Cambridge IELTS 15 Academic Listening Test 4

• Each audio plays once. You CANNOT pause or rewind during the exam.
• Take notes on the question section as you listen.
• After audio ends, you have 10 minutes to review and finalize answers.

Cambridge IELTS 15 Academic Listening Test 4 rewards candidates who treat each section as a separate event with its own warm-up rather than rolling through all four on momentum. Section 1 features a customer survey or questionnaire; Section 2 moves into a tour inside a leisure facility; Section 3 shifts into students preparing a joint presentation; and Section 4 closes with a lecture on water resources.

Section 1 uses form completion; Section 2 uses map labelling plus multi-answer multiple choice; Section 3 uses multiple choice plus completion; Section 4 uses note completion. The transition between Section 2 and Section 3 catches most candidates: the speaker count doubles and the vocabulary tightens, so reset your concentration during the preview rather than carrying momentum across.

Read the preview gaps backwards from the last to the first — this forces you to notice the late-section cues that students normally miss. Pencil rough answers and circle anything you doubted, then resolve those during transfer. Watch your word limits: a four-word answer in a NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS task is automatically wrong. Steady, methodical work earns a clean band 7.

New to this skill? Read the Listening question types guide for tactics, scoring rules, and frequency analysis across Cambridge 10–20. Or browse all Listening practice tests.

Looking for written strategy? See the IELTS Blog for in-depth posts.