To become good at English, you need to listen to it often, but simply listening to English is not enough. Just like other languages in the world, English has many similar words that are difficult to distinguish by listening. That’s why you need to be able to confirm whether you heard them right.
The key to gaining expertise is in mastering dictation!
Dictation has a few advantages in that it helps you improve your micro-listening skills. This means that listening to every word may help you with identifying features of speech that connect ideas together, eg. referent words (he, she, it), prepositions (of, over, in), articles (a, an, the) and so on. Basically, it lets you understand speech a lot better by getting you to recognise different sounds when people speak at a natural speed. It also good to train your spelling skills this way.
So, in the IELTS Listening context, dictation is great for Section 1 where you will need to listen for specific information, such as filling in forms or completing a table, that requires you to write names, phone numbers, addresses, dates, etc.
INTRODUCE 2 APPS FOR LISTENING PRACTICE THROUGH DICTATION
TEDICT on Appstore, developed by CoCO SWING (IOS only)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tedict/id537961396?mt=8
AND EnglishLD.com (Web, Android & IOS) - Web is recommended.
