100+ Dictation Words for IELTS Listening with Strategies to Learn

The IELTS Listening test has a number of words which are very easy to understand but very difficult to spell. The IELTS Listening dictation words will help you to become more accurate and prevent you from losing marks. Practicing difficult spellings, learning word meanings and learning them in context will improve your listening ability. This page contains a list of over 100 IELTS dictation words with meanings and tips on how to learn them for beginners and advanced level students.

100+ Dictation Words for IELTS Listening with Meaning

Here is a combined list of 100 dictation words for IELTS listening, including essentials from daily life, academics, workplaces, and travel.

Difficult Dictation Words for IELTS

These are the most difficult dictation words for IELTS, often misspelled:

• Accommodation

• Aisle

• Queue

• Psychology

• Architecture

• Maintenance

• Stationery/Stationary

• Receipt

• Restaurant

• Foreign

• Mortgage

• Hypothesis

• Environment

• Regulation

• Technique

• Guarantee

• Counsellor

• Analysis

• Millennium

• Entrepreneur

100+ Dictation Words for IELTS Listening with Strategies to Learn

Dictation words for IELTS Listening allow you to build spelling, vocabulary, and accuracy for the fast audio sections in the test. The following strategies will help you learn them fast, making these words easy to write correctly even when you are under time pressure.

• Listen to each word repeatedly in a range of different accents: British, Australian, and American.

• Write the word out three times, to increase the strength of the memory of the correct spelling.

• Learn the meanings of each word to make sure you can understand the word if you hear it in the audio context.

• Practice words in groups based on a common theme: travel, academics, workplace, everyday life, etc. 

• Use slow-to-fast playback practice to increase your accuracy and speed.

• Challenge yourself every day by writing down 20 dictation words in English from the list.

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