Highlight Incorrect Words: reading while you listen

A transcript sits on the screen while a speaker reads it, nearly. A few words in the text are not the words you hear, and your job is to click on them. The trouble is that your eyes agree with the text before your ears have checked, so real differences slip past, and wrong clicks can cost you marks.

Why your eyes are not on your side

When you read and listen at once, your brain prefers whichever version it can see. If the text says "employ" and the speaker says "hire", the meaning is the same, so you feel no bump at all. Your eyes are a poor witness in this task. It rewards listening to words, not to ideas, which is a different habit from ordinary listening, and it takes a little training.

There is a second trap: proofreading. A word that looks odd in the sentence is not necessarily wrong, because you are comparing text with sound, not checking the grammar. Click what you hear differently, not what you would have written differently.

A method that keeps you in step

1. Put the cursor under the word you are hearing and let it travel along the line with the voice. It keeps your place and leaves your hand ready to click.
2. Keep your eyes two or three words ahead of the cursor. You read a word, you predict how it will sound, and then the voice arrives and either confirms it or does not. A mismatch feels like a small bump.
3. Click only when you are sure. A wrong click can cost marks (check the exact rule in Pearson's current test guide), so a doubtful word is better left alone. Do not go hunting for a set number of differences, either. Click the ones you actually heard, and stop there.
4. If you lose your place, click nothing until you find it again. Look for the next distinctive word, such as a number or a long word, and rejoin the voice there.

What the differences usually look like

• A similar-sounding word: forty and fourteen, quiet and quite, affect and effect.
• Plural or singular: team and teams, report and reports. The final -s is quiet in fast speech.
• Tense: plans and planned, has grown and grew.
• A synonym: hire and employ, begin and start, quick and rapid.

Numbers and endings deserve extra attention, because they are the easiest to read past and the easiest to hear wrongly.

A worked example

This is what the speaker says:

This is the text on screen:

I have packed four changes into two sentences so that every type shows up. The words to click are planned (the speaker said "plans"), employ ("hire"), fourteen ("forty") and teams ("team"). Here is how the method catches them. With your eyes a few words ahead, you read "fourteen" before the voice reaches it, expect that sound, and hear "forty" instead: a bump. The same happens with "planned" and "teams", where the whole difference is one ending. Employ is the hardest, because the sentence still makes perfect sense and only your ear can tell you it is wrong.

Practise with podcasts

1. Choose a podcast or news site that publishes transcripts, and play two minutes at normal speed.
2. Follow the text with your cursor, without pausing, and mark every place where the voice and the text disagree. Published transcripts are often tidied, so you will find real differences without anyone changing a thing: a dropped "um", or "gonna" written as "going to".
3. For a harder version, ask a friend to change five words in a transcript without telling you which ones. Listen once, click once.

Score the friend version strictly: count your right clicks and subtract the wrong ones. The test's exact rule is in the guide, but this habit teaches you quickly how expensive a careless click is. The same thinking applies in multiple choice, multiple answers: living with negative marking, and if fast or unfamiliar voices are what trip you up, getting used to different accents will help. When you want a timed attempt, the practice tests on this site include this task, with estimated scores.