FC Listening – 5 top tips
Some students find the listening exam difficult. Here are 5 top tips to help you improve your FC listening mark.
Tip 1
You are often given false information first that sounds as if it could be the answer to the question. An instance of this is where the information given matches one of the answers, but does not fit the information given in the question- the person could be talking about last week, say, when the question asks about next week. The correct information usually, but not always, comes afterwards.
Tip 2
Nearly right is not the same thing as right; examiners often give information that sounds more or less correct, but is in some way unsatifactory. Adverbs and modals are often used to send you the wrong way; the listening text might use ‘She may well be late’ and the question ‘She will be late’- this is not an exact match and consequently could easily be the wrong answer. It has to be 100% accurate to be right.
Tip 3
In longer listening passages, they often try to make you lose concentration by having quite long sections where no information relevant to the exercise is given, then suddenly they hit you with a couple of answers in quick succession.
Tip 4
Although most longer listening passages begin with an introduction that lets you get into the flow before they start testing you, you cannot depend on this; the first word could in theory be the answer to the first question.
Tip 5
Examiners will often place a word directly from the passage in a wrong answer and use a synonym in the correct answer; check the meaning and do not rely on word recognition to get the right answer.
