As promised, in collaboration with the Didasko institution, we are expanding your learning options and offering help in the best possible way. It’s time to focus on high school seniors, and our expert Lana Mesmar Žegarac has shared some key tips on how to ace the reading and listening tasks on your final English exam
Aside from essay writing techniques and ways to save time while making sure you’ve fully completed your tasks, there are specific strategies you can use to successfully tackle reading and listening tasks. Let’s start with listening tasks. These usually come with multiple-choice answers, and your goal is to choose the most accurate one. At the higher level, examiners will test your attentiveness by throwing in “distractor” words you’ll hear in the recording that are actually part of the wrong answer (a technique called “word spotting”).
Listening Tasks
The answer to most multiple-choice questions will be a paraphrase of what you’ve heard. Use the time before the recording starts to carefully read the questions and all the possible answers, underlining keywords. For example:
- Alana explains that it is wrong to think gorillas are dangerous because:
- They are quite gentle animals that form family groups.
- In her many years of research, she has never seen them act aggressively.
- They only fight out of self-defense or to protect their families.
As you read and think about the keywords, try to predict what the passage will be about and what the correct answer might be. Think of possible synonyms for the words in the questions and answers that could appear in the passage. Even though there might not seem to be enough time for all of this, with practice, these actions can become almost simultaneous as you underline keywords.
“Word spotting” is a common technique used to test concentration in listening tasks, especially in matching questions where you have to connect a sentence to a specific speaker. For this type of task, it’s essential to think about synonyms before listening and mark the keywords. If this is the most challenging part for you, you’re not alone! The best way to handle it is to practice as much as possible and then always read the transcript afterwards to understand exactly where you went wrong. Learn from your mistakes!
Reading Tasks
Reading tasks are quite similar to listening ones in that you’re working with multiple-choice questions, but now you have the text in front of you to use. Once you’ve completed the task, the text should look very different from when you first started. Here’s where preparation is key: you’re dealing with longer texts, so you’ll need time for reading. Here’s the process:
- Read the questions.
- Identify key words.
- Think of synonyms.
- Forget EVERYTHING you know about the topic—this test is about your ability to work with the text, not your prior knowledge.
The questions are usually ordered according to the sequence of the answers in the text. So, the answer to the first question will likely be found in the first paragraph, the second in the next, and so on. The last question might test your understanding of the overall message, tone, or the author’s opinion on the subject. The best preparation for this type of task is reading various texts on different topics to familiarize yourself with jargon and writing styles in English.
In gap-filling tasks, where you must insert a word or sentence into the text, or choose from multiple options, it’s always important to read the text first without looking at the choices. While reading, try to think of what you would insert into the gap: if it’s a single word, think about what fits naturally, and sometimes that exact word will appear among the options. If it’s a sentence, think about what information is missing to make the text flow—does it need a person, a place, or a cause? This can guide your selection later.
One of the most dreaded tasks is where you have to fill in a missing word from the text without any options given. As with multiple-choice tasks, read the text and think about what type of word is missing: an article, a verb, a preposition? In most cases, functional words like prepositions or articles are what’s missing, rather than content words like nouns or verbs. According to one study, prepositions account for 34%, pronouns 17%, and conjunctions 8% of answers in this type of task.
Pay close attention to what comes before and after the gap. Always re-read the entire text afterward to ensure it makes sense, and if needed, revise your answers. For these tasks, it’s important to study collocations—which verbs go with which nouns, prepositions, etc. Grammar plays a major role here, especially when testing prepositions and articles, so this aspect shouldn’t be overlooked during preparation.
If you feel like you need more ideas like these, reach out to us, and we’ll be happy to help you succeed.
Author: Lana Mesmar Žegarac, Didasko
This post was created in collaboration with Didasko, a language school and adult education institution from Čakovec. They offer programs in various fields, verified by the Ministry of Education, through which participants earn recognized certificates.
