Do you often make simple spelling mistakes in the IELTS listening exam? Or, do you find listening to names of people and places difficult? Learn an effective study habit that will greatly improve your IELTS listening score and your ability to listen to the spelling of easy or difficult words.
The IELTS listening exam can be very difficult and it is supposed to be. As you try to improve your IELTS listening score, you need to accept that you are not expected to score 40 out of 40 on exam. The questions are supposed to be challenging.
Having said that, there are also quite a few questions in the exam that should be easy for students with a level of between 5.5 and .65. It is these slightly easy questions that you should get correct but I see so many IELTS candidates do badly. And it is not because of their listening skills.
As an IELTS teacher it is frustrating to teach students how to listen well and the answer correct only to see the correct answer spelt incorrectly. I have seen poor spelling account for up to 6 incorrect answers in a practice listening exam. That is enough to take a score of 23/40 to 17/40 or a band score of 6.0 becomes a 5.0 just because of poor spelling, not lack of listening skills.
These mistakes and many more like them can be avoided if students spend a little time each week working on their spelling. There is one activity that can really help you improve your spelling in the IELTS listening exam. Spelling tests.
Here are a few video spelling tests I have made on The IELTS Coach YouTube Channel:
IELTS Spelling Test – Male Names
IELTS Spelling Test – Female Names
IELTS Spelling Test – Family Names
IELTS Spelling Test – Town Names
If you want to get regular updates for more IELTS spelling tests and video lessons then Subscribe to The IELTS Coach YouTube Channel here.
On one of my old websites I created some video spelling tests for my YouTube channel. Those videos are still online and available for free. The type of spelling tests that I created are very suitable for IELTS candidates.
English Spelling Test – Street Names
English Spelling Test – Common Place Names
English Spelling Test – Jobs
English Spelling Test – Names Of Famous People
These are just 4 of the more than 50 videos that I uploaded to that particular YouTube channel. There is even a video that helps with listening to numbers, dates and times. Here is the link to all of the videos on that channel: The Online English Club YouTube Channel
Of course, everyone makes spelling mistakes, even me. If you read through all of the articles on this site you may spot a mistake, or two, or ten! The aim here is not t be a perfect speller, the aim is to avoid silly mistakes for words that you actually know how to spell correctly.
I believe that most spelling mistakes in the IELTS exam are due to students not checking their work before they transfer to the answer sheet. So, when you do any spelling test, at the end read through the answers and double check that they are correct.
You could try this with some of the video spelling tests that I mentioned above. Listen to the words, write them as you listen and at the end of the video take 30 seconds to quickly check for any errors.
I believe that if you spend 10 minutes a day doing spelling tests that you will see improvement in your spelling when you do listening tasks.
As an added bonus. If you improve your spelling skills then you are less likely to make mistakes in the IELTS writing and reading exams as well. Isn’t it worth spending a little time to improve your scores in a range of different IELTS exams?
Thank you for reading this article and visiting my website. If you have questions about how to improve your IELTS listening score with spelling tests, please leave a comment below.
