Примеры использования
There is no words
в предложениях и их переводы
theservice, thepeople, thegirls, your name
is
really well chosen.
услуг, людей, девушек, ваше имя очень хорошо выбрали.
the service, the people, the girls, your name
is
really well chosen.
услуг, людей, девушек, ваше имя очень хорошо выбрали.
Сэр, нет слов чтобы выразить нашу признательность.
И нет слов, чтобы передать ощущения эти.
У меня нет слов, чтобы утешить вас, мистер Ли.
Результатов: 1171,
Время: 0.1753
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Пословный перевод
Фразы по алфавиту
Поиск в Английско-Русском словаре по букве
Лучшие запросы из словаря
Английский
—
Русский
Русский
—
Английский
When I was a young teacher (sadly a long time ago), I used to think that IELTS Listening Part 4 was the most difficult part of the test. I mean, it seemed obvious – this was the only part of the test that asked the students to listen to a lecture and we all know that those are “difficult”. However, with time, I have realised that this actually Listening Part 3 that causes the most trouble as this requires the test-takers to listen for agreement and emotion as well as information.
Plus, lectures are designed to be understood. By this I mean that lecturers use signposting language and organise the information they are giving so that it is easy to digest – that is not the same as the conversation in Part 3 were the speakers can change their mind or suddenly change direction! Finally, the questions that are asked in IELTS Listening Part 4 today are almost always note completion.
This is fantastic as all of those notes can be used as scaffolding to help you follow the lecture. If you add to this the fact that the speaker usually stresses key words, well, you can see why the lecture is not as difficult as I once thought! Let’s listen to find out more!
This is an interactive episode so please have a pen and piece of paper ready so that you can join in the activities.
Below, you can find a summary of the episode, which includes all of the links to useful materials and the times of each part of the discussion (so you can go directly to the part you want to listen to). You can also find every episode of the podcast here 🚀
Subscribe to My IELTS Classroom podcast on Apple podcasts here
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We now also have a video lesson for Listening Part 4 if you would prefer to watch instead of listen!
My IELTS Classroom Podcast Episode 58 Summary: IELTS Listening Part 4
00:00 – 04:20 Introduction (a listener is sitting the exam on Thursday – Good luck Ayomide!!)
04:21 – 09:03 Listening Part 4 – The basics
- IELTS Listening Part 4 is the the final section of the listening test and is the only one where you do NOT have a 30- second break in the middle. The speaking may pause for 2 or 3 seconds, but there is no time to read ahead.
- IELTS Listening Part 4 is always a lecture delivered by one speaker. The topic of the lecture varies but common topics are animal behaviour and the natural world, psychology, history, geology, the business world – in other words, although it’s an an academic lecture, the topic will not be very specialised (i.e. there will be not maths or legal lectures with complex terms!)
- In 2021, 99% of the time the questions in IELTS Listening Part 4 are note completion. This is a change from the past when there tended to be a wider variety of question types (i.e. multiple choice, sentence completion, matching, etc). However, this is good news as note completion is perhaps the easiest type of question for the lecture (as we will see in the episode)
09:03 – 23:55 Listening Part 4 – Before you listen
Although there is no break in the middle of the lecture, you do still have roughly 45 second to analyse the questions before the recording begins. This is actually quite a lot of time, so with a bit of practice you should be able to effectively analyse all ten questions. The first thing you should do is check how many words you can use in each space. 90% of the time it will be only one, but on occasion it can be two, so be sure to check.
If the instructions say ‘write two words and/or a number in each space”, you DO NOT need to use two words for EVERY answer! However, this instruction does mean that at least one answer will be two words, so be careful of this.
Then, start analysing the notes. The key thing is to only focus on the notes that contain the missing words. You will be able to read and follow the completed notes later as you are listening, but for now you want to start reading, underlining the key words and making prediction about the word that is missing. In particular, you should
- quickly look at the title of the lecture and the main headings so that you know the topic and the main segments of the lecture
- work out the type of word that is needed to complete the note. In IELTS, 90% of the answers for note completion activities are nous, but you will still need to understand f the noun is singular, plural, or uncountable. To do this, you can look for articles or quantifiers. Parallelism can also help you here (as we will discuss in the lesson.
- try to actually predict the word that is missing. I am always surprised how many guesses my students make in live lessons that turn out to be correct! Even Nick manages to get two guesses more or lesson correct in today’s episode!
In the episode, we analyse this task taken from Cambridge Book 15, Test 3, Listening Part 4. Why not have a look at the notes and try to predict what the missing answers could be:
23: 56 – 32:55 Listening Part 4 – While you listen
When the recording starts, your job is essentially to so one thing – FOLLOW THE NOTES! Do not ignore notes that are fully complete! I repeat, do not ignore notes that are fully compete. These are your friend as they will guide you towards the answer. I personally always sit and underline the notes as I hear them. This is helpful as it not only makes it clear when you approach the missing word, but it also helps you to maintain focus.
Also, it is vitally important that you are patient. The speaker may spend much longer on some bullets than others. Don’t panic – just wait until you hear a key word from the next part of the notes to signal that the lecturer has moved back to the relevant information.
Basically, you can ignore anything that is not in the notes – very often the lecturer will give detail that is not needed and aims to confuse (after all, this is IELTS!)
Let me show you how you can follow the notes by underlining the words as you listen to them. In the video below, I will pay the first half of the lecture and underline the words as I hear them. Your job is to just find the missing words!
Can you see how easy it is to find the missing words if you us this method? I know that you can’t do this with a pen and paper in the computer-based test, but once you get the hang of following the notes, you will find that you can do it equally as easily with your eyes.
32:56 – 38:11 Listening Part 4 – The tricks that the examiners use to confuse you
As you were watching me underline the notes, did you notice any tricks that the IELTS Listening Part 4 writers use to confuse students? I did! In fact, I think that there were four!
- Using synonyms in the notes: For question 31, did you hear the words “wash off”? No – you heard the synonym “rinse” And, what about question 34? I definitely didn’t hear the word “colour”, but there was a synonym (listen agin if you missed it!) It is important, then, as you listen to understand that you will hear a mix of key words directly from the notes and synonyms.
- Key words are missing: Also, in question 31, the lecturer said that soap was used “to wash dirt from hands”. However, there is no word “hand” in the text. My guess is that it was once there but the item was too say (i.e too many students answered the question correctly) so it was removed to make it more challenging.
- The information is presented in a different order to the notes: This is maybe IELTS most effective trick – changing the order that you hear the information. For some questions, a key word may be printed after the space, but you hear it before the answer. This was the case in question 32 (just look at the direction of my arrow – it goes backwards!) in the same way, a key word may be printed before the space, but you hear it after the answer, which is what happened in question 33.
What does this mean? It means that you cannot just read half a note. You will need to read the note up to and after the missing word. You will also need to be able to remember the previous 2 or 3 seconds of the lecture should you realise that an answer has been given when a “late” key word arrives. I know that this is difficult, but predict the answers and follow the notes, it isn’t actually as hard as it first seems!
38:12 – END Listening Part 4 – Using speaker stress to help you locate the answers
Finally, I want to look at the importance of speaker stress. This is something that many students overlook, but which is blindingly obvious once you notice it. Just like real-life lecturers, the actors who play the role in the IELTS exam stress the key words and answers. And when I say stress, I mean S.T.R.E.S.S.
In the episode we will pay a game, we will ask you to listen to the beginning of Cambridge Book 13 Test 2, IELTS Listening Part 4 to write down the words that are stressed. Trust me, you will see that correlate almost one-to-one to the key words notes and the answers!
Trust me – don’t look at the notes yet! just listen and write down the words that are pronounced more clearly / slowly.
Would you like expert help you improving your Listening?
We offer a 5-day intensive course for IELTS test-takers every month that covers all aspects of listening, from how to approach every type of question, to how to use key words to follow a lecture, and avoid the distractors in Multiple Choice questions. Even better, with every course having no more than 8 students and being run by an ex-examiner, you will be getting personalised advice that is guaranteed to help you to improve your score.
Find out more about the course and how it can help you hit your target score here.
‘The Notting Hill Carnival’
Read the following article written over 11 lines. Some of these lines have an extra word which is not needed, as they make the sentence wrong. Not every line has a wrong word. Some lines are ok. Only look for one extra word on each line:
- This weekend I am going to the Notting Hill Festival
- which will get on underway in West London.
- It is a Caribbean festival which it started in the 1950s.
- Now it has been grown into the biggest street festival
- in Europe. Every a year 2 million people attend it.
- The current route for of the main parade covers around 3 miles.
- There is a big competition between steel bands from all over London.
- People wear bright coloured costumes and make dance in the streets.
- The atmosphere is good with everybody having a great time.
- There are many stalls selling food and loads of great music to listen to.
- I go every year and it just keeps getting more better and better.
Link:Find the extra word-2
- In line 1 the extra word is:
to
the
am
there is no extra word - In line 2 the extra word is:
on
in
there is no extra word
will - In line 3 the extra word is:
it
a
get
there is no extra word - In line 4 the extra word is:
been
it
there is no extra word
Now - In line 5 the extra word is:
there is no extra word
in
people
a - In line 6 the extra word is:
there is no extra word
of
the
around - In line 7 the extra word is:
all
over
from
there is no extra word - In line 8 the extra word is:
there is no extra word
dance
the
make - In line 9 the extra word is:
everybody
great
there is no extra word
with - In line 10 the extra word is:
and
many
to
there is no extra word - In line 11 the extra word is:
just
there is no extra word
getting
more
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Are you afraid of listening to natives too?
How well do you understand English from listening? I have never met an adult learner in 15 years who would say it’s a walk in the park for them. Really. Never.
‘Boy, this is the hardest part, because you not only need to understand what the other person is talking, which is hard due to all the different accents there is, but you also need to comprehend what they are talking!’
‘But listening, oh boy, that’s the tough one. You have to face native speed of speech, accents, intonation… I always thought English as a “hungry language”, its speakers “eat” a lot of letters we were taught they were pronounced. And you seem to say full sentences without moving your lips. We just hear a mumble.’
These are just some answers I received when I asked which skill is the hardest in learning English.
Listening is a difficult skill to master. We can’t deny that.
In a situation like that, we usually end up blaming ourselves (I am hopeless, I have no language talent, learning languages is not for me) or native speakers (they ‘eat’ words and they speak too fast – crazy language, crazy people).
The thing is English is no exception in that. It’s equally hard for any other foreign language to master. The French speak incredibly fast and so do Spanish speakers. Try to listen to a German native speaker when you are a complete beginner. I will not even mention Chinese with their tonic system.
What you need to know about listening and understanding
As I said, listening is hard to master. But not because there is something wrong with our ears. It happens because people try to learn listening using the same methods they learn reading. But how is it possible? They are so different, reading and listening.
When you read a text, you can see it in front of your eyes. It means two things:
- you can see all the words separately in the page
- you have time to stop, to return to some point and think about it.
What happens when you listen?
- You need to decode a line of sounds, with no breaks, because they are all connected together.
- It’s usually quick, especially in conversations.
- And you have no control over what’s going on (I mean you have less opportunity to ‘rewind’ and to think about it). You rely on your memory.
In fact, a listener very often hear something like:
So, you just can’t learn to listen like you have learnt reading.
Another popular myth: you will learn to understand what people say if you listen a lot. But again, just listening to a lot of stuff in unadapted English is a long (and frustrating) way. It’s not focused learning. Without strategies, it will take you years.
It’s a bit funny how most listening tasks you will find on the Web or in the textbooks are tests.
So, somehow you learnt to listen already (when? where?) and now you check yourself. But when was the actual learning happening? If you just hear a lot of text in English, it doesn’t mean learning. If you don’t understand what’s going on, how would you learn?
Even if you come to a teacher for help, it is not always productive. First of all, teachers try to speak comfortably for you, even native speakers. That’s why many people say they understand their teachers well, but can’t understand people in the streets.
I remember one colleague of mine who just came back from her internship in the USA and started teaching English to adults. She used to be saying: ‘I spent so many years learning English. I don’t want to spoil it by speaking unnaturally. I will show my learners how real English sounds’. Well, intermediate and advanced students loved her. Elementary students hated her. At first. But somehow, after a month or so, each of her students developed a better listening understanding of English than mine, for example. Guilty on the spot. I DO speak too comfortably for my students. I can list you many explanations for this, but I won’t. This is just a reality.
So, the first takeaway from this article: Don’t be afraid of being exposed to original listening material. I also vote for variety. Listen to the texts of different difficulty and of different origin. The more accents (both native and non-native) you hear, the more prepared you will be for real life. Learn which TV series you can start with.
The key thing in this process: LEARN to listen, don’t just wait for a miracle to happen one day.
What kind of strategies could help you improve your listening skills?
I will switch now from general linguistics to English. What exactly do you need to know about English to hear it better?
First of all, ‘what you see is not what you hear’. Don’t expect the words will be separate like you see them in this written text.
Let’s take an example.
You see a phrase: ‘half an hour ago’. If you could hear it the same way it is written, the sound would be something like that:
In reality, even in slow pronunciation, the words won’t have pauses between them.
If this phrase is a part of a longer text, it will be pronounced even faster.
Ok, is it all non-stop stream of speech? No, it isn’t. When we speak, we divide our speech into units, not into words. The words serving one meaning will live together. We call them ‘tone units’. We use them in all languages to organise our speech and put accents on the parts which are most important for our message.
The phrase from the example: ‘half an hour ago’. It means 1 unit of information. All the words here constitute 1 meaning. The speaker will pronounce them together, in 1 unit, to serve the meaning. The non-stop speaking all the time is not possible: we need to breathe. These breathing pauses made between short ideas constituing a bigger one.
So, in the sentence: I came home half an hour ago (7 words) there are actually only 3 tone units: I came // home // half an hour ago. They will say it: /aikeim//heum//havenaueegeu/. Just 2 pauses.
Of course, it is not:
Nobody speaks like that. You don’t speak like that.
Here is your first step in improving listening: your brain should get used to the fact that it hears not words but tone units containing one idea. Train yourself for that.
Some practice.
How many tone units can you identify in these sentences:
– When are you going on holiday this year?
When // are you going // on holiday // this year? (4 tone units)
– What kind of books do you prefer?
What kind of books // do you prefer? (2 tone units)
Practise with this ‘difficult’ piece. This one should be hard:
(video source – 00:27)
Even in this fast talking, we can hear some small pauses the speaker does between the tone units:
‘Thanks // for coming back on//. – How is it going? (one tone unit, that’s why so fast) – It’s going awesome! (again one tone unit – they all seem to be stuck together). We’re gonna // have // some fun today…’
I recommend you to practise this way: listen to some short extracts (up to 1 minute long) with the transcript to hear how sentences are divided into tone units in natural speaking. Let your brain learn to hear it differently from what he reads. Listen to the same extract several times until you can hear which small groups the words are organised into in every sentence.
You can use listening materials from the web or some podcasts.
Here are some example resources I always recommend my students:
English Numbers | Listening Test
Deep English
Listen a minute
6-minute English
It’s crucial that you practise listening to very very short extracts, as I said, not longer than a minute. Also, always practise with the text in front of your eyes. You will need some time to re-wire your brain from trying to listen for single words to listening to tone units. They are logical. After listening to 10 or 15 sentences (not at once, every day or every other day), the whole listening process will become different.
Inside the tone unit, words will be organised hierarchically (what a word, hah), so to say, by their importance. Your next step will be to learn the hierarchy of these words and ways how they are connected together. If it seems like a lot of work, no, it isn’t. It’s, again, quite logical. It’s focused work and it is some work, yes. But it is much better than just ‘listen to as much English as possible for a long time’ without any control of what’s happening with your English skills.
Divide this ‘stream’ you hear into into units and then learn how words work together inside each unit. This way, you will focus and start improving. And you will start understanding English, even the films, quite soon (of course, if your vocabulary is good enough 🙂
So, the key takeaways from the today’s post are:
– listening is a skill to train; you can’t learn to listen the right way just by random listening;
– don’t be afraid to vary the difficulty of your listening material;
– expose yourself to as many accents, both native and non-native, as possible;
– develop a simple short routine to learn listening using short (up to 1 minute long) extracts to train yourself for the right focus;
– learn not to expect to hear single words (like they are written in the page) but tone units where words are grouped around 1 small idea.
In the next post, we will continue re-focusing your brain from what it reads to what hears. Stay tuned!
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Learn how your words are counted in IELTS. This page explains about counting words, numbers and symbols. You need to know how words are counted for IELTS listening, reading and writing. If you make mistakes with the number of words, you can lose points which can affect your band score.
How words are counted in IELTS
1. Numbers, dates and time are counted as words in writing. For example 30,000 = one word / 55 = one word / 9.30am = one word / 12.06.2016 = one word. “Six million” is counted as two words in IELTS writing. In listening, 30,000 is counted as one number and 9.30AM is also counted as one number.
2. Dates written as both words and numbers are counted in this way: 12th July = one number and one word in IELTS listening and as two words in IELTS writing.
3. Symbols with numbers are not counted. For example, 55% = one number (the symbol “%” is not counted as a word). However, if you write “55 percent” it is counted as one word and one number.
4. Small words such as “a” or “an” are counted. All prepositions, such as “in” or “at” are also counted. All words are counted.
5. Hyphenated words like “up-to-date” are counted as one word.
6. Compound nouns which are written as one word are also counted as one word. For example, blackboard = one word.
7. Compound nouns which are written as two separate words, are counted as two words. For example, university bookshop = two words.
8. All words are counted, including words in brackets. For example in IELTS writing, “The majority of energy was generated by electricity (55%).”. This sentence is counted as 9 words. The number in brackets is counted. Brackets can be used in IELTS Writing Task 1, but not in IELTS Listening or IELTS Reading.
9. Some people have asked me if words such as “the” are counted only once regardless of how many times they are used. It is best to illustrate: “The man walked into the shop for the newspaper” = 9 words.
10. Contractions are counted as: it’s = one word / it is = two words.
Tips
- Get useful tips and advice about the word count for IELTS writing.
- Start learning how to write compound nouns correctly. Some are one word and some are written as two words. If you make a mistake, it can affect your band score. Here’s a link to tips about compound nouns.
- Learn more about the meaning of ” no more than one word and/or a number” in listening and reading, by watching the video on the main IELTS Listening Page.