Listening practice
The listening section is where recruitment English tests are won or lost: numbers spoken digit by digit, an order given once, an accent you do not know. Here you can replay every recording as often as you like, answer, and then read the transcript. 131 original scenarios with 242 questions, a numbers dictation and 12 forms to fill in from what you hear, in 7 accents: British, Filipino, Indian, Ukrainian, Polish, Chinese, Indonesian. 183 recordings exist in two accents: press "Other accent" to hear the same message from a different speaker.
Choose what to train
Recordings play in random order. Use headphones. Keys 1 to 4 answer, Enter goes on.
No internet on board? Save the recordings on your phone before you sail and the trainer works with no signal at all.
Done
What to listen for
- Numbers digit by digit. Course one two five is 125. Channel one six is 16. One three decimal five is 13.5. Times are four digits: one four three zero is 14:30.
- The message marker tells you what is coming. Question, Answer, Request, Information, Intention, Warning, Advice, Instruction: the word before the message tells you how to treat it.
- Port and starboard, ahead and astern. Half the wrong answers in listening tests are a side or a direction swapped. Listen for them twice.
- Who speaks to whom. In a Mayday relay the station calling is not the one in distress. In a tug order the pilot speaks for the ship.
- Write while you listen. In the form-filling exercises an agent, a VTS operator or the Second Engineer gives four or five figures in one go. Note them as digits the moment you hear them; nobody remembers three times and a phone number.
- More on how figures and phrases are spoken: SMCP basics, VHF and Channel 16, and all 435 standard phrases with audio in the SMCP Trainer.