Practice English Listening Test for B2 with answer and audioscript – Test #29

1 C   2 B   3 A   4 C   5 A   6 C   7 B   8 B

Audioscript

1

M   Are you doing anything on Friday evening?

F   Why? What have you got in mind? I don’t want to go to that film you were talking about the other day if that’s your plan.

M   No, I knew you wouldn’t be keen on seeing that. I thought that we could try out that new restaurant. It’s your mum’s birthday, isn’t it? You could invite her too if you wanted.

F   That’s kind. She’d love that, I’m sure.

2

F   Now, please can you all stay together until we get into the museum. Once inside make sure you do not get separated from your partner. If anyone does get lost remember that our bus has the number 25 on the side and we shall be leaving at 4.15. You should all have the worksheet that I gave you yesterday. OK? And no one has forgotten to bring a pencil? Good. Now, when we go into the Museum you should start your work in room 1, which you’ll find on the left of the main entrance. Remember there will be at least one museum worker in each room and they will help you with any questions you may have.

3

F   I’ve just read The Careless Tourist. Have you read it?

M   Yes, I have. I quite liked it though I wasn’t quite sure why it had got such rave reviews.

F   Me neither. I didn’t like it much at all. I had to force myself to finish it.

M   I didn’t think it was that bad. I thought the main character was quite interesting and the story was original.

F   The story was quite exciting in parts, I suppose, I just didn’t like the people in it. They were all so unpleasant.

M   They were well described though.

F   Did you think so? I thought he wasn’t so bad at describing places but none of his people were at all convincing, in my opinion.

4

M   It was one of the most exciting matches that Cambridge United’s been involved in for a very long time. The first half saw some magnificent saves by both goalkeepers but Peterborough managed to score twice in the last five minutes before the break. Cambridge returned determined not to be beaten and they fought their way back to a winning position just five minutes before the end. The score was three two. Then in the last thirty seconds Roddy Blake scored an equaliser. The crowd went wild.

5

M   You look really busy, Jackie. Can I do anything to help?

F   If only you could write my essay for me! I wish you were studying history too.

M   Yes, well I’m only a mathematician. I don’t know the first thing about history. But I could get some books out of the library for you if you like?

F   I’ve got everything I need already. But if I could borrow your laptop for a couple of hours tonight, that’d help a lot.

M   Yes, that’s fine but what’s wrong with your own computer?

F   You’ve got a much better drawing program on your machine. I want to do some fancy graphs.

6

M   You wouldn’t have believed it if you’d been there. Everyone else was laughing but I was furious. How dare they behave like that? I mean, I’ve got a perfectly good sense of humour but that was just taking things too far.

7

F   So how did you feel when you won the award?

M   I was thrilled, of course. I knew that the film had done very well at the box office and we’d had some good reviews. But it’s usually the actors or the directors who get the prizes, not the scriptwriters.

8

M   You shouldn’t have been so close behind me. Then you’d have stopped in time.

F   You can’t blame me. I certainly never expected you to suddenly stop without any warning.

M   I couldn’t exactly predict that a dog was going to run out in front of me, could I. And if you’d been driving at the proper distance from me, you wouldn’t have dented my bumper or smashed your headlight.

9 (modern European) history   10 turn off their mobile phones

11 20 minutes   12 prospects / future jobs

13 a reporter   14 poem   15 adventure   16 retires

17 school holidays   18 suspicious

Audioscript

F   Pupils may complain about taking exams but most teachers would say it is far worse to have to supervise candidates while they are writing their exam papers. You have to keep alert for two or sometimes even three hours. You are not allowed to read, use your laptop or listen to a walkman. All you can do is think. We asked an experienced teacher for his tips for new invigilators. So David, what do you do while your students are taking their Modern European History A level?

M   Well, first of all, of course, there are a number of duties that you have to fulfil. You will undoubtedly be given a list of these – make sure you read it carefully well in advance of the exam and tick things off as you do them. One thing that is not always on the list but which you must do is to tell everyone to turn off their mobile phones before the exam starts – and turn your own off own too, of course!

Once the candidates have turned over their sheets and got started, what do you do? Well, of course, every now and then you have to walk up and down the gangways to check that there is no cheating going on. But you can’t do this all the time or it would be very distracting for the pupils. Do it more or less every 20 minutes. That should be enough to ensure that there is no foul play without interfering with candidates’ concentration.

How you spend the rest of your time depends on whether you are a people, or a words or a numbers person. If you are a people person, identify all the pupils that you know in the room. What do you recall about each person? Predict the future prospects for each of these – will they be a nuclear physicist, a politician or a criminal? Think up what you would say to a reporter interviewing each person’s old school teacher.

If you are a words person, you could try writing a poem about the experience of being in the exam room. Don’t get so engrossed in this that you forget to pay attention to your pupils, though. Alternatively, you could write an adventure story beginning with the words ‘If I had not gone into teaching, I would have …’

If numbers are more your thing, you can certainly while away a lot of time on some interesting calculations. You could try working out, for example, how many teaching days you have left until you retire. That might be a bit depressing, I suppose. You might prefer to think instead of the summer holidays and to calculate how much money you will be earning on each of those days when you are reading the newspaper at home or lying on a beach in the sunshine.

Activities like these will not only help to pass the time but should also help you to stay alert enough to notice any suspicious behaviour.

F   If any of our listeners have suggestions for passing the time while invigilating please text us on …

19 D   20 A   21 E   22 B   23 F

Audioscript

F   I think I’m pretty laid back really, but I do get pretty annoyed by those awful company phone answering things when you have to listen to ages of If you want to query a bill Press 1, if you want to order an item, Press 2 and so on. The option you need is usually last or not there at all. Even when you’ve pressed the button of your choice, you don’t get put through to a human being; sometimes you even get another set of options before being put through to canned Vivaldi punctuated by apologies that no operator is currently available but please don’t hang up. Of course, they don’t want you to hang up, they’re probably sharing the huge amount you must be paying for the call with the phone company. I’m getting all worked up just thinking about it!

M   At the moment I feel I am particularly annoyed with politicians. They seem to treat us as if we were idiots, giving us all sorts of ridiculous excuses for their behaviour as if we were incapable of seeing through the most blatant lies. It’s depressing in that none of the parties now seems much better than any of the others. Don’t know if things have really got worse since I was younger when I was quite a strong supporter of one party – I even canvassed for them at one election – or if it’s just me getting older and more cynical. Both those explanations are quite depressing, come to think of it!

F   I just hate it when people waste time. My own life is so busy that I have to be really organised. It’s not that I don’t think people should take time off – of course we all must – I just can’t stand it when people don’t get on with doing jobs that have to be done. They mess around complaining about having so much to do and then say they’ll start when they’ve had a cup of coffee and read the paper or after they’ve made a few phone calls or checked something out on the Web. Why not just get on and do what’s got to be done and then they could properly relax!

M   I find myself getting irritated by more and more things these days. Maybe it’s because I’m so busy at work. What really annoys me more than anything else though is when people are habitually late. Of course, sometimes everyone gets delayed through no fault of their own. It’s those people who you know are going to be late that irritate me – I’ve got three or four friends and colleagues like that. Yet you never quite like to be late yourself if you arrange to meet them just in case they turn up on time for once in their lives and then they’ll feel they have the right to go on being late for ever after. It’s as if they have a kind of late gene. But it seems arrogant to me. Why should other people always be put out by them? Who do they think they are?

F   I hate to say it but lots of different things irritate me. It annoys me when shops start selling Christmas cards and tree decorations in September. It annoys me in summer when there are crowds of tourists in our town. They are so noisy and seem to block up all the streets. I know they bring money into the town but I still can’t help finding it irritating. It annoys me when shops tell you in July that they are only selling their autumn clothes now and you won’t be able to buy a summer dress until next year. It takes me all my time not to be rude to the poor shop assistants though I know it’s not their fault. I could go on for ages.

24 B   25 A   26 C   27 C   28 B   29 B   30 C

Audioscript

M   Stella, you work for the Social Statistics Agency, is that right?

F   Yes, I do. We are a government organisation involved in investigating all sorts of aspects of change in society – family relationships, work and leisure habits, consumer trends. It’s very varied and interesting work.

M   So, what have you been involved in recently?

F   My most recent project was to investigate the increasing tendency for people to opt for temporary jobs. It is not a trend that had been predicted and we were curious to try to find out the reasons for it. We were particularly surprised by the fact that the tendency is more pronounced among men than women.

M   Yes, that is not what I would have expected either. So what did you discover about the motivations of people choosing temporary work?

F   Well, by far and away the main reason was that temporary work allowed people more flexibility with their time. This enabled them to pursue other dreams – they could choose to work intensively for a couple of months and then take extended periods off to travel, they could take odd days off when they were suddenly offered opportunities of furthering their ultimate dreams of becoming an actor or a disc jockey; they could opt for weekend work or double shifts if that suited them for some personal reason.

M   What other factors were important?

F   The second main motivation for doing a temporary job was to gain experience of a different branch of work. A lot of people said they weren’t sure whether to train for a particular career or not and a stint of temporary work in the field gave them a bit of a taster to help them make up their mind.

M   I can certainly see the attraction of temporary work. If you were a novelist or a journalist, for example, it would be interesting to do a range of different temping jobs – you’d get lots of different insights that could be useful in your work.

F   Well, yes, the interest of variety was the third main reason presented for the popularity of temporary work. Quite a few people said that they had started out temping because they couldn’t find a permanent job but that they had enjoyed the range of opportunities it offers so much that they now see themselves as ‘career temps’ and never intend to apply for a permanent job again! They are convinced that even if they don’t earn so much this is well compensated for by the richness of the work experience which they gain.