Listening
Listening Part 3

C1 Advanced Exam

Overview

During Part 3 of the C1 Advanced listening paper, you will usually hear a conversation between two or more speakers that's about 4 minutes long.

You must answer 6 multiple-choice questions about what you hear.

You will hear an introduction about what the task is about. This is written on the exam paper as well.
Then you will have 70 seconds to look at the questions.
The recording will start after that.
The recording will be repeated with little time between both recordings.

This is often an interview, so someone will be asking questions to interviewee(s). Usually there is one question on the exam paper for each question in the interview.
Answer the question first without looking at the options. When you think you know an answer, look at the options and see which one best matches.
Pay attention to words that represent feelings and attitudes.
Pay attention to reporting words (emphasise, agree, support, compare, suggest, criticise).
Listen for words that indicate degrees of certainty (certainty, not really, most likely).

There will be words you don't know. Ignore them and try to use information around them to get the answer.
The answer will probably use different words than you hear. Cambridge loves paraphrasing and using synonyms. So, if you hear the the exact same words that you see in an option, that option probably is not the right answer.
When you begin to hear an answer, listen to the entire passage. Words like however or but can change the entire meaning of a phrase, so Cambridge likes to use these.
When practicing, if you get something wrong, look at the transcript and understand why your answer is wrong.
All answers come in the same order as the questions.
The options are filled with things mentioned in the audio. They do this to distract you. It's always best to try to answer the question yourself first before looking at the options so that you don't get confused.

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