IELTS Listening: Beware the distractor!

The trouble

The IELTS Listening test sets out to show which candidates can listen effectively, and which can’t. One of the ways of doing this is to set traps — and be checked whether you fall into them. You need to know about these nets and how to avoid them. In this announce we will look at one of the most common traps: the distractor.

Illustration of distractors

Distractors are most often seen in exchanges, where a speaker says something, and is then redressed by the other speaker. That means you listen the same piece of information in two versions. One is correct and one is incorrect, and if you are not listening carefully, it’s easy to write down the wrong one.

Let’s look at three samples. Can you answer the questions?( Answers below .)

Example 1

Question: The humanity sought _____ T-shirts.

Dialogue 😛 TAGEND

Man: Hi, I’m calling to confirm a give of thirty T-shirts to my apartment in Waterloo.

Woman: I meet … let me have a look. Oh, we only have one order for Waterloo, sir, and it’s for thirteen shirts , not thirty.

Man: Ah, yes! Did I say thirty? Sorry. I implied thirteen. It is thirteen shirts.

Example 2

Question: What is the right postcode? _____

Dialogue 😛 TAGEND

Man: Where do you live, Lynda?

Lynda: Legion 15, Maximilian Way.

Man: That’s in Whitfield, right? I have a cousin who lives in that area.

Lynda: Yes, Whitfield.

Man: And the postcode is doubled seven double five?

Lynda: Not quite — you’ve got it the wrong way around. It’s double five double seven.

Example 3

Question: What is Lynda’s date of birth? 25 th _______

Dialogue 😛 TAGEND

Man: Just one more thing — your date of birth — but I can get that from the card. One moment…

Lynda: Look. I’m afraid you haven’t simulated it down properly. I was born on 25 th September 1990.

Man: What have I written? Oh yes, I see now. I’ve got the 25 th of the eighth month, but that would make it August…

Analysis of the distractors

It’s not difficult to find the answers when the dialogue is written down in front of you. But when you are listening — and recollect you simply hear the audio once — it is much more confusing. Notice that the examiners tried to confuse you in three different ways 😛 TAGEND

In dialogue one, both paroles( “thirty” and “thirteen”) are echoed several times. Remember that they reverberate very similar.( The rebuttal is 13.) In dialogue two, the wrong answer is given firstly, followed by the right answer; in dialogue three, the right answer is given first, followed by the wrong answer. This means you can’t predict the order in which the answer and the distractor will come.( In dialogue 3 the answer is September .) In dialogue two, instead of saying “seven-seven-five-five”, the three men says “double seven double five”, giving you one more thing to think about — at accurately the moment the examiners are trying to confuse you.( In dialogue 2 the answer is 5577 .)

So a distractor often comes with an extra spin: readily perplexed oaths, or paroles said in an exceptional way.

The mixture

Now you know about distractors, you will at least be expecting them when they come. There is really exclusively one lane being handled effectively, and that is to do as numerous practise experiments as you are eligible to. Probably the best way of doing this is through Road to IELTS, the British Council’s official IELTS planning concoction. The Practice Zone section of Road to IELTS includes over 20 listening research. Click here to find out more.

Final guessed

Distractors are just one thing that can go wrong in your IELTS Listening test. In this post I talk about three other things that can trip you up.

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