Listening: Four Parts, Thirty Questions
Listening is Paper 3 of B2 First for Schools. It lasts about 40 minutes, contains 30 questions in four parts and is worth 20% of the total score. Each recording is heard twice. Part 1 has eight short extracts with three-option multiple-choice questions. Part 2 has ten sentence-completion gaps. Part 3 has five multiple-matching items, matching speakers to opinions or attitudes. Part 4 has seven three-option multiple-choice questions on a longer interview or conversation. The for-schools paper uses accessible school, travel and leisure contexts but tests the same B2 listening skills.
Core rules
- Read ahead. Use the pause before each recording to identify the answer type: a place, a time, a reason, a feeling or a speaker’s opinion.
- Listen for paraphrase. The correct option rarely repeats the words of the question; it restates the same idea.
- Part 2 needs exact words. Write one or two words, copied from the recording, that fit the grammar of the sentence.
- Part 3 is about gist and attitude. Match what each speaker actually believes, not the topic they mention first.
- Part 4 follows the question order. Use the questions to track the conversation and reject options that are only partly true.
Worked example
Part 2 sentence: The museum is closed on ______.
Recording: We’re open every day except Monday, and on bank holidays we close at four.
Answer: Monday (or Mondays if the sentence allows it).
Reasoning: except signals the exception that answers closed on. Bank holidays and four are distractors: they are mentioned nearby but answer different questions - holiday opening and closing time. The answer is one word, and it fits the grammar after on. Checking the sentence after the second listening confirms that no other day is excluded.
Traps that cost marks
- Writing three words in Part 2, or copying a word that does not fit the grammar of the sentence.
- Hearing a word from an option and choosing it without checking the speaker’s meaning.
- Missing a negative, such as not, except or hardly, which reverses the answer.
- In Part 3, matching a speaker to a topic they mention rather than to the opinion they express.
- Changing an answer after the second listening without new evidence from the recording.