Sentence Completion or Fill in the Blanks in the IELTS Listening section of the exam is definitely there. Therefore, you should know the secret tips and magic tricks to encounter Sentence Completion and Fill in the Blanks of Listening in IELTS. Learn as we proceed with a variety of solved sample examples to guide you better.

IELTS Listening: Sentence Completion or Fill in the Blanks Tips, Tricks, and Strategies.

A quick overview of Sentence Completion and Fill in the Blank.

Sentence Completion or Fill in the Blanks in your Listening section of the IELTS exam will come up with a sentence to complete from the audio you hear. The blanks can appear anywhere in the sentence, but usually, they are framed at the end of the sentence, and we will make you ready to crack any Listening completion sentence with this reading.

What to do before Listening to audio begins?

Before the audio plays, there is some time to read the questions. How to utilize it to the fullest? Let’s learn with a solved example.
Questions 21 — 24
Complete the sentences below.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS OR A NUMBER for each answer.

21 Jenna and Marco must complete their project by ______
22 The project will be a study of the increase in _______
23 The project will be assessed by _______
24 Jenna and Marco agree they need ______ for the project.

Go through the sentences carefully & quickly. The primary key to IELTS Listening is understanding what questions’ answers you are looking for.

For instance, in the example given above, there is a project completion date followed by what the project is about, who will assess it, and How to proceed.

Here the keywords are – complete, a study of, assessed, need. Underlining those keywords to concentrate on while hearing the audio is another tip to crack the Complete the Sentences of Listening IELTS exam. Keywords help you eliminate the distractors set up by the test setter to make the candidate lose bands.

Apart from keywords, as the difficulty level of questions increases with each section, if Fill in the Blanks is in section 3 or 4, the candidate is more likely to lose a band in answering questions grammatically—for instance, use of an article with an answer or using the plural form of a solution.

You will be a little behind at the beginning of your Listening section practice with the tricks mentioned above. However, as you will follow, you will be the master of these tricks. You will see a boost in your IELTS examination overall band scores by following our secret listening strategies.

What to do while the IELTS Listening task audio is playing?

Once reviewing the sentences is done, reread the first two sentences thoroughly to avoid missing them. As your audio plays, a secret tip to get 9 bands is avoiding distractors.

Follow the notes you prepared while scanning the sentences to succeed.Audio Player00:0000:00Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.

Look at the transcript and check out for distractors.

Transcript of the audio-

● Come on, Marco, we’ve got to get on and sort out this project for professor Berkeley. Hang on. I want to make sure we’ve got all the information. Now, Where are we? Well, today, we need to sort out exactly what we’re going to do and how we’re going to divide the workup. Okay. How long have we got,
by the way? The end of term is April 6 & he said to hand in a week. So that’s March 25 at the latest because the beginning of that week is the 21st. So not long. Right.

● Have you got the notes there? Yes. He wants us to do a fairly small-scale study like the last one on whether or not businesses were offering more benefits to staff. We now got to look at the rise in older workers. We should be fairly straightforward. Yeah. As long as we keep it small. (Here, the biggest
distractor is using the word ‘study’ before the actual answer. Many candidates are likely to write the answer to this sentence as ‘staff benefits’ or ‘benefits to staff’, which is incorrect.)

● Who’s marking it? I don’t know. Sometimes he gets the Ph.D. students to market for him. Oh. Actually, it just says here a senior lecturer. I suppose it’s too much for professor Barclay to do them all. Yeah.

● Anyway, how are we going to go about this? Well, We have to decide how big we want it to be but I think we must sort out a timetable for the project.
Otherwise, nothing will get done. Okay. Do you want to do that? Alright. I’ll do it as soon as we finish here.

What to do after the IELTS Listening task audio is done playing?

Now that the audio is done playing, you cannot play it twice and again. So, what to do if you missed an answer or are not sure of your response. As you get some time to look at your responses after the audio, be accurate with your response also grammatically, this is to say, use of an article, plural or singular form, date format, and instructions limit for your reply.

Look at the Answers:-
21) March 25th
22) older workers
23) (a) senior lecturer
24) timetable

21 Jenna and Marco must complete their project by ______ Here the answer is March 25th or 25th March, be sure to use the word as conversed in the audio to be specific; here, it is March 25. For such types of questions, at times, the examiner asks for a date. For example, Jenna and Marco must complete their project by ______ March. Many candidates tend to respond as 25th March, which is incorrect.

22 The project will be a study of the increase in _______ Here ‘older workers’ is correct but ‘older worker’ is incorrect. If you aren’t of the proper form of your response, look at the sentence grammar. ‘A study on the increase in’ – there is mention of a rise in something which has to have a plural form.
Assess your answers and practice to be more accurate in IELTS Listening Fill in the Blanks or Sentence Completion type of questions.