English Learning Tips:Don't Panic - Its the Same for Everyone

As you know, five of the questions in tomorrow's exam will involve listening. Listening, as the S-Cool.co.uk web site has noted, ''is probably the area where most students feel they are weakest. ''You can't'', they note, ''revise this topic very easily at home and it's far more daunting than a normal written exam''.

Their message however is: ''Don't panic - it's the same for everyone!'' Exams, they note, vary across boards but essentially they are testing your ability to understand a variety of whatever language you are learning across different topics, different styles. Questions range from fairly straightforward simple answers to much more complicated ones. You may have true/false questions, gap-fill exercises, multi-choice questions, or full sentence answers .

Usually, they note, you will be required to listen to a recording then answer some questions. Always check with your teacher what type of exams you can expect.

Finally, the three suggestions they offer to improve your listening in exams are:

• don't panic
  
• practice
• listen out for key words
• read the questions carefully to focus your listening

Find below links to the the S-Cool.co.uk website page on Listening for exams; a list of 100 ways you can improve your English Listening for TOEIC Exams from Using English.com; and a whole stack of listening quizzes from esl.About.com.


Links:
1. Listening Exams [S-Cool.co.uk]
2. How to improve your TOEIC listening [UsingEnglish.com]
3. English Listening Quzzes [esl.About.com]