IELTS Listening: four parts, six question types, one play
IELTS Listening is 40 questions across four parts in about 30 minutes, and the recording is played once. The test is the same for Academic and General Training. What changes across the four parts is not the difficulty of the English so much as the number of speakers and how far the answer sits from the words you were listening for.
The four parts
| Part | What you hear | Context | Typical difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Part 1 | A conversation between two people | Everyday social — booking, enquiring, arranging | Names, numbers, dates spelled out |
| Part 2 | One person speaking | Everyday social — a talk about local facilities | Maps and plans, directions |
| Part 3 | Up to four people talking | Education or training — a tutorial or discussion | Opinions, who said what, interruptions |
| Part 4 | One person speaking | Academic — a university-style lecture | Dense, no second speaker to re-state anything |
Part 4 has no conversation to clarify anything. In Parts 1 and 3 a second speaker often repeats or corrects a detail; in Part 4 what you hear is all you get, which is why it rewards following the structure of the talk rather than hunting for single words.
Transfer time depends on how you sit it
- On paper — 10 extra minutes at the end to copy your answers onto the answer sheet.
- On computer — 2 minutes at the end to check what you typed. There is nothing to copy.
This is one of the few places where the delivery mode changes what you should practise. On paper, write on the question sheet and transfer carefully at the end. On computer, type the answer straight in, because two minutes will not rescue forty gaps.
What costs marks, in order
- Staying with a missed answer. The recording keeps going. One lost question becomes three.
- Spelling. A correctly heard word spelled wrong is marked wrong, and Part 1 spells names out loud precisely because of this.
- The word limit. The same strict rule as Reading — three words where two are allowed scores nothing.
- Not reading ahead. Every section gives you time to look at the questions first. That time is the test.
Every Listening question type
IELTS Listening — FAQs
3 questions
No. Both sit the identical Listening test — the same four parts, the same 40 questions. Only Reading and Writing differ between the two.
Once. There is no repeat, in either delivery mode.
Yes, and you should. On paper you write on the question sheet and transfer at the end; on computer you type directly into the answer box.
Listening on the other exams
Sources
Written from the test board's own published material and checked on 1 October 2026.