Now that the Listening component has finally arrived after the delays caused by the pandemic, I decided that I should try doing the M22 HL exam, in order to explore how it worked and the level of the standards required. So I did… but rather cursorily and hastily. I glanced rapidly at the question paper… then played the recording of text A, noting rapidly which seemed to me to be the correct answers. I didn’t play text A again, but scanned further in the recording in order to find the start of text B – which I played, again noting answers casually as I went. I repeated the process with Text C, finding, to my surprise, that the questions were rather trickier – so after my single playing of the recording, I puzzled for a while over the questions, in a couple of cases choosing my answer more by process of elimination than by my rather hazy memory of what had actually been said.

The I checked my answers with the mark scheme – and found that I’d scored 22/25, equivalent to a Grade 6. Oh dear! A poor performance for a senior examiner!

Well, my own fault, really. As I’ve said, I treated the whole process casually, even inattentively, because I was more assessing the quality of the test rather than concentrating on getting the right answers (but I did try, honest!). I merely glanced at the questions before starting the recording; I jumped quickly at my choice of answers as the recording proceeded; I bypassed the second playing of each text; and so I didn’t cross-check my rapid choice of answers. In fact, despite my native-speaker Listening skills, I behaved like a rather silly, lazy student!

Which leads me to suggest some exam techniques that should be emphasised to students…

1. Read the questions   The point of this is to work out, and note, what they should be looking for in each question. This will probably be a key word or phrase (e.g. “The first priority of autonomous driving technology is…” > MCQ – so underline ‘first priority’, and so listen out for anything about priorities or any similar wording).
2. Make notes or marks   There is a space on each page of the question paper headed ‘Notes’. I’m not sure that this is actually very useful – under the time pressure of the unstoppable playing of the recording, it must be better to concentrate on the questions themselves, making little marks and indications, rather than jumping back to the Notes box to waste time writing. It is worth explaining to the students that only what is written inside the answer boxes is marked – all other scrawls and scribbles on the paper are ignored.
3. Questions follow the sequence of the text   So student should proceed methodically through the questions – as soon as they have a probable answer for one question, they should move on to the next question, listening out for the answer to that one.
4. Choose then check    During the first play-through, they should note (in some form or another: see 2. above) the likely answer to each question. In the pause between play-throughs, they should re-read the questions, checking that their answer is indeed likely – and if not, they should know that they will have to listen especially carefully at that point in the recording. During the second play-through, they should check their probable answer against what they hear – is that really what the recording says?
5. Write in the answer boxes   The M22 Subject Report makes a point of this – only what is in the boxes will be marked. So, once students have checked their chosen answers, they should write them clearly in the boxes – after the second play-through: they shouldn’t think of writing anything in the boxes until they have checked.

Finally, a mildly critical comment – the Listening comprehension exam also involves reading comprehension, since the questions appear in writing and the students have to understand what has been written. This is unavoidable, of course, but it does mean that the questions have to be written very carefully so as to be accessible. I was critical of two details in the M22 HL paper. Firstly, an example of over-complex writing – one MCQ option was “configurations of the system”: how many students would know ‘configurations’? ... and anyway, “the system” was ambiguous. Secondly, an example of imprecise phrasing – in Q15, a ‘choose true statements’ question type, one option referred to “change the city skyline” … but the target phrase in the recording was about changing “the urban layout”. Now, to me, those phrases are not synonymous – a ‘skyline’ is a vertical image, while a ‘layout’ is a horizontal image. (And so I rejected this option, and got it wrong … well, that’s my excuse anyway!)

Overall, then, it is worth training the students to be methodical and careful about how they do the Listening exam. The answers are all there, if you listen attentively – but you also have to note the answers as they roll by, and that means annotating, but only the minimum that is effective. Sell them the advice that I give above.