IELTS Listening: Strategy to solve Multiple Response Question

The IELTS Listening Section has a wide variety of question types to test the listening skills of the candidate. One of the most popular ones is known as Multiple Response Questions. When students usually see the question for the first time, they think it is quite easy.

The complication arises when they have to solve the questions along with the audio.

Most students don’t have a lot of practice with Multiple Response Questions since such questions are rare in the education system. But multiple response questions can be quite scoring if you use the appropriate strategies. 

The multiple response questions have five options from which you have to pick two correct answers. The ideas in the wrong options may or may not be in the audio.

The options are jumbled up so the options do not follow the audio for sequence. Multiple response questions can be found in Part 2 or Part 3 of the IELTS Listening Test.

Even though the format of the audio is different in Part 2 and 3, the strategy to pick out the correct answer largely remains the same.

Format of IELTS Listening Multiple Response Questions

Multiple response questions are of IELTS’ favourite question types for Part 2.

You can identify the question by the instruction “Choose TWO letters, A-E”.

The audio may discuss all options, of which two will be correct and three will be incorrect or irrelevant. 

How to identify correct answer choice on IELTS Listening Multiple Response Question?

Like multiple-choice questions, the correct answers for multiple response questions do not always have the same words in the audio and the option.

You must understand the meaning of the answer and then match it to the contents of the audio. Only proper nouns remain the same.

Proper nouns are names of people, places and things. Try to underline the keywords of every option so that you can match it to the audio.

It is vital that you know what each option means because the audio format is not constant and the correct answers will not be one after another in the audio or in the question paper.

Your best bet might be to understand the conditions of the question and answer according to the tone of the speaker instead of matching the words. 

How to identify incorrect answer choice on IELTS Listening Multiple Response Question?

The three wrong options will have words from the audio. The wrong options would have additional or irrelevant information, which would sound like the correct option because the words would be in the audio as well.

This is a trap set by IELTS to catch students who lost even a little concentration. There may be fillers between each answer, but there is no sequence as such.

Sometimes the words used in the filler would be on the question paper as well. That is another trap set by IELTS to waste the student’s time and make them miss the right answer. 

Conditions of Multiple Response Question on IELTS Listening

Part 2 is about identifying the features of a place being described in the monologue. The question would have a condition about the features of the place. The conditions are usually advantages, disadvantages, positives, and negatives of the main subject of the monologue.

If you find that there are no conditions in the question, look for adjectives in the answer that need to be matched for the option to be correct.

You should read the question to identify the condition, and then underline the keywords of each option. This will make hearing the tone or condition associated with each keyword simpler.

The key is to keep moving along with the audio in case you miss an answer.

Otherwise you will miss other answers just because you were not clear on one answer. Overthinking does not help with this question type.

Conclusion

You will be asked to pick two right answers from five options for multiple response questions. There are four conditions found in multiple response questions. They are advantage, disadvantage, positives, and negatives of the subject of the monologue.

The correct answer always corresponds to the audio with meaning. The wrong answers have the same words as the ones used in the audio. The answers are not sequential but you must keep pace with the audio otherwise you will miss out on the next answers as well.