Practice FCE (B2) Listening Test 01 with Answers and Audioscripts

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

Audioscript

1

Mark:   Did you enjoy today’s geography class about Canada? It really made me want to go there!

Zoe:   It’s a great place – I’ve been a few times.

Mark:   Really? Wow! Well, I certainly discovered loads of useful stuff I wasn’t aware of before. I was struggling to keep up sometimes, though. Doing some background reading will help, I think.

Zoe:   Mm, well, even though I’ve been there, I can’t say I knew that much. What we did should really help with our next assignment. I wonder if we’ll get to find out about the animals in Canada. They’re really interesting.

Mark:   That’d be great, but I’ve no idea if geography includes those.

Zoe:   Mm, maybe not …

2

Millie:   Where are you off to with that bag of birdseed, Jake?

Jake:   I’m going to put some in the garden and then wait till the birds come. I’ve fed them every morning this winter – I’ve had an amazing number come and feed so far, and recently one really unusual-coloured bird’s been visiting. It might come back again.

Millie:   Really?

Jake:   Yeah. Anyway, it’s all for a conservation organisation I’m involved with. There’s been such a decline in some species, they’ve asked people to identify the birds they see over a certain period.

Millie:   Sounds brilliant. Can I take part too?

Jake:   Sure. You can help me if there’s one I don’t recognise!

3

Tom:   Congratulations on winning the national spelling test, Hayley!

Hayley:   Thanks. I thought it’d be scary, as the other students were brilliant, but I refused to be put off by them!

Tom:   Great! Loads of the words were really difficult, though. How on earth did you learn to spell them all?

Hayley:   Well, I just got used to remembering them. My dad taught me different strategies, like using rhymes to remember unusual spellings. Actually, just seeing the words constantly was what did it – it really helped get them into my head. I had lots of them all stuck on the walls in my room. I always remember stuff that way.

Tom:   Wow! Wish that worked for me!

4

Right, last term we made some great model cars from ready-made kits, didn’t we? This term you’ve got a new challenge – building a model car using parts you’ve made yourself! Now we’ve got pretty much all the tools you’ll require here in school, but if you need anything else, I’ll see what I can do. The key to this project is that you are precise about the component parts you make. If you are careless, the car probably won’t work! But first, look online for the kind of car you’d like to build. Even if it’s something quite advanced, you can get help to simplify it. Right, let’s get started!

5

Nicole:   Ben, could I borrow your new sweatshirt? I’m going skateboarding, and it’s really cold.

Ben:   Sure – in fact, you can keep it if you want.

Nicole:   What? But it was really expensive! And I love the bright red – it’s not a colour you usually buy, is it? But it looks good on you.

Ben:   Mmm – Maybe you’re right! To be honest, though, I’ve been tempted to return it to the shop. It’s quite thin, considering how much they charged for it. You might feel quite chilly in it today.

Nicole:   It’s what everyone’s wearing, though – not like you to be so fashionable!

Ben:   Well, thanks! I’ll take that as a compliment!

6

Right everyone, it’s the start of the football season soon, and I want to make sure you’re all well prepared, so we can avoid unnecessary injuries on the pitch. We did pretty well last year, so let’s keep that up. Now we did some strength-building sessions last year, but I want to ensure we do that weekly this season – that’ll really help. I know you’re all aware of the importance of keeping hydrated, keeping up fluid levels, so I won’t go on about that. And those warm-up exercises we’ve always done for your muscles will be just as important this year, so don’t go treating those as a waste of time!

7

Beth:   I finally went to visit Curzon Palace yesterday, Sam.

Sam:   Really? I’m not sure that place would be for me.

Beth:   Well, like you, I’m not really into old houses and paintings and all that stuff, so I just skipped those. I was told the gardens weren’t that great, but actually they were amazing – you could just wander through them and believe you were the only person there. I reckon there’d be enough stuff there to keep you interested. I mean, I even got really into the exhibition of vintage cars they’ve got there, and they’re not normally my thing at all.

Sam:   Well … we’ll see, maybe I’ll go …

8

Hi Jack, we’re back from our family camping trip! As you know, we’d spent weeks beforehand getting ready – Mum and Dad packed so much stuff! Anyway, by the time we arrived at the coast, bad weather had already set in and we could see we weren’t in for the sunshine we were hoping for. It could’ve wrecked the whole trip, but our tent was really dry, so we just got on with it and decided not to let it spoil things. It was a beautiful place, overlooking the sea – you’d love it! Whether we’d be tempted to go again, though, I’m not entirely sure. Anyway, see you next week!

9 magazine   10 blog   11 reader’s lifestyles   12 jeans

13 second-hand shops   14 1920’s   15 stripes

16 cotton and wool   17 bags and earrings   18 professional

Audioscript

Anna:   Hi! I’m Anna, and I’m a fashion blogger. I’ve always loved fashion and creative writing, so a fashion blog combines both interests!

My blog’s about clothes for teenagers, which my brother and I model. When I first started, I didn’t get many hits, but I did get mentioned in a well-known magazine, so I was pleased. Then one newspaper wrote something about me, and loads more people started to look at the blog. After that, a local TV channel came and interviewed me for a programme – that was great!

Since then, the blog has really started to develop, so I’m no longer working alone. I recently met a photographer at my college – who agreed to take some shots for the site, in return for publicity. And I considered asking a hairdresser to help but I can’t afford to pay anyone yet. I’d like to hire a make-up artist too, one day, but we’ll see.

There are some beautiful clothes available for teenagers now, so I feature those in my blog, while bearing in mind what my readers’ lifestyles may be like. They’re probably all students, so that’s really the deciding factor when thinking about what to include. But they all have different tastes, so I make sure I feature clothes to suit a range of tastes. I try and think about their budgets, too, of course – so choosing clothes is quite a task!

Having said that, I’ve discovered teenagers are prepared to pay more for certain things if they’re good quality. I asked readers about their most expensive purchases, expecting they’d say trainers, which can cost a fortune. However, jeans seemed to be their biggest purchase in terms of how much cash they’d part with. That didn’t surprise me, ’cos well-fitting ones aren’t cheap. As for other essential items like jackets, their parents seemed to be the ones to buy those.

Most of the clothes I talk about are readily available, so you can go into department stores and find them there, and local clothes shops will stock them too. To mix things up though, I also feature clothes I’ve found in second-hand shops. They’re my personal favourites – I shop in them a lot, you can find really original things. Markets are quite good for that too.

As well as showing the latest styles, I also include vintage clothes from other periods. Believe it or not, the 1920s in the richest source of ideas for my most recent blogposts, although other periods I’ve featured have been interesting too. People enjoyed the clothes from the 1970s that I showed last year. I got lots of positive comments about stuff from the 1980s too!

Because I’m trying to show clothes for both sexes on my blog, I include a range of colours and patterns in the items I choose. Clothes that have no pattern on them are always popular, but people also like checks, especially in bright colours. A little while ago there were suddenly far more hits on anything that had stripes. Anyway, clothes with flowers on them are my personal choice, so they’ll always appear somewhere!

I try to avoid materials that are artificial if I can. I focus largely on items made from cotton, say, which I like better than anything made from plastic! And you don’t have to spend a lot on them. Wool sometimes features too, especially in winter.

I’ve also begun experimenting with putting things on the blog that I’ve made myself. I attempted a few hats, although people didn’t seem to like them that much. But the bags I made got a better response. Then I started putting together earrings, and when those appeared people asked to buy them! So that’s something for the future.

I’m proud of how the blog’s grown. I think even at the beginning it was fairly sophisticated, and recently some readers commented that it looked professional, which I took as a compliment. I didn’t start out feeling skilled at it, so it shows what you can achieve once you become more experienced!

19 E   20 F   21 G   22 B   23 A

Audioscript

Speaker 1

My family owns a 300-year-old farm, and we’re always finding ancient things in the soil, like bits of pottery. It’s great for me, because I’m interested in archaeology. Then one day I discovered a valuable gold ring! I was thrilled, and imagined showing it to my friends! I must admit, I wanted to hang on to it, ‘cos I knew we’d never find the owner. But then I felt guilty, so I told Dad. He took it to the museum, where the staff put it on display – with an alarm, to stop it going missing! So it wasn’t quite the ending I’d hoped for, but I guess visitors to the museum can see it now.

Speaker 2

I love music, but knew my parents couldn’t afford to buy a piano. Anyway, the school had an old one, left by its owners when they went abroad. So I’d practise on that, all the time imagining I was playing a very expensive modern one. One day, I happened to look inside the piano to see how it worked – and discovered a bag tucked into one corner with lots of old coins inside it. I never imagined they’d be anything special, but the city museum said they were really valuable – and the school got some money as a reward! So my dream came true, as we got a brand-new school piano to play!

Speaker 3

My whole family was checking in for a flight to Canada when I noticed another passenger had left a table by the desk – similar to one I was hoping to buy. The check-in staff said they’d try to find the owner, in the hope of returning it before the flight left. Anyway, back at school again, I mentioned what had happened to my IT teacher, who soon came up with an idea for a phone app that would help people to locate their device if they lost it on a journey. So with his support, our class worked on a design – I hope it’s now being used by the owner of that tablet!

Speaker 4

There’re always loads of people flying kites on the beach near my house. One day Mum noticed an expensive-looking kite flying across the beach – with no-one holding the string. Then the wind suddenly dropped, so when the kite landed, I went over and picked it up. It was beautiful, and I wanted to fly it, I love kites. But then we spotted where it’d come from. A bit further away, a young guy was running up and down the beach, looking worried. That kite was obviously precious to him. Anyway, he offered me some money as a reward, but Mum thanked him politely and said it wasn’t necessary -sadly!

Speaker 5

I like browsing through second-hand bookshops. It’s amazing what people leave inside books – letters, foreign banknotes, you name it. Anyway, a recent find has probably become the most valuable to me – a very old photo of the house we live in now, showing the family that lived there at the time! My dad agreed there was virtually no way of finding the original owner – so I just kept the photo, not really knowing what to do with it. Since then, I’ve found myself searching antique shops for similar old photos, and I’ve got quite a collection now! I don’t think any of them are worth much money, but that doesn’t matter.

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

Audioscript

Interviewer:   Today I’m with John Benton, who’s just taken part in a 25-kilometre running race. John, you’d never run that distance before, what made you decide to enter the race?

John:   Well, a few famous people have recently taken up running – one in particular ran twice the distance I did. That really impressed me – but what finally made me get my running shoes out was my mates’ attitude. They reckoned I was far too lazy to complete any race at all, so I was determined to show them I could do it! Anyway, my dad’s a keen runner – and once I’d decided to enter, he came along during my training runs as my ‘running buddy’, which was great.

Interviewer:   So how much training did you do beforehand?

John:   Well, I was pretty organised! First of all, I drew up a 12-week training plan, and built in goals I thought would be manageable. Dad wondered if I was being over-ambitious time-wise, ‘cos I hadn’t run for a while – but then I do play football, so I knew I was in reasonable shape. And I was told I shouldn’t push myself too hard without resting and recovering between training sessions, but I admit I didn’t really listen to that advice!

Interviewer:   And I imagine the training was tough. Were there any problems?

John:   Well, of course there were school mornings when the alarm went off really early, and it was freezing outside, but I’d still look forward to getting myself out there. Getting back home again in time for the school bus caused problems though – and when I got home from school, after 4 p.m., it was really too dark to run, but I still went. Anyway, at least after my training, I could still play computer games on the sofa as usual!

Interviewer:   And did you follow a special diet?

John:   Well, some runners do things like eat high-protein, high-carbohydrate diets, but I just tried to eat what I usually do, pretty healthily – apart from chocolate and chips, which I cut out, and I didn’t miss them. Then about a week before the race, I started eating more carbohydrates, like pizza and pasta, to build up my energy levels, and that worked fine especially on the day of the race itself. I knew I had to start all that well before the race, though – it’s too late to experiment on the day.

Interviewer:   And what was the day of the race like?

John:   Pretty exciting. There were loads of people there when we arrived, and even complete strangers were wishing me luck. Anyway, once we’d all set off, everyone was cheering us along the route, and calling out the names of their friends – I actually spotted my mates holding up a sign with my name on! That really made me determined to finish the race.

Interviewer:   So did you have any strategies to help you keep going?

John:   I had a finishing time in mind that I was aiming for. But once I’d started, the aim just became ‘keep going and cross the finish line’! Since I’d never done a race like that before, I didn’t have a ‘personal best’ to beat. I’d been told, too, that starting too fast is a mistake, that I should just relax and enjoy it, then speed up before the end – which did work. It’s blocking out the voice in your head, telling you that you can’t do it that’s hardest. But I’d learnt to manage that by dealing with the race in stages, and remembering my training.

Interviewer:   So how did you feel when you finally crossed the line?

John:   Well, I’d assumed my first thought would be that I’d never attempt anything so tough again! But I had such a feeling of achievement that I’d finished, and my dad looked so proud, waiting there with my friends – although I was so exhausted I barely registered it. But we did celebrate later! And I’ve already signed up for my next run!

Interviewer:   I’m sure! Congratulations, John!