Listening Part 3
In Part 3 someone asks another person for information - about a service, a course, a job, a place - and you have to hold on to the answers. This is the most fact-dense part of the Listening test, and the one where good notes are worth the most marks.
Walkthrough published by the official CELPIP Test channel.
Listening for Information is built around an exchange in which one speaker knows something and the other wants to find out: an enquiry, an interview, a briefing. The content is practical and specific, and it arrives quickly.
The questions afterwards ask what was actually said - which day, which price, which reason, in which order - so this part rewards accurate capture more than interpretation. It is also unforgiving: a detail you did not catch on the first hearing is simply gone.
Expect the speaker giving the information to qualify or correct themselves as they go - "the Tuesday session, sorry, the Thursday one" - because those revisions are exactly what the questions check.
The audio sets the pace, so decide your note format before it starts. A vertical list of short entries - one line per fact, with a dash beside anything that gets corrected - beats prose, because you can find a number again in a second.
Write numbers as numerals and names as initials, and leave the reasoning until the questions appear. When they do, read each stem carefully: several options will name things that were genuinely mentioned in the recording, and only your note of which one applied separates them.
Build a note shorthand and practise it until it costs you no attention: numerals for numbers, initials for names, arrows for sequence, a dash for a correction. This part is less a test of English than of capture under pressure, and capture is a mechanical skill you can train. Practise on radio interviews and information lines, and check the recording only after you have answered.
Quick answers about Listening Part 3.
Density. The recording delivers a lot of specific information quickly, and the six questions ask about details rather than the general idea - so anything you did not capture on the first hearing cannot be recovered.
Six, all asked after the recording. They contribute six of the 38 scored Listening questions, each worth one mark with no penalty for a wrong answer.
Numbers, names, dates, conditions, and any correction the speaker makes. Skip anything you could reconstruct from context, and never write full sentences - the sentence you are writing costs you the one being spoken.
Often, but do not rely on it. Notes organised as a findable list let you locate a fact wherever the question falls, which is safer than assuming a fixed order.
Not to trick you, but they do change their minds and correct themselves the way real speakers do. When that happens, the later version is what the question is testing.
Part 3 is a two-way conversation in which someone is being asked for information. Part 4 is a one-way news report with a single voice and a journalistic structure. Part 3 rewards note-taking accuracy; Part 4 rewards knowing how a news story is organised.