Hello,
I'm an IELTS tutor and I'd like to make my first Steemit post a brief introduction to using TED Talks for IELTS improvement.
So... how can they help you?
The first thing is the TED Talks are short and interesting. Millions of people around the world enjoy them and learn from them. It's super important when learning a new language that you are interested in your learning materials. If you study something boring, you just won't take in as much information as you should.
TED Talks are made by people from all over the world. English is an international language, and you should be able to understand all sorts of accents. In the IELTS exam, you usually hear English and American accents, but hearing different ones is important to your overall listening abilities. Moreover, in TED Talks you hear a natural speech with a blend of formal and informal structures and a range of lexis.
It's important when practicing your listening skills that you listen actively. That means asking yourself questions about the material. TED Talks can be used for practicing IELTS-style questions: gap-fill, comprehension, summary completion, and so on. Check out http://www.ted-ielts.com for lots of practice IELTS questions.
If you really are struggling to hear the words spoken, you can turn on subtitles or check the transcript. This might seem like cheating, but actually it's an important way of practicing so that you can learn better.
Finally, TED Talks are best for listening practice but you can also categorize them by IELTS topic and look up questions for the speaking and writing tests. The TED Talk can give you ideas on how to answer these questions.