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Listening — Short Recordings for the KET Exam

A2 Key Listening tests understanding of short recordings (dialogs, monologues, announcements) on everyday topics. Candidates answer multiple-choice or matching questions. Listening is played twice for most parts, giving candidates a second chance to confirm answers.

Locale-specific study guides

Pass-rate data, regulatory context, and study tips for Listening — Short Recordings all change by candidate locale. Pick your context:

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.

!Writing down what they hear literally instead of identifying the answer to the specific question asked
!Missing the answer on the first playing and panicking instead of listening calmly on the second playing
!Not reading the question and options before the audio begins

Study tips

1Read the questions and options before each audio begins — know what you are listening for.
2Practice distinguishing similar-sounding words: fifteen/fifty, live/leave, ship/sheep.
3Listen to BBC Learning English Elementary and A2-level English podcasts for exposure to natural speech.

Sample KET Listening — Short Recordings questions

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

1
You hear: "The train to Brighton leaves from platform 4 at 10:15, not 10:30 as shown on the board." When does the train leave?
- A10:00
- B10:15Correct
- C10:30
- DPlatform 4
Why this answer?
The announcement explicitly corrects the departure time from 10:30 to 10:15. The question tests whether the candidate caught the correction. "Platform 4" is location, not time.

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