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IELTS, standing for the International English Language Testing System, is used to measure English ability in four main areas - listening, reading, speaking, and writing. There are two different types of paper - academic and general, and why you are taking the IELTS exam will define which paper you need to take. If you want to attend a university or college in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada or the UK, then you will need to take the academic paper. And as each course or university may vary in its requirements it is important to check what score you need before beginning to study for IELTS. On the other hand if you need IELTS to attend work experience or school in the above countries or if you want to emigrate to them then you need to take the general training paper, and again it is important to check which band score is required before you begin your studies.

The first thing to do is to figure out which paper you need to take, and what score you need to achieve. The listening and the speaking is the same for both the general and academic papers, but the reading and the writing are quite different so it is important to focus your studies and practice on the correct paper. Once you have worked this out you can begin to study properly.

Break your studies down into sections - don't think of it all as one big difficult test, but as four smaller ones. Try to work out which sections are your strong ones and which are your weak, and then you can focus more study time on the areas you find more difficult. However, make sure that you do not neglect any areas so continue to do some practice even on your stronger sections.

The Listening paper:

There are about 40 questions in the listening paper, with about ten questions in four different sections. Section 1 is an informal conversation between two speakers. Section 2 is an informal monologue. Section 3 is a formal conversation with up to four speakers - usually in an academic setting. And section 4 is a formal academic monologue usually a talk or lecture.

To improve your score - get hold of as many practice IELTS listening papers as you can - buy or borrow practice books, search the internet for free practice questions, and do as many different tests as you can. Look at the style and type of IELTS questions, and get used to their little tricks. Also do dictation - listen to parts of the IELTS test and try it down, you can play it again and again, and do it sentence by sentence - and this will really help improve your listening

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