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A review of the official free exam practice materials shows that many alternative answers
are acceptable for certain responses. On one hand, this situation may be seen to empower
the test-taker. The inclusion of multiple correct answers recognizes that there is often
more than one way to correctly state an answer using the English language. For example,
the time seven o’clock in the morning may be written as 7am or 7 a.m. or seven am etc.
On the other hand, displaying multiple acceptable answers in exam practice material may
confuse test-takers – most of whom do not speak English as a first language. Some test-
takers may feel overwhelmed by the fact that they can sometimes offer multiple
responses that are equally correct.
The following set of texts are a verbatim extract from an official IELTS practice test.
“Sample Listening A: Answer Key
21 cigar
22 13 (different) countries
23 (is) activated
24 (average) (around/about/approximately) 50 kilometres/kilometers
25 (water/ocean/sea) temperature / change(s) in temperature / (water/ocean/sea)
temperature change(s) / temperature of water/ocean/sea”