Both IELTS and TOEFL deliberately mix accents — British, American, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian. If you've only ever practised with one, an unfamiliar accent on test day can cost you an entire section while your ear adjusts.
Each accent shifts vowels, rhythm and connected-speech patterns. Australian and New Zealand vowels sit differently; British non-rhotic speech drops many /r/ sounds; American speech flaps the /t/ in "water" to a soft /d/. The words are the same — the surface sound isn't.
The way to remove the surprise is exposure under exam conditions: full-length mock sections, played once, across the full accent range, then reviewed to see which accents cost you marks. Familiarity turns "I couldn't understand them" into "I've heard this before."
Lisenia's mock tests rotate accents the way the real exams do, and your results break down performance by accent so you can target the ones that trip you. Start with the free diagnostic to find your weak accents.