IELTS Listening. Flow charts

About

On IELTS, flow charts are usually used to present the stages of a certain process. The information is usually presented in the form of notes and the order of questions is consistent with the flow of the recording; that is, the answer to question 1 will come first, then there’ll be the answer to question 2, and so on.

Why it can be difficult

The main difficulty associated with this type of task is that you need to actively listen all throughout the recording, since if one answer is missed, it’s more difficult to do the following question – often test takers keep listening for the answer to question 1 when the recording deals with question 2 or 3.

What to do before listening:

• Check the word limit in the instructions to the task;
• Look through the chart to understand what it is about;
• Identify the key words;
• Try to predict which part(s) of speech the answer is, based on grammar;
• Try to predict the exact answers based on the context.

What to do as you listen:

•  Perceive what you listen to as a whole. Test takers tend to process the listening input in small sections, which is perfectly natural. However, to do well, you need to consciously make yourself link those smaller pieces into the bigger picture. It’s like when you are preparing to listen and as part of it, you work out the general information and create a thread. When you’re listening, you should be stringing the smaller pieces of data onto that thread. This’ll prevent you from getting lost or distracted, and even if you miss something relevant, you’ll have a bigger chance to guess the correct answer after the recording is over.
• Be ready to reveal answers to at least two questions at a time (while this tip works for the whole Listening section and most of the Reading section, it’s vital for flow charts). When working on one question, you’ve got to know what the following one’s about. The reasoning behind this idea is the fact that if you miss the answer to the current question, you might not notice it and keep listening for it. Thus, you need something that’ll tell you the ship has sailed and you’ve got to move fast to make it for the next one.
• Don’t hold on to the information that you’ve missed (this tip works for the whole Listening paper). A common mistake that test takers frequently make is fixating on something they didn’t hear well or didn’t understand immediately. You have to realize that you have no more than a few seconds to ponder over the answer to the current question. Thinking about it longer than that isn’t going to do you any good; on the off chance that you manage to remember something after a minute’s thinking or so, you’re almost sure to miss the answer to the next question, and not have enough time to prepare for the question after that, and this is the place where the snowball effect kicks in. Therefore, LET GO of the things that you can’t process immediately. You’d better skip one question, but have a good chance to do all the rest. Besides, when you have some time to check your work, you’ll have a possibility to try to figure out the missing answers.

What to do after you listen (when you’re given time to check your answers):

• Check whether the word limit condition has been met.
• Make sure that your answers fit in terms of grammar.
• Make sure that your answers fit the context.
• Guess the answers to the questions that you didn’t do during listening. Use your common sense, grammar knowledge, the context - pretty much anything – you’ve got nothing to lose, but you might get it right!