IELTS & TOEFL Listening Practice: Academic Vocabulary

Want to improve your listening skills? In this lesson you'll practice your listening in English by hearing stories about university life. This video is especially important if you are studying in an English university, if you plan to, or if you are going to take an English test like IELTS or TOEFL. You will hear conversational English with university and academic vocabulary, including common slang and expressions that native English speakers use. Then take the quiz here: http://wwww.engvid.com/ielts-toefl-listening-practice-academic-vocabulary/

Follow this link to view or download a free resource page with this lesson's vocabulary: http://www.engvid.com/wp-content/media/Listening-Practice-University-Vocabulary.pdf

Also check out these vocabulary lessons to learn the words used in this lesson:
Learn English Vocabulary: The people you will meet at UNIVERSITY – http://www.engvid.com/english-vocabulary-people-at-university/
University English: Expressions and Vocabulary – http://www.engvid.com/university-english-expressions-vocabulary/

More IELTS videos: http://www.engvid.com/english-exams/ielts/
More IELTS practice & complete guide: http://www.goodluckielts.com/

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, there. My name is Emma, and in today's video, we are going to do some listening practice. This video is going to be particularly useful if you are going to university or plan to go to university, if you are writing the TOEFL test, or if you are writing the IELTS. University words come up a lot on the TOEFL and the IELTS, especially in the listening, so this video will help you improve your listening, specifically about university words.

Okay, so to get started, I want you, on a piece of paper, to put something like this. Okay? I want you to write the word "university" in the center, "verbs", "people", "places", "things", "slang". Okay? I want you to copy this, because I'm going to have you pause the video for one minute... Or maybe... You know what? Give yourself three minutes, and I want you to think about all the words you can think of that have to do with university. Okay? So, for example, people, I might think the "prof"; verbs, I might think "enroll". But try to come up with as many as you can. Places, maybe "cafeteria"; things, "course"; slang, "hit the books". Okay? So I want you to try to come up with as many words as you can, and then we will talk about these words.

Okay, so I hope you've done some brainstorming, and you've come up with a list of words. What I want you to do now is I want you to see: Did you come up with any of the same words that I came up with? Okay? So, behind me, I have a bunch of words I thought of. Do you have the same words, or totally different words? I put the word: "advisor", "flunk", "fall behind", "marks", "grades", "freshman", "sophomore", "junior", "senior", "prof", "pull an all-nighter", "cram", "TA", "ace the test", "dean", "instructor", "registrar", "drop a course", "hit the books", "undergrad", "grad student", and "hand in". So these are all very common words we use when we talk about university. If there are any words here that you don't know the meaning of, I highly recommend watching some previous videos I've done on these words that explain them fully. Okay? So there will be a link for that, so feel free, if you don't know these words, to click on the link.

So now what I'm going to have you do is we are going to do a practice listening. Okay? We are going to... You are going to listen to me tell you a story about university. You are going to look at these words, and if you hear me say the word, you're going to put a checkmark right beside the words you hear. If you are on engVid, there's going to be a link that you can click to download these words so you can print them off and have them in front of you. Same with on YouTube, if you're watching this off of YouTube, there will be a link you can click on in the description, and that will take you to a place where you can download a list of these words. Otherwise, if you don't want to do that, you can actually just copy them out by hand, just write down these words. And then when you're ready, you can listen to me, and all you need to do is if you hear the word, you put a checkmark. If you don't hear the word in what I'm going to say, then no checkmark. Okay?

Okay, so let's get started. So, again, put a checkmark if you hear the word. I went to the University of Toronto. I remember when I was an undergrad, I found school very difficult, especially in my freshman year. I guess the main problem was it was my first time away from home. School had always come naturally to me before. I wasn't used to cramming and pulling all-nighters. I naturally had been a straight-A student.