Listening in Tests

English tests

Look at the following list of international English tests. Which ones have you heard of? Have you ever taken one? Do you have plans to take any in the near future?

IELTS

PTE

Cambridge Preliminary (PET)

Cambridge First (FCE)

Cambridge Advanced (CAE)

Cambridge Proficiency (CPE)

TOEFL

OET

TOEIC

APTIS

Which exam should I take?

Well, for most people, no exam is probably the right answer. I'd only recommend taking an exam if you need it for a specific purpose, e.g. for migration / education purposes.

IELTS, run by Cambridge, is the most popular exam with about 3 million test-takers every year. Most universities and countries that require proof of your English level ask for IELTS. The other Cambridge exams have an additional 2.5 million test takers per year, and exams such as First for Schools are particularly popular in schools all over the world. The Canadian government recently said that it would accept PTE (by Pearson) for immigration purposes, so this test has seen a spike. Many American (and European) universities ask for TOEFL, so this one is popular too. OET is popular for healthcare workers who need to prove their English level, and TOEIC is connected to English purposes.

There are many other exams out there too, such as ILEC for legal English, TEFI for hospitality English and BEC for business English.

IELTS vs Cambridge

The main advantage of IELTS is that it has no grammar / vocab test. Grammar and vocabulary are measured, of course, as part of the speaking and writing parts, but there is no specific test for it. In Cambridge First, Advanced and Proficiency, there is a test called USE OF ENGLISH which tests your grammar and vocabulary explicitly. Students generally find this test particularly difficult. On the whole, it's easier to get a C1 certificate from IELTS than it is from Cambridge Advanced.

There are a couple of downsides to IELTS, though. Firstly, the certificate is only valid for 2 years. So if you get your certificate in September 2026 and want to use it for migration purposes in October 2028, then you'll need to pay to take the test again. Another downside is in the listening part. In the Cambridge exams, you listen to the audio texts TWICE, but you only listen ONCE in IELTS.

Discussion

Do you know anyone who has taken IELTS / Cambridge exams?

Do you think English exams are a good measure of a person's English level? (If you've never seen IELTS, Cambridge, then try to remember any English exams you passed at school)

Do you think English exams should have a grammar / vocab part?

What are the arguments for a) only listening once, b) listening twice in listening tests?

IELTS listening

IELTS is a multi-level test, and the listening test has FOUR parts.

The first part is the easiest and then it gets progressively more difficult, so part 4 is the hardest.

When students want C1, I generally tell them to aim for ...

Part 1: 9/10

Part 2: 8/10

Part 3: 7/10

Part 4: 6/10

As promised, we're going to do some tricky test listening today. And we'll start with IELTS part 4, which is a monologue on an academic subject. Take a look at the task on the next slide.

Exam techniques

A huge part of passing any exam is preparation and training specific techniques.

In the real test, of course, you won't have too much time to look at the questions, but while students are preparing for their listening tests, they learn how to analyse the question paper.

One popular technique is to try to predict the right answers before listening. Students generally hate doing this and feel that it's a waste of time 😎

With a partner, look at the questions again and try to predict the answers.

Now listen and write your answers to questions 31-40

Your goal is 6/10

Correct answers:

31: puzzle

32: logic

33: confusion

34: meditation

35: stone

36: coins

37: tree

38: breathing

39: paper

40: anxiety

Cambridge Proficiency

Cambridge Proficiency (CPE) is a real challenge. Imagine the cruelest English teachers you've ever had all got together and designed a test just to trick you and make you feel bad - that's how it feels sometimes.

With IELTS and Cambridge Advanced, it's pretty easy for most L1 users to get 100% if they're reasonably focussed. Most would struggle get 100% in CPE. There always seem to be a couple of questions that are just, well, too tricky.

There is no shame in getting a bunch of answers wrong here - even if you get all of them wrong. The purpose of this lesson is simply to expose you to different levels of texts and tasks, and as far as published texts go, this is the highest level in general English.

Let's do this one in test conditions, without extra time to read or analyse the questions.

Remember - you will listen to this twice

19:30

Now listen and write your answers to questions 16-20.

Note - there are two marks for each correct answer.

Go to: 19:30 in the video

Correct answers

16: D

17: B

18: B

19: D

20: C

Reflection

How difficult did you find the listening tasks today?

Do you agree that Cambridge Proficiency is unnecessarily difficult?

Do you think students who do well at English listening tests find it easier to understand authentic English-language movies and TV shows?