dear student,welcome to this new oriental ielts preparation course and the listening book in particular:ielts, the international english language testing system, is one of the world's most popular english language tests for entry into university or higher education where english is the language of communication. in other words, it is your academic passport!you may find that listening is one of the more difficult modules in ielts because you have to listen, process the language, read the questions, and write the answers all the same time. you will practise a lot of these in this book.this book is designed to help you to prepare for the test in a academic way. you will learn a lot of useful vocabulary, and you will learn how to predict and listen for different kinds of information.the exercises have been worked out for you extensive practice, and useful tips have been provided in the hope that you will able to answer different kinds of questions in the listening test.you will also further develop you listening skills by listening to dialogues and monologues spoken with a variety of accents on topics that typically occur in the ielts listening test.thank you for choosing to study for the ielts with new oriental.rod ellis