Short answer: Map labelling in IELTS Listening gives you a plan with letters on it and asks you to write the letter of each place as a speaker describes the site. The letters are in a fixed order on the question paper, the speaker walks the route in that same order, and the answer is always a letter, never a name. Orient yourself on the plan in the reading time, follow the direction language, and write the letter the moment it is said, because the speaker does not come back.
Map labelling is the question type candidates dread most in Listening, and it is the one where the marks are most predictable once you know how it works. A plan is printed on the question paper with letters A to H scattered over it. A speaker, usually a guide or a coordinator showing a group around, names five or six places and says where each one is. Your job is to write the letter of each place. There is no vocabulary to guess and nothing to spell: the answer to every question is a single letter. What the task really tests is whether you can hold a picture in your head, listen for direction words, and keep your place when the speaker moves on.
What the task looks like
The plan is a simplified drawing: a park, a library floor, a museum site, a leisure centre, a campus. The entrance is marked, sometimes with "you are here". Some features are already labelled in words (the pond, the main path, the car park) so that the speaker can use them as landmarks. The letters A to H sit on the places that are not labelled. Below or beside the plan, the questions list five or six places by name, in the order the speaker will mention them, with a box for the letter.
| Element | What it is for | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|
| The entrance or "you are here" | The speaker's starting point. Every direction is given from where the speaker is standing. | Put your finger on it before the recording starts. |
| Labelled features | Landmarks the speaker uses: "just past the pond", "opposite the car park". | Read them so that you recognise the words when you hear them. |
| Letters A to H | The possible answers. There are more letters than questions. | Do not try to guess which letters will be used; follow the speaker. |
| The question list | The places in the order they will be described. | Read the names once; predict nothing about their position. |
| The instruction | "Write the correct letter, A to H, next to each place." | Write the letter, only the letter. |
Two things follow from the layout. First, the questions are in the same order as the recording, so if you have just found question 12 and the speaker starts describing something new, that is question 13. Second, the letters are not in order on the plan, so you cannot work through them A, B, C. You have to look at the drawing, not the list.
The 4-step method
- Orient yourself in the reading time. You get about twenty seconds before the recording. Find the entrance. Decide which way is "straight ahead" from it, which side is left and which is right. Read the labelled features aloud in your head. Notice where the letters are grouped: three letters along one wall, two at the far end, one behind the entrance. That grouping is what will let you choose fast.
- Read the five names in the question list. Not to guess where they are, but so that you hear them coming. The speaker says "the children's area" and you know that this is the second question, and that the letter for it comes in the next few words.
- Follow the route with your finger. As the speaker moves ("as you come in", "at the far end of the main path", "upstairs at the back"), move on the plan. Each place is described in relation to the previous one or to a landmark. Locate first, then read the letter that sits there, then write it.
- Write the letter the moment it is confirmed, and move on. The speaker does not repeat. If you miss one, leave the box empty and pick up the next place; five questions missed because of one is the worst outcome on the page. Come back to the empty box in the checking time and use elimination: the letters you have used are out, and the speaker's route usually leaves only one or two candidates.
The direction language
Map descriptions use a small vocabulary, and almost all of it is in the table. Learn it as a listening vocabulary, that is, by sound: "opposite" and "next to" are easy to confuse at speed, and "at the far end" means the other side of the plan from where the speaker is.
| What you hear | What it means on the plan |
|---|---|
| as you come in, straight ahead, in front of you | On the line from the entrance, without turning. |
| on your left, on your right, the left-hand wall | Relative to the direction the speaker is facing, which is away from the entrance unless the speaker has turned. |
| next to, beside, alongside | Touching or immediately adjacent, on the same side. |
| opposite, across from, facing | On the other side of a path, a corridor or an open space. |
| just past, beyond, after | A little further along the same route, after the landmark. |
| before, on the way to | Between the speaker and the landmark. |
| at the far end, at the back, at the top | The point on the plan furthest from the entrance, or the highest point on a vertical plan. |
| behind, tucked in behind | On the other side of a feature from where the speaker stands, often hidden. |
| in the corner, in the bright corner on the left | One of the four corners; the adjective tells you which. |
| between X and Y | The letter that has X on one side and Y on the other. |
| north, south, east, west | Only when the plan has a compass. North is the top unless the compass says otherwise. |
| upstairs, on the first floor, downstairs | On a plan of a building with two levels drawn side by side, switch to the other level. |
The speakers on this site use exactly these forms, because they are the ones the exam uses. Section 2 of the fifth Listening test, for example, places the ticket office "on your right" as you enter, the staff room "tucked in behind the entrance" and the picnic area "on the grass beside the river". Each phrase points at one letter and one only, provided you know where the speaker is standing.
A worked plan
You cannot practise map labelling on text alone, but you can rehearse the reasoning. Imagine a plan of a small nature reserve. The entrance is at the bottom of the drawing. A main path runs straight up from it to a lake at the top, labelled. A car park is labelled to the left of the entrance. Eight letters are placed as follows: A just inside the entrance on the right; B halfway up the path on the left; C halfway up the path on the right; D at the top of the path, on the near shore of the lake; E on the far shore of the lake; F in the top left corner; G in the bottom right corner, some way from the entrance; H behind the car park.
Now read what a warden says to a group of new volunteers, and decide the letter for each of the five places before opening the answer.
"Welcome, everyone. We're at the entrance. The visitor centre, where you sign in each morning, is the building right beside us on the right as you come in. Follow the main path towards the lake and the bird hide, our most popular spot, is on the left about halfway up, looking over the reeds. Directly opposite it, on the other side of the path, is the picnic area, where we ask visitors to eat so that the shore stays clean. Keep going to the lake: the boat house is at the far end of the path, on the shore nearest us, not on the far shore, that's a private jetty. And finally the tool store, which you'll use every day: it's not by the entrance, it's behind the car park, so allow a few minutes to walk round."
- Visitor centre
Show the answer for 1
A. "Right beside us on the right as you come in": the letter just inside the entrance on the right.
- Bird hide
Show the answer for 2
B. "On the left about halfway up" the main path. The speaker is walking away from the entrance, so left is the left of the drawing.
- Picnic area
Show the answer for 3
C. "Directly opposite" the bird hide, "on the other side of the path": halfway up, on the right.
- Boat house
Show the answer for 4
D. "At the far end of the path, on the shore nearest us." E is named and rejected: "not on the far shore, that's a private jetty". The first candidate you hear is not always the answer.
- Tool store
Show the answer for 5
H. "Not by the entrance": a correction that rules out A and G. "Behind the car park" is H. Two letters, F and G, are never used, which is normal.
Notice what the exercise did not require: no knowledge of nature reserves, no unusual words, no spelling. It required the entrance, the direction of travel, and patience at the two corrections.
The traps, and how each one works
| Trap | How it sounds | How to beat it |
|---|---|---|
| The correction | "at point E, sorry, point D"; "not by the entrance, it's behind the car park" | Listen to the end of the sentence before writing. The second version wins. |
| The unused landmark | The speaker mentions the pond, the magazines, the reeds, none of which are questions. | Landmarks help you locate; they are not answers. Do not write a letter for them. |
| The turn | "Turn left at the end of the corridor, and the meeting room is on your right." | After a turn, left and right flip relative to the drawing. Turn your head with the speaker. |
| Two candidates close together | Two letters on the same wall, one "just past" the other. | "Just past" means further along the route; "before" means nearer to where the speaker is. |
| The paraphrase | The question says "toilets", the speaker says "the washrooms"; "car park" becomes "where you left your car". | Expect the name to be said differently. The position words are what to listen for. |
| The jump | The speaker leaves the route: "and while I think of it, the first aid point is over by the gate". | Keep your finger where the tour was; find the jump, write it, and return. |
Five mistakes that cost the most
- Writing the name instead of the letter. The marker wants "D". Nothing else scores.
- Starting without an orientation. If you do not know where the entrance is before the first sentence, the first two questions go by while you are still looking for it. The reading time is for this and nothing else.
- Reading the letters in order instead of looking at the drawing. A is not "first"; it is wherever it has been printed. Work with your eyes on the plan.
- Writing at the first letter you hear. Speakers give a first version and then correct it, or name a landmark before the answer. Wait for the end of the sentence.
- Chasing a missed question. One empty box costs one mark. Trying to recover it while the speaker moves on costs the next two. Leave it, keep pace, and use elimination at the end.
Every Listening test on this site has a plan in Section 2, from a country park to an open-air museum, each with five places to label and a correction somewhere in the description. The questions appear on screen as the speaker reaches them, as in the computer-delivered exam, and the result page shows the letter you wrote next to the key. Start with Listening Practice Test 1 and its country park, then move on; by the fifth plan the direction language will be familiar, and that is the whole point. For the spelling and word-limit rules that apply to the completion questions in the same section, read IELTS Listening Spelling Rules: Plurals, Numbers, Dates; for the ten question types side by side, read IELTS Listening Tips: Question Types, Spelling Rules, Traps.
Quick answers
Are the letters used more than once?
No. Each letter on the plan is the answer to at most one question, and there are usually more letters than questions, so two or three letters are never used. If you have written the same letter twice, one of the two is wrong; go back to the recording in your memory and check which place the speaker reached first.
Do I write the letter or the name of the place?
The letter. The instruction says "Write the correct letter, A to H, next to each place", and the marker checks the letter only. A candidate who writes "café" instead of "D" scores nothing for that question, however well they understood. On this site the answer box takes one letter and the key accepts it in capitals or lower case.
What if the speaker corrects a location?
Write the second location. A correction is a standard trap in Section 2: "the café is at point E, sorry, point D, just past the magazines". The first letter is a distractor, the second is the answer. Candidates who write the moment they hear a letter, and never listen to the end of the sentence, lose this question every time.
Is the map always in Section 2?
Almost always. Section 2 is a monologue by a guide, a manager or a coordinator, and a plan is the natural way to test whether you can follow a spoken tour. It can appear in Section 1 or 3, but rarely. The five Listening tests on this site each have a plan in Section 2. The site is independent and not affiliated with IELTS, the British Council, IDP, or Cambridge English, and the band it gives is an estimate.
The short version: read the plan before the recording, find the entrance and your starting point, follow the direction words, write the letter as it is said, and expect a correction once per plan.