their answers onto the answer sheet. 
Marks
Each correct answer receives one mark. Scores out of 40 are converted to the IELTS 9-band scale. Scores are reported in whole and half bands.
Preparation
Any teacher preparing students for any test or exam must familiarise themselves with the exam. This means teachers must read as much as they can about the test: find out what types of questions will be set, text types, text lengths, text genres, time constraints, etc. A good start would be to actually sit down and do a past paper, limiting yourself to the actual timings of a real test. 
There are many websites dedicated to IELTS which also have past papers as practice tests. Some useful ones for you and your students are:
Free Practice Tests
Listening Samples
2. What’s in the IELTS Listening Test?

As we discovered in the last chapter, IELTS tests a range of listening skills including how well a student can:

• 
  understand main ideas and specific factual information.
  
• 
  recognize the opinions, attitudes, and purpose of a speaker.
  
• 
  follow the development of an argument.
  

Format
The Listening test has four parts, with ten questions in each part. The test questions are in the same order as the information in the recording, therefore the answer to the first question will be before the answer to the second question, and so on. The questions become progressively harder, so for example, most students will find Part 4 more difficult than Part 1.