When the examiner says "You may now open your question booklets", open it and immediately begin reading. Use the following approach:
1 Read the question and understand what it is asking you to do, for example, choose one letter, write ONE word, complete the diagram etc. If you do not read the question properly, you might do the whole section wrong so be sure that you know what you have to do.
2 Read all the questions in the block, underlining the key words as you go.
3 When you underline the key words, try to think of the possible synonyms that might come up when you listen.
4 When you read the question, if it is a gap-fill question, try to predict what kind of information you should be listening for, for example, a number, a name, a colour, a place. Also, try to predict what kind of grammatical category word, for instance, noun, verb, adjective, adverb.
5 If you finish reading all the block before the recording starts, start reading it again - the more familiar you are with the questions, the more prepared you will be.
6 When the recording has finished and it says "You now have time to check your answers", if you are happy you have put something for every question, then do NOT waste time checking your answers - move immediately to the next block of questions and start reading and underlining and following this approach again from the beginning.
Most importantly, do not sit back and relax even for a second. You must use all the time given to you to read the question paper and get ready for the recording.
Vocabulary:
prepared (adj) = ready
moment (n) = small amount of time
wisely (adv) = in a clever way
to be familiar with sth = to know about sth
waste (v) time = to use time in an unproductive way