So you want to master IELTS Listening. But how close are you to “mastery” right now? Not sure? No worries. Use Magoosh’s IELTS Listening Practice Test to get an idea of your current ability. In this IELTS Listening diagnostic you will listen to audio passages and answer questions just as you would on the real IELTS exam. Then, our automatic IELTS Listening Score Calculator will estimate your band level and provide you with an answer key to help you learn where you went right (and wrong)!
How This IELTS Listening Practice Test Works
This quiz contains two passages and 20 questions, and is half the length of an actual IELTS Listening section. Here, we’re using the first and fourth passages and question sets from the Magoosh’s full-length free IELTS Practice test.
Passage 1 is always the easiest passage in the section; the fourth and final passage is always the hardest. To account for these differences in difficulty, the first 10 questions in the quiz are worth 40% of the final score. Questions 31-40 are harder, and make up the remaining 60%.
This is just a rough estimate, of course. Be sure to keep practicing to get a clear, consistent idea of your IELTS Listening ability.
Take the IELTS Listening Diagnostic!
IELTS Listening Score Calculator
Now that you’ve completed our IELTS Listening evaluation, you’re probably wondering how well you performed. Knowing your approximate band level is important for determining your baseline score. That way, when you take another IELTS Listening evaluation you’ll be able to compare your results and figure out how much you’ve improved.
Be sure to check your email to get your band range and quiz results. Keep that email safe—you may even want to retake this IELTS Listening diagnostic at a later date (once you’ve forgotten the questions and answers) and then compare your two sets of results.
IELTS Listening Prep: Your Next Steps
Once you’ve finished the IELTS Listening diagnostic quiz, Magoosh has some great additional materials for IELTS Listening prep. Be sure to check out Magoosh’s Complete Guide to IELTS Listening. And consider a subscription to Magoosh IELTS Prep.
To measure your other IELTS skills, see our diagnostic quizzes for Reading, Writing, and Speaking!
Hello , this applies for Ielts academic for UK ?
Yes, these questions apply to IELTS Academic, for the UK and for all countries. (The same version of IELTS Academic is administered worldwide.) These questions also apply to IELTS General Training, since the IELTS Listening section is exactly the same on both versions of the test.
Thank you for this tool. I would like to know if during real tests, writing “zonez instead of “zones”, “km” instead of “kilometers” will make our answer being wrong.
Thanks once again,
Guylaine
To my knowledge, there is no English standard (British, American, or other) that would allow for “zones” to be spelled as “zonez.” In general, any regular plural noun should end in s and never end in z. However, km is a common, accepted abbreviation for kilometer, so that would be perfectly permissible. 🙂
For Questions 31 and 34, I wrote “ecological zones” and “farm lands” as my answers.Why are they wrong? In the explanation, there is mention that the answer should not be more than one word,however, here it says that it can be two words.
Hi Zohaib,
My apologies! First off, according to the directions you followed, both answers really are correct. Secondly, I actually intended to say that you should use no more than one word in the instructions. The 2 word limit was a typo, for which I apologize. I’ve corrected the mistake, and the instructions now call for one word. But for the purposes of scoring yourself on this practice quiz, consider your answers to 31 and 34 to be correct. 🙂
In the actual ielts exam, should i use km kms or kilometers? 6 km was a wrong answer.
And how should i represent time. 6.00 or 6:00?
Hi Maria,
Great questions! 🙂 First, let’s talk about km vs kms vs kilometers… vs kilometres (phew!). You can use abbreviations for kilometer and other measurements on IELTS Listening. However, you should apply an “s” at the end of any abbreviation to make it plural… unless of course, you are dealing with a single kilometer, a single minute, a single gram, etc….
So the answer to number 4 on the quiz would be 6 kms, not 6 km. For more information, see this video from the official makers of the IELTS.
As for time, 6.00 or 6:00 should both be acceptable. But remember– be consistent! 🙂
HI,i read sometimes ago that it’s ideal for one to answer there ielts listening section with capital letter,is this correct or not?
Secondly,my answers to question 1to 4 are as follow
(1) AD569837JC6
(2) SCOTTS VILLE
(3) 6 KILOMETRS
(4) 2 BEDROOMS
and i was marked wrong,
Hi Clifford,
Capitalization is not tested in IELTS listening. You can write in all caps, all lowercase, or a mixture. However, spelling is tested here. Did you watch the entire explanation video for these questions? You can view it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRVBqBOeslU&feature=youtu.be
Here’s a quick explanation of why these answers are wrong:
(1) you missed a ‘5’(the 5th character in the number). The answer should be AD5659837JC6
(2) You broke “Scotts ville” into two words instead of 1
(3) “kilometers” is spelled incorrectly
(4) You wrote “bedrooms”, which is repeated information from the blank. With your answer, the blank would read ‘2 bedrooms bedrooms’. The correct answer here is just “2” or “two”
There are a lot of rules to follow for the listening test! You would have gotten most of these questions correct with some more attention to details like spelling and the information around the blank!
For Question 32, I used the word resource instead of resources and it marked me wrong. In fact resource even sounds grammatically right there. Please guide me on this?
Hi Aditya,
Here’s the question:
32 People living in dryland zones often over-use their own _________
, such as water.
For IELTS short answer questions, the answer must be directly taken from the audio and create complete and grammatically correct sentences. ‘Resources’ is correct because that is what the lecturer says in the audio, and because it is the option that creates the grammatically correct sentence. We are talking about more than one resource here, so “resources” is the correct answer.
I wrote 6Km for question 3 and it is marked wrong. Do I have to write the full character?
HI Lee, ‘km’ is an acceptable substitution for kilometers. It sounds like this may have been marked wrong because you did not leave a space between 6 and km.
What do you think about the difficulty of these questions (especially last 4) – one a scale of 5?
Great resource, thanks!