An IELTS Listening practice test wish list, then two candidates for the prize.

The perfect IELTS Listening test would have:

• Part One in which one of the two speakers would naturally be taking notes such as someone joining an employment agency
• Part One with one thing spelt out (preferably something that is not in a dictionary like a family name, with typical phrases for spelling like “Is that…?”)
• Part One with at least one number to write, with a variety of different kinds of numbers if there are two or more
• Part One split into two parts as it changes from “One word only” to “One word and/ or a number”, or vice versa
• Part Two with one speaker (or just a very quick introduction by another speaker)
• Part Two with a map
• Few or no typical IELTS trick questions like “… used to be next to… but now…” in Part Two map tasks
• Part Three with two or three speakers, in a typical situation in this part like a university tutor/ supervisor and students
• Part Three in which the candidate has to understand if the speakers are agreeing or disagreeing (such as two students discussing planning a presentation together with a who-said-what task)
• Part Four that is a 101 academic lecture that doesn’t need any specialist knowledge (as most of these parts are)
• Part Four with “One word only” all the way through, or possibly “One word and/ or number” for one of the two parts
• Part Four with language related to Writing Task 2 such as cause and effect, or problems and solutions
• Over the whole test, no repeated tasks apart from gapfill (so one group of multiple-choice questions, different kinds of matching tasks, etc)
• All sections are split into two with a pause, most or all at obvious places such as a change of page, task and/ or topic
• A range of different gapfill answers (plural nouns, singular nouns, uncountable nouns, different kinds of numbers, adjectives, etc)
• Wrong options in multiple choice, matching tasks etc mostly mentioned but not correct because of a range of different reasons (different subject, phrases like “… used to… but…”, etc), but also sometimes not mentioned at all
• Lots of good examples of typical phrases in IELTS Listening like checking/ clarifying, agreeing and disagreeing, signposting, and showing that answers are wrong or right

It would also be nice to have a flowchart in Part 3 to tie in with Writing Task 1, even though that would mean even more gapfill tasks. It wouldn’t hurt to have one gapfill task that asks for more than one word such as “no more than three words”, in case that is still part of the exam (despite not having been in the official Cambridge practice exams for ages). Part Four with no split also wouldn’t be too bad, as it least it adds some variety and shows the need to listen very carefully to the instructions.

And the test that most matches that list of the ones I’ve analysed so far is (drumroll):

Cambridge IELTS 16 Test 4

with IELTS 18 Test 2 as a reasonably close runner up.

Any other candidates?

For over 350 pages of more fun IELTS Listening materials, see here.

Updated 13 May 2025