Specific Skills and Strategies for Matching

Questions
In the previous topic, you learnt how to answer matching questions in the listening test and your course trainer showed you some
common before and while listening strategies for this question type.

In matching questions, it is important to identify synonyms and recognise paraphrases of the key words in the questions. Let's learn more
about these two skills.

Identifying synonyms

One of the key strategies for answering matching questions is to think of synonyms of the key words in the question. This is particularly
important as the recording will not necessarily use the same words as you see in the question. For this reason, you need to be able to
identify the synonyms you hear.

Activity

The words below are taken from a question about using multimedia in university courses.

Match the words on the left column to their synonyms on the right.

Recognising paraphrases

In addition to synonyms, you will see that in the listening test, some of the options in matching questions are completely paraphrased.
That is, they are mentioned in the recording but using different words. It is important that you listen actively and that you recognise what
is being said so that you can select the correct answer.

Activity

Read the following sentences taken from the listening text on using multimedia in university courses.

Select the most appropriate paraphrase for each sentence.