Matching speakers and opinions

In IELTS Listening Part 3, two or three people (often students and a tutor) discuss a study topic, and they rarely agree about everything. One common task is matching. You see a numbered list of items, such as sources, methods or stages of a project, and a box of options labelled A, B, C… Each option is an opinion or a feature. The items are in the same order as the recording, but the options in the box are not. There are usually more options than items, so some letters are never used.

Another version asks who holds an opinion: one speaker, the other speaker, or both of them.

The TOEFL Conversation task tests a similar skill on a smaller scale: a short conversation between two people, usually about campus or daily life, followed by two questions. One of them may ask what a speaker thinks, or why someone says something.

In every case the challenge is the same. You will hear several opinions about each item, and you need the one that the right person finally holds.

1. Before you listen, shorten each option. Turn “It is out of date” into a quick note such as old, and think of paraphrases: published years ago, things have changed since then.
2. Write the speakers' names above the questions as soon as you hear them. In “who says it?” tasks, every answer depends on knowing which voice is which.
3. Don't answer after the first comment. One speaker gives a view, and the other usually reacts. Agreement makes it a shared view. Maybe, but… or Really? usually means it is not.
4. Watch for a change of mind. If someone says I've thought about it since, the new view replaces the old one.
5. Listen for the move to the next item. Phrases like Right, what about…? or Next, there's… tell you to move your eyes to the next question.

Listen to two students, Jasmine and Felix, planning how to collect data for a project. Before the audio, a strong listener reads these opinions and gets ready to write J (Jasmine), F (Felix) or both next to each one.

1. Questionnaire answers may not be accurate.
2. Many volunteers would stop keeping a diary before the week ends.
3. People are more patient than expected.
4. Photographing the bins would give the most accurate data.

1. Both. Felix doubts that the answers would be honest, and Jasmine replies That's a fair point… the figures might not be very reliable. “Fair point” followed by her own reason shows real agreement.
2. Jasmine. She says most people would give up after two or three days. Felix disagrees: Not if we explain why it matters.
3. Felix. People are more patient than you think. Jasmine's Hmm, we'll see is doubt, not agreement, so this is not a shared view.
4. Both. This is the trap. Felix wasn't keen at first because it felt like spying, so a listener who answers too early writes Jasmine. But Felix then says I've thought about it since, and I agree with you now. His final view is the one that counts.

Notice that Jasmine's first comment about getting hundreds of replies is not tested at all. Not everything you hear is in the questions, so don't let it distract you.