IELTS Band 8 Plan Week 1: Quick Check and Part 4 Lectures

This week's sessions

Tick each session when you finish it. Your ticks are saved only in this browser.

Day 1 · 🎧 Listening · about 35 minTake the quick checkDo all four parts of the quick check. Note any skill below 7.5: that's where to spend extra time. Start your error log with every mark you lost.
Day 2 · 🎧 Listening · about 25 minStance and late correctionsRead this week's lesson, then do the Part 4 practice set below. For each wrong option, write down where the speaker mentioned it and why it isn't the answer.
Day 3 · 🎧 Listening · about 35 minListening full test 2Do the full test without pausing, reading two questions ahead in Part 4. Log every lost mark by type: stance, late correction, speed, spelling, word limit or grammar.
Day 4 · 🎧 Listening · about 35 minListening mock testDo a full mixed listening test. Before you check answers, spend two minutes checking spelling, plurals and word limits; count how many marks that saves.
Day 5 · 🔤 Vocabulary · about 20 minAcademic collocationsStudy 20 academic collocations. For each one, write a sentence you might hear in a Part 4 lecture, and add any you'd misspell to your error log.

This week's lesson: Part 4 lectures and a five-mistake budget

At band 7, you can drop around ten answers in Listening. At band 8, the budget is closer to four or five across the whole test, so one difficult question type or one spelling habit can decide your result. Most band 7.5 listeners understand nearly everything; the lost marks come from three places.

1. Follow the argument, not just the signposts

The band 7 plan taught signposts such as turning now to. In a band 8-level lecture, the answer often depends on the speaker's stance: what they accept, what they doubt and what they reject.

"It's tempting to conclude that the drought caused the collapse. I'd put it differently: the drought exposed weaknesses that were already there."

If the question asks what the speaker thinks caused the collapse, the answer isn't simply the drought. Listen for stance language: I'd put it differently, that's only half the story, the evidence is thinner than it looks, what's often overlooked is.

2. Distractors that are corrected later

At this level, a wrong idea isn't always rejected straight away. A speaker may give a detail, then correct it a sentence or two later:

"Most of the samples came from the coast... well, the early ones did. By the end, the majority were from inland sites."

Keep each question open until the speaker moves on to the next point, and be ready to cross out an answer you've already written. Two patterns to listen for:

Not so much X as Y: "The problem wasn't so much cost as storage." The answer is storage.
True, but not the main point: "Cost mattered, of course, but the real constraint was space."

3. Answers close together

Part 4 usually runs without a break, and some answers arrive only a sentence apart. If you're still writing one answer, you can miss the next. Two habits help:

Write the first few letters, keep listening, and complete the word when there's a gap in the answers.
Read two questions ahead, so you always know the key word of the next gap as well as the current one.

If you lose your place, don't search backwards. Find the next question you can hear, answer it, and guess the one you missed.

Precision: where 7.5 becomes 8

Many of the last marks are lost after you've understood the answer:

Word limit: ONE WORD ONLY means storage, not the storage.
Grammar of the gap: a gap after a range of needs a plural noun.
Spelling of academic words: environment, government, maintenance, accommodation, temperature. Keep a list of the ones you get wrong and test yourself.
Plurals said quickly: seed and seeds sound similar at speed, so check the grammar of the note.

Start your error log

This week you'll start one document that you'll use for the whole plan. For every lost mark in every skill, write the question type, what you wrote, the correct answer and why you lost it: stance, late correction, speed, spelling, word limit or grammar. After a few tests, the pattern shows you exactly what to fix. At band 8, the log matters more than the number of tests you do.

Practice for this week

Stance and late corrections

Loading questions…

Weekly check: Listening full test 3

Aim for about 35 out of 40. Check whether your lost marks fall into the same types as earlier in the week.

Start the weekly check

When you finish, come back to your plan home: your dashboard updates with the new score.

Answers, explanations and transcripts

Finish the test first, then open each section to check your answers. Every answer has an explanation.

Stance and late corrections

Transcript: Part 4: a lecture on seed banks

Today I want to look at seed banks: collections of seeds that are stored so that plant species, and especially crop varieties, aren't lost.

The basic principle is simple. Most seeds can survive for a long time if they're dried and then kept cold. Dry them to a low moisture content, store them at around minus twenty degrees, and many will stay alive for decades. Seed banks are often described as a kind of insurance policy, and that's a reasonable comparison, but I'd put it slightly differently. Insurance pays out after a disaster. A seed bank is more like a library: its value lies in being used, by plant breeders and researchers, long before any disaster happens.

Now, which seeds are stored? You might assume the priority is the major food crops themselves: wheat, rice, maize. Those are certainly well represented. But what's often overlooked is the importance of crop wild relatives, the wild plants that our crops were originally developed from. They tend to be far more varied genetically, and breeders have used them to find resistance to disease and drought.

Storage isn't the end of the story, though. Seeds don't stay alive forever, so collections have to be tested regularly. A sample is taken and germinated, and if the proportion that sprouts falls too low, the batch has to be grown out: planted, allowed to mature, and harvested for fresh seed. This regeneration is, I'd argue, the real cost of running a seed bank. Building a freezer is a one-off expense; growing out thousands of samples is labour that never ends.

There's also a group of plants that can't be stored this way at all. Their seeds are sometimes called recalcitrant, and they die if they're dried. Many of them are tropical trees, including several important food crops. Early collections tried simply keeping these seeds cool and moist, but most only lasted a few months. Researchers now focus on cryopreservation: storing a tiny part of the seed, usually the embryo, in liquid nitrogen. It works, but it's slow, and the method has to be adapted for each species.

Finally, a word about location. It's tempting to think the safest arrangement is one enormous central vault. In fact, the system depends on duplication: copies of the same samples held in different countries, so that a single fire, flood or conflict can't destroy a collection.

Answer key (11 answers)

#	Question	Answer	Why
1	Most seeds survive for decades if they are dried and kept ___	cold	Gap 2 is the stance trap: 'insurance policy' comes first, but the speaker says 'I'd put it slightly differently… more like a library'. Gap 4: 'harvested for fresh seed' (seeds is also accepted). The notes paraphrase around each answer: 'stay alive for decades' → 'survive for decades'; 'the proportion that sprouts falls too low' → 'too few seeds sprout'.
2	The speaker prefers to compare a seed bank to a ___	library	Gap 2 is the stance trap: 'insurance policy' comes first, but the speaker says 'I'd put it slightly differently… more like a library'. Gap 4: 'harvested for fresh seed' (seeds is also accepted). The notes paraphrase around each answer: 'stay alive for decades' → 'survive for decades'; 'the proportion that sprouts falls too low' → 'too few seeds sprout'.
3	…have used crop wild relatives to find resistance to disease and ___	drought	Gap 2 is the stance trap: 'insurance policy' comes first, but the speaker says 'I'd put it slightly differently… more like a library'. Gap 4: 'harvested for fresh seed' (seeds is also accepted). The notes paraphrase around each answer: 'stay alive for decades' → 'survive for decades'; 'the proportion that sprouts falls too low' → 'too few seeds sprout'.
4	…sprout in a test, the batch is planted and harvested to produce fresh ___	seed (also accepted: seeds)	Gap 2 is the stance trap: 'insurance policy' comes first, but the speaker says 'I'd put it slightly differently… more like a library'. Gap 4: 'harvested for fresh seed' (seeds is also accepted). The notes paraphrase around each answer: 'stay alive for decades' → 'survive for decades'; 'the proportion that sprouts falls too low' → 'too few seeds sprout'.
5	Recalcitrant seeds die if they are ___	dried	Gap 2 is the stance trap: 'insurance policy' comes first, but the speaker says 'I'd put it slightly differently… more like a library'. Gap 4: 'harvested for fresh seed' (seeds is also accepted). The notes paraphrase around each answer: 'stay alive for decades' → 'survive for decades'; 'the proportion that sprouts falls too low' → 'too few seeds sprout'.
6	Cryopreservation usually stores the seed's ___	embryo	Gap 2 is the stance trap: 'insurance policy' comes first, but the speaker says 'I'd put it slightly differently… more like a library'. Gap 4: 'harvested for fresh seed' (seeds is also accepted). The notes paraphrase around each answer: 'stay alive for decades' → 'survive for decades'; 'the proportion that sprouts falls too low' → 'too few seeds sprout'.
7	What does the speaker consider the main ongoing cost of a seed bank?	B. Testing and regrowing stored samples	'This regeneration is, I'd argue, the real cost.' A is the distractor: a freezer is described as 'a one-off expense', so it isn't ongoing.
8	What does the speaker say about crop wild relatives?	B. Their value is frequently underestimated.	'What's often overlooked is the importance of crop wild relatives' = their value is underestimated. C is close but not stated: breeders used them to find resistance; the speaker doesn't compare their drought resistance with crops.
9	What happened when recalcitrant seeds were kept cool and moist?	A. Most survived for only a short time.	'Most only lasted a few months.' B describes dried seeds stored at minus twenty degrees, not recalcitrant ones.
10	What is the speaker's view of storing seeds in one central vault?	C. It would leave collections at risk.	'It's tempting to think the safest arrangement is one enormous central vault. In fact, the system depends on duplication.' A is the view the speaker rejects; a single site could be destroyed by 'a single fire, flood or conflict'.
11	Which TWO difficulties with cryopreservation does the speaker mention?	A. It is a slow process. · C. It has to be adapted for each species.	'It works, but it's slow, and the method has to be adapted for each species.' Cost is discussed earlier, for regeneration, not for cryopreservation. Tropical trees are mentioned as examples of recalcitrant seeds, not as a limit of the method.

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