IELTS Listening multiple choice: how the wrong answers are built

In Listening multiple choice you hear every option mentioned. That is not an accident and it is not a trick you can avoid by listening harder. The question writers put the wrong options into the recording on purpose, in three specific ways, and once you know the three ways you stop being caught by them.

The three distractor types

1. Mentioned, then corrected. The speaker says one option and then changes their mind, is contradicted, or adds a condition that cancels it. "I was going to book the Tuesday session, but in the end Thursday suited everyone better." Tuesday is an option. Thursday is the answer. A candidate who writes the first thing they recognise gets it wrong, and the recording never comes back to help — the same pattern that map labelling builds its traps from.

2. Same words, different meaning. An option uses the exact words of the recording, but in the recording those words are doing something else. The question asks what the museum closed; the recording says the closed section reopened last year. The word matches, the meaning does not. Meanwhile the correct option is a paraphrase: the recording says "you'll need to pay extra", the option says "there is an additional charge".

3. True, but not the answer. The speaker says something that is perfectly true and appears as an option, but it does not answer the question that was asked. The question asks why the trip was postponed; the recording mentions that the bus was expensive (true, said, not the reason) and then gives the reason: the guide was ill.

Almost every wrong option you have ever picked in this question type was one of these three. In Section 3 the same machinery runs on a conversation, where the distractors are the discussion's discarded proposals.

The transcript

Read the three questions first, as you would in the test. Then read the transcript once, at reading speed, without going back. It is written in the style of a Part 2 monologue: a member of staff describing a community centre to new users.

1. The pottery class now takes place on A. Monday evenings B. Wednesday evenings C. Saturday mornings

2. Members who want to use the recording studio must A. book at least a week ahead B. complete a short training session C. pay an extra fee each time

3. The café is currently closed because A. the kitchen is being rebuilt B. a new manager has not been found C. there were not enough customers

Welcome, everyone. Let me go through what's on and a few things that have changed since the leaflet was printed. The pottery class is the one people ask about most. It used to be on Monday evenings, and the leaflet still says Monday, but we moved it in the spring because the tutor now teaches at the college on Mondays. So it's Wednesday evenings now, seven till nine. There was talk of a Saturday morning session as well, and we did run one for a couple of months, but too few people came, so that one's finished.

The recording studio is downstairs. It's free to members, which surprises a lot of people, and you don't need to book far ahead; usually a day or two is fine, and on weekday mornings you can often just walk in. What we do insist on is that everyone does the induction before their first session. It's only about forty minutes, it's run every Tuesday, and you can't use the equipment until you've done it. That's not us being difficult; the last mixing desk was ruined by someone who hadn't been shown how to power it down.

Finally, the café. A lot of you will have noticed it's shut. It was doing well, actually, especially at lunchtime, and there's nothing wrong with the kitchen, which was refitted only last year. The problem is simply that Maria, who ran it, retired in June and we haven't yet managed to appoint anyone to take over. We're interviewing next week, so with luck it'll reopen in a month or so.

The answers, and where each distractor was set

Question 1: B. Option A, Monday evenings, is type 1: mentioned and corrected ("It used to be on Monday evenings… So it's Wednesday evenings now"). Option C, Saturday mornings, is type 1 as well, with a delay: the Saturday session existed, and then "that one's finished". Two of the three options were said out loud and both were cancelled. The only defence is to keep listening after the first match until the speaker has stopped talking about the class.

Question 2: B. Option A, book at least a week ahead, is type 2: the words book and ahead are in the recording, but the meaning is the reverse ("you don't need to book far ahead"). Option C, pay an extra fee, is type 2 too: free to members is said, and a candidate who half-hears fee in free takes the bait. The answer is a paraphrase: the recording says induction, the option says training session. If you were waiting to hear the word training, you never heard the answer.

Question 3: B. Option A, the kitchen is being rebuilt, is type 1 in its negative form: the kitchen is mentioned in order to be ruled out ("there's nothing wrong with the kitchen"). Option C, not enough customers, is type 3: the recording says the café "was doing well", so this is not even true here, but on a harder question it would have been true and still not the reason. The reason is the one the speaker labels as the reason: "The problem is simply that…"

The four habits that beat all three types

1. Read the options before the audio and underline what makes them different. In question 1 the options differ only by day and time of day. That is the only thing you are listening for; everything else in the paragraph is noise.
2. Expect the answer to be paraphrased and the distractors to be quoted. If an option's exact words are in the recording, be suspicious, not relieved.
3. Do not commit at the first match. Hold the option lightly until the speaker moves to a new topic. In this transcript every correct answer arrived after a wrong one had been said.
4. Listen for the speaker's final position. Corrections, conditions and "but" are where the answer lives. A sentence that begins with a correction ("It used to be…") is announcing that what follows the correction is what you write down.

How to practise it

Take any Listening multiple-choice section and, before you check the answers, label every wrong option you were tempted by with its type: corrected, same-words, or true-but-irrelevant. After a few sections you will notice that one type catches you far more than the others, and that is the habit to fix. Then do the section again a week later with the audio at normal speed and see whether the label appears in your head before the option does. A free Listening section, played once like the exam, gives you fresh material to try it on.