IELTS Listening: Sentence completion
You complete a sentence with words from the recording, within a word limit. Unlike form completion the gap sits inside full English, which gives you far more to predict from — the grammar of the sentence rules out most of what you could hear.
Read the whole sentence, not the gap
The words after the gap matter as much as the words before it. "The museum was built in ______ by a local merchant" needs a date, and nothing else can go there. Reading only up to the gap throws away half the information you were given for free.
- Read each sentence to the end during the preparation time.
- Decide what kind of word fits and whether it must be singular or plural.
- Listen for the idea of the sentence, not its exact words — the recording paraphrases everything except the answer.
- Write the words exactly as spoken, then count them against the limit.
The paraphrase rule
The sentence on your paper will not match the recording word for word. What is almost never paraphrased is the answer itself, because it has to be words from the recording. So the words around the gap are a signpost and the gap is the destination; expecting to hear the sentence read out is the fastest way to miss it.
These run in order with the recording. If you find yourself hearing content from a later sentence, you have missed one — mark it and move forward rather than back.
Sentence completion — FAQs
2 questions
No. Write it as you hear it. If the result is ungrammatical, it is usually the wrong word rather than the wrong form.
Yes, and it is applied just as strictly.
More listening question types
Sources
Written from the test board's own published material and checked on 1 October 2026.