Tip #1: 

- Listen to and understand people talking fast in English. This is because if you are using too much of your brain focusing on just trying to hear and process every word that is spoken, you will not be able to also focus on questions and answer choices effectively.

- Build your ability to listen to people talking English fast. Method and use online audio and video to help you improve your English listening skills.

- Focus on how voices 'change' in tone and speed

- Notice all the 'ups and downs' (intonation) in the tone of their voice.

- Identify words (or parts of words) that are more stretched than others.

- Notice parts of sentences that are spoken more quickly, where it seems like many words are smashed together.

Tip #2: Become comfortable with common IELTS accents

- Become familiar and comfortable with British, Australian, Canadian, Indian, South African and American accents. It is rare (but not impossible!) to hear other accents in official IELTS Listening tests. Because the IELTS test was created in Britain, the IELTS Listening test uses many accents that are common to countries with a close relationship to the U.K. 

- Improve your understanding of these accents, we recommend you begin listening to news from certain countries. Two of the best places to go are the BBC and CNN. Both of those news organizations have pages focused on news from different regions and countries. So, you can focus your listening practice on accents you are less confident about.

- Visit one of these news web pages and look for news reports that include a video. Find and play the news video and use the 3√ó3 Method to help you build your skill at understanding people from various parts of the world. Most of the videos at the BBC and CNN have the 'Closed Caption' (CC) option; look for the CC button at the bottom of the video

Tip#3: Analyze transcripts for 'changing information' in IELTS conversations 

-  Listen to as many IELTS conversations as you can, and practice listening for changes in tone speakers' voices.

- Look at the transcript for the conversation and see if there are other clues you didn't notice at first after you have listened to an IELTS conversation.

- Hear how people use their voice to signal that what they are saying is either an idea they don't agree with or an idea they are going to show is incorrect. Noticing how these changes in intonation are used in the real world will help you spot them much more easily in IELTS Listening tests!

Tip #4: Practice spelling correctly and writing clearly

- Know how to spell many words correctly. In most IELTS Listening tests, half of the questions (20 questions!) are Fill-in-the-blank questions. 

- Download and use our Spelling Quiz Creator. This is a Microsoft Excel file you can use to create your own spelling quizzes, so you can focus on practising words that are hard to you to spell.

- Use our FREE IELTS Online classroom at Quizlet. There, you will find word lists for many common IELTS topics, with spelling and definition activities for each word list.