Practice CAE (C1) Listening Test 01 with Answers and Audioscripts

1 A   B: Adam says he now has good friends in the community, but he doesn’t say this is what attracted him to Montreal. C: He mentions that he and his family love celebrating Canada Day, but he doesn’t say anything about the value other inhabitants put on celebrating that tradition.

2 C   A: Although they both mention people who are moving away from their street, neither of them comments on the frequency with which people move house in Montreal. B: Only Juliet mentions that her sister would like to live in the city centre.

3 A   B: Soraya says the opinions expressed in the press and journals now are very different from earlier ones, but she doesn’t comment on their accuracy. C: She doesn’t attempt to explain or clarify why people have changed their opinions.

4 B   A: Halim expresses the opposite opinion: ‘it did go into the pros and cons of the uses of plastic’. C: He also says that the documentary covered the significant points: ‘it covered the main ideas we’d discussed in class’.

5 B   A: Jane says parents cope well with their teenage children’s moods, which suggests they do understand them. C: She also suggests that parents do recognise that their children’s needs have changed because they adapt to giving more emotional support.

6 A   B: Ed mentions that his son is reluctant to wake up before ten, but this is not what particularly interests him. C: Although he is keen for his son to have a good circle of friends, he doesn’t say that he’s particularly interested in the influence of peers on teenagers.

Audioscript

Extract One

Juliet: Hi, Adam. How are you finding living in Montreal?

Adam: Hi, Juliet. It’s a great city and I’ve got some good buddies now, guys who live on our street and work colleagues. Are you going to the street party to celebrate Canada Day?

Juliet: You bet. It’s a real important thing for me and my family; celebrating it is an annual ritual for us.

Adam: I’ll see you there then; it’s going to be a beautiful day. That sudden shift from biting cold gales to beautifully balmy evenings when you can sit outside in a T-shirt until midnight is what drew me to Montreal. It’s awesome!

Juliet: I know what you mean. So are you staying on in your apartment? I think you said you only leased it for a year?

Adam: Yeah. It makes sense to rent in Montreal – you don’t have to fork out a fortune for a place downtown.

Juliet: You can get a deal because there’s so much on the market.

Adam: And getting a place of my own is, well, financially out of the question. But quite a few people on our street are moving out, right?

Juliet: Yeah, like my sister’s moving again. She wants to be more in the centre.

Adam: Oh, OK.

Extract Two

Halim: Hi, Soraya, how are you getting on with your essay on plastic?

Soraya: Hi, Halim. Well, the background reading’s fascinating. OK, there’s been a complete U-turn in the views expressed in journals and even in the popular press in recent years. But actually, when I read about the 1950s, I get that at that time plastic was seen as revolutionary. You could make anything from it, from bottles to roofs; it was so strong and durable. What was not to like? Whereas now, it’s seen as a real threat to the planet.

Halim: Yeah. I’ve read a couple of really thought-provoking articles and I watched the documentary our tutor recommended, you know the one called Plastic Madness.

Soraya: Oh yeah, any good?

Halim: Wildly over-dramatic at the end, in my view. To be fair, it did go into the pros and cons of the uses of plastic, and it covered the main ideas we’d discussed in class, but to close with statements like Most species of fish will be extinct within ten years was way over the top.

Soraya: And did it go into issues like plastic causing air pollution?

Halim: It did, yeah.

Extract Three

Ed: So, Jane, I’m the parent of a sixteen-year-old, Max, and my wife and I are constantly wondering if we’re doing the right thing.

Jane: The teenage years are critical in human development, Ed. Parents are programmed to care for their child, but in evolutionary terms, the infant must develop, mature and eventually separate from them. And although the majority of parents cope admirably with their child becoming a monosyllabic and at times difficult teenager, few know when to let go. At the same time, parents do generally adapt well to having to provide more emotional support than physical support.

Ed: With Max, we’re going through things like, he seems reluctant to wake up before ten.

Jane: Some schools have changed their timetable to take into account the fact that teenagers perform better later in the day.

Ed: Not his, unfortunately. The good thing is Max and I are both seriously into gaming and I’m fascinated by how so many games promote universal values like hard work pays off, collaboration works better than confrontation and thinking things through is to be admired. I encourage Max to invite his mates round to our house because I want him to build up a circle of good friends who share common interests.

7 observation   Synthetic pesticides are mentioned, but Ben doesn’t use them, and he says that observation is more important than the protection of young trees.

8 leaves   Bark is also mentioned, but it’s when leaves are discoloured that the tree needs fertiliser.

9 weather   Two factors are mentioned, but the weather is more important than the delivery dates.

10 bacteria   Other farmers use soap, but he doesn’t.

11 irrigation   Although he mentions grass mowers and a shed, these are not systems and don’t fit with the meaning of the sentence.

12 size   He checks the levels of sugar and juice, but the sentence is about what he does last.

13 scissors   Ladders and metal baskets are also mentioned, but Ben and his workers don’t use them.

14 touch the earth   He also uses the term ‘intelligent food choices’, but this doesn’t fit the meaning of the sentence.

Audioscript

Ben: Hi, I’d like to tell you a bit about myself and my work as a citrus fruit farmer. My name’s Ben Tyrell and my family’s been growing oranges, lemons and grapefruit for several generations. As an organic grower, I don’t use synthetic pesticides on our farm, so to ensure all the trees are healthy, observation becomes that much more important; even more important than, for example, the protection of young trees. If a tree needs fertiliser, there’ll be discoloration of the leaves rather than the bark. When a tree’s off-colour, it might be because it’s running low on potassium or nitrogen. Deciding when to start putting some organic fertiliser on the trees has to be carefully calculated. It’ll depend partly on the deadlines for delivering the fruit to the packing house, but mainly on the weather. Do it at the wrong time and its efficiency is greatly reduced.

In springtime, my day will also include checking the fungus situation on the fruit on the trees. At this time of year, we’re mainly concerned with the fungi Alternaria and Melanose. While harmless, if the fruit has either of these fungi, it’ll have blemishes and that’d put our fruit into a lower grade at the packing house. So, if we find any fungi, I use bacteria to attack and control the fungi as an organic solution to the problem. Some growers use a type of soap made from organic fats, but not me.

During the summer, weeds start growing up around the trees. We’re completely against using any sort of chemicals as a weed killer and I guess our neighbours might think our farm looks a bit messy, but I don’t get hung up about weeds. The only time we do something about them is when they start appearing right next to the irrigation setup. Then we might use small grass mowers that we keep in a shed to control the weeds.

In late fall, harvest time, I begin to check if the fruit’s ready to pick. In the US, there are state regulations for when to pick fruit. We have to check that the fruit contains certain levels of sugar and juice. After meeting these requirements, finally, we’ll look at size because there are regulations for that as well. So, when we’re sure the fruit is ready, we call in the pickers. All the fruit’s picked by hand – our workers use scissors so that we don’t damage the fruit. We don’t use ladders or metal baskets for the same reason.

I love growing organically and knowing that the fruit we produce is as healthy as it can be. We do tours of the farm for school kids because I’m keen that future generations can ‘touch the earth’, if you know what I mean. They can make what we call ‘intelligent food choices’, based on the knowledge of how a food was grown, how it was processed and how it was stored.

Now, any questions …

15 D   A, B and C all refer to other teachers and schools and are not Amy’s opinion.

16 C   A: Only John makes the point about rules with children: ‘Don’t you think most parents talk about how, where and when to use phones a lot with their children before they allow them to have one’ B: Only John mentions young children. D: Neither speaker says this. In fact, Amy refers to parents making rules about children’s use of social media, which suggests that they do know what sites their children use.

17 B   A, C and D are all mentioned, but John doesn’t approve of them.

18 C   A: Amy refers to a police report about the number of smartphones stolen, but there is no suggestion that the ban had any effect on this. B: Amy says students enjoyed their teachers’ lessons more, but we don’t know if teachers spent more time on them. D: The opposite opinion is expressed: ‘It didn’t go down well with some mums and dads’.

19 A   B: John says that schools, not workplaces, should look again at their policy on the use of smartphones. C: He gives examples of workplace rules, but doesn’t say these are hard to enforce. D: He says that it’s a good idea that children get used to not being able to use phones, but not that they are a valuable tool.

20 C   A: Amy says there will always be ‘heated discussions’ on this subject, but not that there is disagreement between teachers and parents. B: She says ‘sometimes the debate may seem trivial’, but that doesn’t mean that serious matters are being concealed. D: Although she mentions the speed of technological change, she isn’t saying that the debate is outdated.

Audioscript

Interviewer: I’d like to hear your views on students using smartphones at school, a topic that’s been in the press a great deal recently. Amy, what’s your opinion?

Amy: Yes, there’s a really interesting debate going on about it. In one school where I worked as a trainee teacher, teachers were concerned that students weren’t paying enough attention to the lessons, as they were thinking about when they could next take a look at their phones. In my view, the role of education should be to enable students to assess a situation and then decide if using a smartphone is appropriate – polite – and how long to use it for. In another school, I saw a lesson where students had to actually look for pop-up messages selling products aimed at young people on their phones and then there was a class discussion about the ethics of that.

Interviewer: And John, what do you think?

John: But what about the role of parents in this? Don’t you think most parents talk about how, where and when to use phones a lot with their children before they allow them to have one, especially if the child’s still young?

Amy: You mean they say, you can only use it to talk to friends for one hour a day and not after 7 pm, that sort of thing?

John: Exactly, or …

Amy: But how do they monitor that? And anyway, lots of parents say things like ‘Don’t use your phone during dinner’ and then they actually do that themselves!

John: Or they’re always doing internet shopping. They can’t expect their child not to do what they themselves are doing, I guess. But in my experience, parents do monitor their kids’ use of smartphones.

Interviewer: Coming back to smartphone use at school, John, do you think students should be able to use phones in class time?

John: For some things yes, but with limits. I think using the camera should be a no-no, even if students say they want to show a painting they’ve done or something to their parents. That’d lead to inappropriate use of phones, I’m sure. Like the record function – as a teacher I wouldn’t like students recording me in class. But if they wanted to check a spelling or find out what the capital of Norway is, for instance, that’s fine in my book. Some teachers let students use phones in maths lessons for difficult calculations and things, but I’d rather students understood how to work it out for themselves.

Interviewer: And Amy, didn’t you work in a school where smartphones were banned?

Amy: Yes, when I was doing teaching practice last term as part of my course to become a teacher, the school had just introduced the ban. It didn’t go down well with some mums and dads who wanted their child to have a phone in case there was an emergency. There’d just been a police report in the local newspaper about crime near the school, and parents felt young people might need to contact them or the police at any time.

John: I bet the students weren’t very happy about the ban either.

Amy: Strangely enough, after the first week, they seemed almost to forget about it! And some even said they enjoyed their teachers’ lessons more.

John: Interesting. And actually, in most workplaces you can only use your smartphone during your official breaks; it’s part of your terms and conditions when you accept the job. So perhaps it’d be a good idea if more schools looked again at their policy regarding smartphones, so that children get used to the fact that restriction is the norm and not a rule that they think can be easily broken. Of course, there are offices where smartphones are totally forbidden, like where they deal with confidential information, or they’re banned when a worker’s operating machinery because being distracted by their phone might result in an accident.

Interviewer: So, Amy, any final words on this topic?

Amy: Well, there’ll always be heated discussions about this sort of thing in education. And sometimes the debate may seem trivial, but schools have to always make sure they’re doing the best for students. With new gadgets coming out at such a rate, schools are just keeping pace with what’s going on in the wider community. And, let’s face it, new technology has a huge effect on our lives.

John: And soon, we’ll all have forgotten about smartphones because some other piece of technology will be all the rage!

Interviewer: Thank you both.

21 G   ‘a gripping read and well written’ reflects G. A may be tempting, but it’s wrong because it’s not how she felt when she entered the competition.

22 H   ‘it’d give me the chance to get feedback on my work and I’d take it on board’ reflects H. C is wrong because he had no convictions about whether he would win or not: ‘whatever the result, win or lose’.

23 F   ‘I had numerous sleepless nights thinking: what’ll happen if I don’t win?’ reflects F.

24 B   ‘I knew there’d be a big formal dinner and the winner would have to get up and come out with words of wisdom and the thought made me feel numb with fear!’ reflects B. C is wrong because ‘At that stage I had no idea whether I’d even win or not.’

25 E   ‘I was so hacked off by all the criteria I had to meet for the competition’ reflects E. D is wrong because ‘funny’ refers to the amusement she feels now, not when she entered the competition and not in response to the reactions of friends.

Task Two

26 G   ‘bookshops were overwhelmed with readers suddenly wanting anything and everything I’d ever written’ reflects G. D is wrong because it was her agent who dealt with fans’ emails.

27 B   ‘the mental switch I made from writing novels based on historical facts to more descriptive, character-driven stories‘ reflects B. C is wrong because he was travelling when he heard that he’d won the competition.

28 E   ‘I spent hours staring at a blank screen’ reflects E. F is wrong because she says that being ‘headline news’ was ‘great’, not an intrusion.

29 A   ‘I was being asked to write a follow-up novel by companies in countries I knew little about’ reflects A. B is wrong because there is no mention of him travelling to these countries, and G is wrong because the market interest was in a new novel, not his previous work.

30 H   ‘Winning has also made me a more assertive person, sure enough of myself to say …’ reflects H.

Audioscript

Speaker 1

I was thrilled when I heard I’d won first prize – a substantial amount of money! I’d had a sneaky look at all the novels that had been entered and I must admit every single one was a gripping read and well written. The ironic thing about winning the money was that I needed it less after I’d won. I’d spent a couple of years earning enough to live on, but not exactly living the high life. Then, once news was out about me winning, bookshops were overwhelmed with readers suddenly wanting anything and everything I’d ever written! Thankfully, my agent dealt with the emails that flooded in from fans and she also managed my social media presence.

Speaker 2

I live in Australia and I was on a flight back from Europe when the news broke, so I’d no idea I’d won the competition until the next day. Sure, I remember the publicity that surrounded winning, but what marked the event for me was the mental switch I made from writing novels based on historical facts to more descriptive, character-driven stories. I also recall, when I’d just sent off the entry form, thinking whatever the result, win or lose, it’d give me the chance to get feedback on my work and I’d take it on board. The judges were all highly respected writers and publishers, and even if they’d poured scorn on my work, it’d still have been useful.

Speaker 3

Well, to be honest, winning the prize has been a double-edged sword. Yeah, it was great to be headline news, but after that all died down, I spent hours staring at a blank screen thinking – what now? Obviously, I knew I was a good writer, I wouldn’t have won otherwise, but it was hard for about a year. It’s weird, because when I went in for the competition I had numerous sleepless nights thinking: what’ll happen if I don’t win? Would I go into some sort of decline and not want to face my friends and colleagues? Fortunately, I did win, so those anxieties never had to be faced.

Speaker 4

The minute I’d completed the form to enter the competition, the only thing I could think about was: what would I say when I accepted the prize? At that stage I had no idea whether I’d even win or not. I knew there’d be a big formal dinner and the winner would have to get up and come out with words of wisdom and the thought made me feel numb with fear! Anyway, I managed to mumble thanks to all my readers and the usual stuff when the time came. In contrast, afterwards there was no time to think at all – I was being asked to write a follow-up novel by companies in countries I knew little about!

Speaker 5

I was so hacked off by all the criteria I had to meet for the competition that by the time I’d checked this, that and the other, sent endless confirmations of my ID, and read the competition style guide for the tenth time, I hoped I’d have nothing more to do with it all. Of course, having won, I can now see the funny side of all that. Winning has also made me a more assertive person, sure enough of myself to say, ‘No thank you, I won’t be doing that interview or attending that party.’ The same’s happened as far as writing goes – I know what works for me!