Listening

The Listening paper checks that you can understand what people are talking about, even when they use regional accents and colloquial English. You should also be able to understand particular important details, even if you do not understand everything.
 
Sometimes you will not be told some of the details but you must understand them from the other information you have been given. The texts will be radio interviews, telephone calls, advertisements, lectures, and conversations, amongst other things. You will hear different accents, and sometimes noise in the background, though this will not interfere with the test.

The test takes 40 minutes, and has 30 questions. There are four papers in the test, and you hear the recordings in each part twice. In Part 1 you will hear eight separate short pieces and you have to answer one question about each. In Part 2 you hear a longer talk, perhaps a radio programme or part of an interview, and you must answer ten questions about it.
 
Part 3 has five short monologues and you must choose from eight options the five which best match each monologue. Part 4 is a conversation lasting less than five minutes. You must choose A, B, or C (often 'true', 'false', or 'doesn't say'). There are seven questions in this part.