Practice speaking and listening with Improve Your IELTS Listening and Speaking Skills

"Improve Your IELTS Listening and Speaking Skills" is one of the most effective and convenient "2-in-1" IELTS preparation materials, combining both listening and speaking skills in one book. The types of questions and exam formats have been meticulously researched and selected by the author to help learners simultaneously improve both listening and speaking in various situations. Let's explore the content and usage of the book with PREP!

I. An overview of “Improve Your IELTS Listening and Speaking Skills”

1. General information

This book includes essential skills needed to improve IELTS band scores, focusing on training methods to enhance Speaking and Listening skills. Improve Your IELTS Listening and Speaking Skills 6.0 – 7.5 will become a wonderful companion for those who want to self-study at home but are still unsure of the specific orientation and methods needed.

2. Main parts of the book

A special feature of this book is the integration of Speaking and Listening in one volume. This method is highly practical because Listening and Speaking skills always go hand in hand in everyday communication. This also helps learners study and practice better with transcripts as well as audio dialogue excerpts.

The book includes 10 Units based on topics commonly found in real tests. Each unit consists of four parts:

• Topic Talk: Exercises and activities to introduce vocabulary and useful ideas for the topic.
• Listening Skills: Practice exercises to develop skills in answering questions in the Listening section.
• Speaking Skills: Exercises and practice to develop skills and language for Speaking, including practice questions from a part of the test.
• Listening tests: Practice tests to refine Listening skills.
• In addition, there are boxes clarifying training techniques and methods to listen and speak effectively throughout the book. These parts reinforce the main points about approaching Listening and Speaking tasks.
• Especially, at the end of each Unit is a Pronunciation section to help practice standard and native-like pronunciation.

3. Targeted learner

According to the author's suggestion, this book is suitable for those who want to spend time revising at home and need detailed guidance on methods for achieving high scores in Listening and Speaking. We can divide into two different levels of study as follows:

• Basic IELTS learners: Improve Your IELTS Listening and Speaking Skills at the bands 4.5-6.0 will help learners practice in-depth, clearly specifying tips when learners are still unsure how to handle a Listening 
• and Speaking test to score highly.
• Intermediate IELTS learners: Improve Your IELTS Listening and Speaking Skills at the bands 6.0 – 7.5 will help learners have additional question types to practice and improve their band scores.

II. The pros & cons of Improve Your IELTS Listening and Speaking Skills for IELTS

1. Pros

This book has superior advantages compared to other Listening and Speaking practice books in that:

• The structure is clearly arranged to help you study and practice more easily; the parts are extremely logically combined.
• It provides a detailed explanation for each part of each lesson. The Improve Your IELTS Listening And Speaking Skills Answer Key will be at the end of the book to help you check your answers and scores.
• If you buy the hard copy version of the book, you will receive 2 accompanying CDs to practice Listening and Speaking. Alternatively, if you download the PDF version, you will have access to Improve Your IELTS Listening And Speaking Skills Audio Download for very convenient and fast home self-study.
• The transcripts of the listening passages at the end of the book help you learn new vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structures for communication. In addition, if you want to learn the spelling dictation method to help improve your listening skills, the transcripts will be very useful in checking the accuracy of the sentences you have heard.
• A variety of question types and forms: open and closed questions (Controlled Practice and Free Practice). Learners can do ready-made exercises according to a certain structure such as filling in words and choosing the right answers... In addition, there will also be questions where you will have the opportunity to express your views but still have to be grammatically correct according to the requirements.

2. Cons

Alongside its benefits, the "Improve Your IELTS Listening And Speaking Skills" PDF book also has certain areas for improvement, including

• The Speaking section does not have sample answers, so learners will find it difficult to know if their answers meet the requirements.
• The images and colors are still not diverse enough and can cause eye strain and boredom due to the same color as the text.
• The book was published in 2013 and currently does not have the latest updated version, so the question types may be different and not closely match the recent IELTS exams.

III. How to use Improve Your IELTS Listening and Speaking Skills effectively

1. Listening skill

This is a skill that requires long-term training and specific and systematic methods. You can refer to effective Listening methods that PREP has researched to quickly improve listening skills and support your learning with the exercises and instructions in the Improve Your IELTS Listening And Speaking Skills PDF book.

Learners of different levels will have different learning methods to increase effectiveness:

• IELTS 4.0: Learners should focus on vocabulary in short audio passages in the book to enrich their resource bank and upgrade their level.
• IELTS 5.0 - 6.5: Users should learn the book as well as listen to longer audio passages, or summarize the listening passages in the book along with doing the exercises. Then check the answers with the transcripts.
• IELTS 6.5+: At this stage, learners need to do many types of exercises and questions along with more listening.

2. Speaking skill

With this skill, learners can apply the Speaking learning method divided into three parts: Problems, Solutions, and Action Plan, specifically as follows:

• Find problems to be addressed in Speaking such as pronunciation errors or lack of ideas...
• Then find solutions by studying units and question types and questions included in the Improve Your IELTS Listening And Speaking Skills book and other Listening and Speaking practice books or listening to English speeches.
• Finally, start scheduling time to study and practice the skills you need. Effective practice can be done by referring to Prep's Virtual Speaking Room - one of the earliest technology-enhanced methods for practicing Speaking, developed and trusted by many learners.

3. Listening and Speaking simultaneously

In addition, Improve Your IELTS Listening and Speaking Skills did not randomly combine the two skills of Speaking and Listening into one book. This means that we need to study the two skills in parallel to increase effectiveness. You can refer to 9 steps for the parallel practice of IELTS Listening-Speaking:

• Step 1: Listen once and do the exercise of that question type.
• Step 2: Listen for the second time and write down the answers separately in another place to compare the number of correct answers between the two listens.
• Step 3: Check the answers and carefully read the Script section to see which words you did not hear clearly in terms of pronunciation or missed information.
• Step 4: Listen again to the wrong and missed sentences.
• Step 5: Practice the Shadowing method to train Speaking and Listening in parallel.
• Step 6: Note down useful expressions that can be applied in different situations and practice.
• Step 7: Practice repeating sentences containing newly found structures with their intonation and pronunciation.
• Step 8: Practice framing sentences, using examples to memorize and express naturally.
• Step 9: Apply the examples from earlier to the corresponding IELTS Speaking practice section.

IV. Download the book "Improve Your IELTS Listening and Speaking Skills" PDF + Audio for free

PREP now offers the ebook "Improve Your IELTS Listening and Speaking Skills" in PDF + Audio format for you to download completely free of charge. This allows you to conveniently and quickly arrange your self-study time and improve your listening and speaking skills as soon as possible. Log in to download it:

DOWNLOAD IMPROVE YOUR IELTS LISTENING AND SPEAKING SKILLS

V. From Beginner to IELTS Mastery

The article shares PREP's perspective on one of Sam McCarter's books that has recently caused a stir. Now you can quickly improve your Listening and Speaking skills with just one click to download this free Improve Your IELTS Listening and Speaking Skills book with accompanying audio. If IELTS listening and speaking feels challenging, let our task-specific training help you write your way to success.

👉 IELTS learning online: Get Started With Expert IELTS Training Now!