B2 First Listening Sentence Completion Practice
B2 First (FCE) · Listening Part 2 · 21 free exercises
A monologue — a talk, lecture or presentation — with sentences to complete using the exact words you hear. The sentences follow the order of the recording, and answers are short: usually one to three words, often a specific noun.
Listening Sentence Completion: Write exactly what you hear — the whole word, spelled right.
- A monologue — you fill gaps
- 1–3 words — you hear
- 1 mark — each
- Heard twice — spelling counts
Catching specific information — usually a concrete noun — from natural speech and writing it accurately. The word on the page is the exact word spoken; marks are lost to missing part of it, misspelling it, or mishearing it.
What real learners get wrong: In our B2 data this is the toughest Listening part (about 38%). Nearly every error is an incomplete answer, a spelling slip, or a misheard word — not comprehension.
The method
- Read each sentence before the recording and predict the word class you need.
- Write the exact words you hear — do not paraphrase or improve them.
- Capture the whole answer, including describing words ("blue turtle", not "turtle").
- Check it fits the sentence grammatically — singular or plural, verb or noun.
- Spell it correctly on the second listening. Never leave a blank.
The traps
- Writing only part of the answer: The most expensive error — a describing word spoken with the noun gets left out.
- Spelling slips: The right word heard correctly, then a letter wrong or a compound split. Zero marks either way.
- Mishearing the word: A similar-sounding word replaces the real one — prediction from the sentence catches these.
- Changing the word’s form: Write what is said, then check the grammar — do not reshape the word.
All Listening Sentence Completion exercises
Cambridge B2 First 4, Cambridge University Press
- Helping to Organise a Music Festival - Test 4
- The Albuquerque Balloon Festival - Test 2
- Total Solar Eclipses - Test 3
- Volunteering in the Ecuadorian Cloud Forest - Test 1
Cambridge English First 2, Cambridge University Press
- Archery - Test 7
- Expedition to South Pole - Test 8
- Journalism Course - Test 6
- Volunteer at the Children's University - Test 5
Cambridge English First 3, Cambridge University Press
- Film Advisor - Test 3
- Survival in the forest - Test 1
- Visit to a tea plantation - Test 4
- Working on a turtle conservation programme - Test 2
Ready for B2 First 4th Edition Workbook, Macmillan Education Limited
Ready for B2 First 4th Edition, Macmillan Education Limited
- A New Bookshop - Unit 7
- A Weather Presenter - Unit 11
- City College Vocational Courses - Unit 5
- Music All Around Us - Unit 2
- RoboCup - Unit 3
- The Superstition Mountains - Unit 9
- The Zoo Bird Show - Ready for Listening