Are my Listening test answers correct or incorrect?
There are a few things that confuse students when they're looking at the answer key:
- Dates - IELTS marking is very lenient on dates and will accept any format. That means if you write 25 December 1999 or 25th Dec 99 these will both be marked as correct as long as it's the correct answer.
- Times - As with dates, ELTS marking will accept any format. If the answer is twenty five minutes past five, you can write: 5:25 or 5.25. Both would be correct. If you need to write AM or PM, then you can write: AM/am/a.m. All would be acceptable as punctuation and capital letters are not penalised in the Listening test.
- Symbols - If an answer includes information like a currency or percentage, you can either write it as a word or as a symbol, e.g. 'dollars' or $, 'percent' or %.
- Numbers and Measurements - These can be abbreviated or written in full. All of the following would be correct:
- Fifty kilometres
- 50 kilometres
- 50 km
- 50 kms
- Brackets/parentheses - You will often see something like this in the answer key '(on the) bottom'. This means that it's okay to include or exclude the words in the brackets. That is to say that 'on the bottom' and 'bottom' are both considered to be correct.
- Spelling - It is absolutely essential that your spelling is correct, and it must match the answer key exactly. Any small mistake will be considered as incorrect. Even a missing hyphen will be considered as wrong, so if you write 'well developed', instead of 'well-developed', you will not get a mark for this question. Similarly, if the answer key includes an accent over the word 'café', then 'cafe' will not be correct. If there is more than one accepted spelling, they will all be included in the answer key. For instance, if the answer key says 'bestseller / best seller / best-seller', then any of those options will be correct. This is one reason why it is important to only use authentic materials when you practice.
Note: always make sure you have followed the instructions carefully and have not included more words or numbers than is allowed.
