It can be difficult for students to keep up in the Listening section, especially if the passage is long or they are a slow writer. One way to make sure you don’t fall behind during each question is to use shorthands that you then fill in during the breaks between questions or at the end. For example, consider a question that asks you to list the symptoms of malaria, and then the audio lists them very quickly as below:

“Headache, fever, muscle pain, dizziness, anaemia, sweating, nausea….”

It can be hard to jot all these down in full without losing track of the speaker, and this is where shorthands come in. During the audio, you could write down

“Head…, fev…, musc…., diz…, ana…., sweat…., naus…”

This would take less time than writing out each symptom in full, and would mean you could keep up with the speaker better. You would then go back and fill these words in during the break after the question. It’s important to realize we do not recommend coming up with a short form for every word before the exam – rather, you write fragments of each word you meet that are recognizable enough that you can come back during the break and fill them out. You might not recognize “ana” as being short for “anaemia” a week later, but during the test the audio should be fresh enough in your memory that you can fill it in.

Good luck studying!