IELTS, International English Language Testing System, has two categories divided from its testing materials and purposes – IELTS for Academic, and IELTS for General Training. Both Academic and General Training IELTS assess four basic language skills – listening, reading, writing, and speaking. Listening, as one of the most difficult section for some people, would be discussed within its worth trying tips.

Listening section of IELTS is organized in four section in which we can find several different kinds of question type ; multiple choice, short answer questions, sentence completion, labelling a diagram, classification of information, matching information, and summary. Two monologues and two conversations on a variety of topics are usually found in IELTS Listening Module within ten questions for each section. The provided topics in IELTS Listening Module cover everyday social matters and subjects which are related to educational or training situations, in this section also, IELTS taker will hear the recording once only, but fortunately they will have time to look at the questions first and additional time to write their answers onto answer sheet. IELTS Taker will get one mark for each correct answer up to a maximum of 40 marks, although the questions will get gradually harder.

In fact, Listening section of IELTS often becomes IELTS Taker’s burden in obtaining higher score of IELTS Band, especially in Indonesia as a Non Native Speaker country. According to the fact, solving this problem would be easier by developing three related matters ; skills, sense of language and test-answering strategy. Firstly, Developing skills, can be helped by reading many of IELTS Listening Skills book sources, especially those which have detailed syllabus of essential IELTS Listening skills. As an example, IELTS taker can theoritically learn signpost phrases and prediction skills from some IELTS book sources before trying to apply it in answering IELTS sample modules. Secondly, Developing Language, IELTS taker should trigger their sense of language by getting familiar to vocabulary, phrases, and sentence forms through reading and listening to English spoken sources such as books, musics, and video lectures. The last, Developing Test Answering Strategy, this technique aims to solve IELTS taker problem in answering IELTS Listening module by trying to find the best method tackling each type of question that probably asked.

As a conclusion, knowing the best way to tackle each type of question, having a good sense of English language, and preparing your mental well would be the best methods to solving this stigmatized problem of Listening, particularly for IELTS Taker whose first language is not English. Therefore, reading and practicing are still being the only way to a perfection.