Three unrelated conversations, two multiple-choice questions each. The focus is rarely on facts: you are asked what a speaker thinks, how they feel, or where the two of them disagree.

• Read both questions before the extract starts. Two questions in ninety seconds leaves no time to catch up.
• Underline the question stem, not the options. The stem tells you whose opinion you need.
• When the speakers disagree, the answer sits with the one the question names.

One speaker talking at length. You complete eight sentences using the words you actually hear, in the order the recording gives them.

• Write what you hear. Rephrasing it in your own words is the most common way to lose an easy mark.
• Read around the gap first and decide what is missing: a noun, a number, an adjective.
• Answers are short, usually one to three words. If you are writing a clause, you have misread the gap.
• Spelling counts, and so does the singular or plural you heard.

A longer interview or discussion with six multiple-choice questions, testing opinion, attitude, and the finer shades of what each speaker means.

• The questions follow the order of the recording. If you are lost, jump to the next one and re-anchor.
• Expect the wrong answer to be said out loud. Speakers raise an option, then reject it or change their mind.
• Listen to the end of the idea before you commit. The qualification usually comes after the claim.

Five short monologues and two tasks running at the same time. You match each speaker twice, choosing from two separate lists of eight options.

• Work on both tasks from the first listening. The second pass is for checking, not for starting.
• Skim both option lists in the pause and note which ones sound similar. Those are the pairs being tested.
• Three options in each list are never used, so an unchosen option is not evidence that you are wrong.

The real exam gives you time before each part for exactly this, and it is not filler. Knowing what to listen for is most of the work — once the audio starts, you are only confirming.

Treat the replay as confirmation, not as your real attempt. Candidates who save everything for the second play run out of time and end up guessing under pressure.

There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so a considered guess is always worth more than an empty box. Put something down, then come back to it on the replay.

Read them while the audio plays again and find the exact moment each answer was given. Hearing the words that carried the answer is where the improvement actually happens.

Most lost marks repeat: a distractor mentioned early, a plural you missed, a speaker changing their mind. Patterns are fixable in a way that individual mistakes are not.