I took the IELTS exam twice. When comparing the two tests, the overall scores of the second test did not improve significantly, but each test improved slightly, especially the listening one.

The most difficult part of IELTS listening test is that I found it hard to understand the content of the conversations. I remembered when I did the practice papers last year, the most frustrating thing for me was that my listening score was always hovering at 6. I figured out the following ways to improve my IELTS listening skills.

First, because the audio of the IELTS listening is only played once, so you need to seize all the time to browse the questions in advance. When you have a general understanding of the topic, and then listen to the audio, it will be much easier. Secondly, please try shadow listening. The steps I use are: first do an IELTS listening practice, and play the most difficult parts again and again. When you play a sentence, write it down on your notebook and make sure you understand the meaning, and then compare it with the transcript and look up any new words. Learn how to pronounce these words. If there are any mistakes or things you didn't understand, make a note of them, and review them later. Keep this up for a half month, your listening level will improve significantly.

Finally, I would like to recommend some useful websites and resources for you to prepare for IELTs:

• https://ieltscat.xdf.cn You could use this website to do the practice papers published by Cambridge.
• https://ieltsonlinetests.com If you have done all the Cambridge papers and you want to do more practices, you can go to this website to do more papers.

Hope you get a very wonderful score on your IELTS test!