Listening Parts 3 & 4 — Multiple Matching & Multiple Choice for the FCE Exam

Common failure modes

These are the patterns that cause most candidates to lose marks on this topic. Recognising them in advance is half the work.

• !Part 3: Matching on the first related idea heard instead of listening to the whole speaker's turn
• !Part 4: Selecting answers based on topic words in the question rather than the speaker's actual meaning
• !Not using the extra options in Part 3 as process-of-elimination tools

Study tips

• 1For Part 3, listen to each speaker completely before marking — the most important statement often comes at the end.
• 2For Part 4, identify the three options per question and predict what answer types they represent (attitude, fact, opinion).
• 3Practice identifying distractors: recordings include content related to wrong answers — it is intentional.

Sample FCE Listening Parts 3 & 4 — Multiple Matching & Multiple Choice questions

These sample items mirror the format and difficulty of real FCE questions. Practice with thousands more on the free Koydo question bank.

1. 1

   In FCE Listening Part 3, you have 5 speakers and 8 options (A–H). Three options will:

   • AEach be used twice
   • BNot be used at allCorrect
   • CBe used for each speaker respectively
   • DBe randomly matched
   Why this answer?

   In Part 3, there are 5 speakers and 8 options, so exactly 3 options will not be used. Each option is used at most once. This design means process-of-elimination is a valid strategy — confident answers on early speakers narrow the options for later ones.