Practice FCE (B2) Listening Test 15 with Answers and Audioscripts

1 A   2 B   3 A   4 A

5 A   6 C   7 A   8 B

Audioscripts

1   You are at a public celebration when you hear this announcement.

Er … Excuse me everybody … this will only take a minute. We have an announcement and the announcement is: Could the owner of the grey Skoda, registration CRA 179P please remove his car from its parking space at the far end of the street? Sorry, we appreciate this is your legal parking space, but if your car remains there, the floats won’t be able to get past and then everybody will be complaining.

2   You have taken your camera to a shop where the assistant explains why it is not working.

Ah well … there doesn’t appear to be anything the matter with the camera itself. But I don’t think you paid much attention to the instruction manual. And don’t worry about the film, I wound it back into its container. Now, if you look here into the battery compartment, this should be put in this way round with the little metal bit pointing down towards the base of the camera … and then if you depress the shutter just a bit, you’ll see this little light comes on – so now we have power.

3   You switch on the radio to find a phone-in programme in progress.

G = Gerald     C = Cecilia

G:   And our first caller today is Cecilia. Cecilia, what is your question for Gerald?

C:   Well, I’ve been having quite a lot of trouble with my Swiss Cheese plant. I just can’t get it to do what I want. It’s in quite a large pot now, I transplanted it last spring, but the leaves and stems haven’t spread out at all. I’ve been wondering if it could be root-bound.

G:   Well, Cecilia, this is more common than you might think. What you’ve got to do is … FADE

4   You are in the lounge of an expensive hotel when you hear this exchange.

W = Woman     M = Man

W:   I’m terribly sorry sir, but we can’t allow you to do that here.

M:   But why ever not? I’ve paid my money, now just leave me alone.

W:   I’m awfully sorry, but we simply can’t allow it. You see the flash disturbs other visitors and damages the colouring in our priceless antique paintings.

M:   Well, what about that man over there with the dog?

W:   I think you will find, sir, that he is not using a flash.

M:   Well, I’m going to talk to the manager.

5   You are in the office of a major trading company when you hear this woman talking on the phone.

Well, Peter, I do have rather a tight schedule on Friday … let’s see … at 3:30 I’ve a meeting with my agent. That goes on till 3:45 and then I have to drive to the office for the departmental heads meeting at 4:15 and that won’t be finished till quarter to six at the earliest … No, I know what. I’ll cancel my agent. After all, I’m the one who’s paying his fee. He’ll just have to lump it … and then we can meet at quarter to four and I’ll still get to the meeting for 4:15.

6   Listen to this woman speaking on a TV travel programme.

W = Woman     M = Man

W:   … and now turning to a subject that we discussed last week. We have had a number of phone calls from other customers who also suffered the same inconvenience as a result of booking ‘Horden Sun and Save’ package deals last summer. We have also been informed that the Office of Fair Trading have in fact carried out an investigation and issued the following statement:

M:   While not directly responsible, Horden’s Limited should provide compensation of no less than sixty pounds for each individual …

7   You overhear this man talking in a fast food restaurant.

Well, Samantha’s really calmed down in the last month or so. In fact, she’s been a lot better behaved since she had her last little adventure. You did hear about that, didn’t you? It is really quite incredible. I mean, she actually survived a whole wash cycle in the washing machine. It’s a good thing I came back before it started to spin … and her fur did come out such a beautiful, snowy white colour afterwards. Mind you she won’t go near the washing machine again.

8   You telephone a number in order to hear a freephone message about a new product.

Thank you for phoning the Positronic Information Service regarding the new Brain-Booster Theta-Wave Expander. You have already read our newspaper advertisement and will know that over a six-month period the Brain-Booster is capable of raising your intelligence level by as much as 40 I.Q. points without affecting other brain functions such as memory. If you wish to hear an example of the Brain-Booster’s unique Theta-Wave Stimulator, please listen after the tone.

9 hitting   10 telling off

11 the wrong shoes   12 (very) cruel

13 young children

14 the government   15 lazy

16 how lucky   17 changed the law

18 (teenage) crime

Audioscripts

Yvonne:   Any of you who are of my generation or older will no doubt remember … the strap. But for those youngsters listening, I’d better explain because I’m saying this for your benefit. The strap, as they called it, was a thick piece of leather about an inch wide and half as long as a belt and it was especially designed for hitting small children, on the palms of their hands. Nowadays, if you do something wrong at school, you’re unlucky if you even get a telling off. And even the most serious offences get little more than a concerned phone call from the head teacher to your mum and dad. Now, when I was at St Anne’s School for Girls in the fifties, we didn’t have things quite so easy. It didn’t take much to get a strapping. I’ll never forget the first time it happened to me. One morning, I came to school in the wrong shoes – brown ones instead of black – and that was enough for the principal to call me up in front of the whole class of children and beat my hand until it bled. I saw this and many other examples of our school’s discipline system as very cruel and unfair.

Now, unlike many people of that time, I didn’t just forget about it when my school days were over. Soon I had children of my own and the thought that they would one day get the same treatment, really made my blood boil … and that’s when I heard about P.O.P.P.I. … er … Parents Opposed to Physical Punishment of Infants. All the other members were like me. They had young children and didn’t want some unfeeling teachers filling their lives with misery. So we started writing letters.

First, to the schools, then to the education department and eventually, to our local politicians, and in 1979, the government put an end to the strap … and to the cane … and to the paddle and we thought that we had guaranteed our children the chance to grow up into fine young people. And that, I’m afraid, did not happen. My own son and daughter have turned into lazy, irresponsible young adults who really have no idea how lucky they are. I’m sure you all know people like them … and they’re not the worst by far. But it’s only recently that I’ve begun to think – to wish – that they’d never changed the law. Cruel it may have been, unfair it often was, but it taught us our place in society. And that’s something that few young people today seem to know or want to respect. For example, we wouldn’t have all the teenage crime that goes on nowadays if those teenagers concerned had, when they’d been younger, been given the strap.

19 D   20 E   21 F   22 B   23 A

Audioscripts

Speaker 1

There are only two examples of this instrument in the world, one in a museum in Japan and one recently unearthed in southern China. Many experts do not consider it to be one instrument as it is made up of 46 silver alloy bells each suspended from its own supporting wooden frame. I must mention that some of these bells weigh as much as 40 kilograms. What makes this assembly one instrument, in my opinion, is the fact that each one of the forty six bells plays a separate note and that the wooden supporting structure has been designed so that they fit together in an ascending scale rather like the strings inside a piano or the frets on a guitar.

Speaker 2

What gives this drum its unique mellow tone is the fact that the bowl around which the skin has been stretched is made from a single piece of white ivory. The outer surface of the bowl has been carved with special places for the fingers. In each of these there is a hole that the player can cover with one of the fingers of his left hand to slightly alter the tone as he beats the skin with his right hand. The finger movements of the left hand are not dissimilar to those used with a guitar. It is, perhaps, rather sad that since international trade in ivory has been made illegal, few of these instruments have been made. There is a risk that the tradition behind its production will soon be lost forever.

Speaker 3

What is particularly interesting about this traditional hand drum are the unique red and gold patterns painted on its wooden underside. This, of course, does not affect the sound but reflects the social importance of this instrument for the Sachawaya tribe who produce it. They believe that as a result of its use in pubic celebrations, it is filled with the good spirits of the community. Then, later in the year, when the autumn winds begin to blow, the drum can be displayed outside a building of importance to drive away the evil spirits that may cause destruction in the winter ahead.

Speaker 4

The stem and sound-box of this instrument are made from the wood of the eucalyptus tree. This is quite a soft wood which means that the instrument goes out of tune very rapidly. The craftsmen who construct them still use stretched snake-gut to make the five strings. This, of course, makes the instrument very expensive and it was traditionally only played by tribal chiefs and their families. Surprisingly, not only its appearance but the tuning as well are similar to that of a classical guitar, suggesting that this tribe must have had some contact with the outside world long before the twentieth century.

Speaker 5

The curved base and supporting structure of this instrument are made of matured rose-wood while the nails that hold the blocks are traditionally made of ebony, which was the hardest wood available until recently. Four different trees are used to make the blocks themselves which are matured in different ways, to give each one its own individual note. The special hammers are fashioned by hand from willow, a wood still widely used in the manufacture of guitars. As a result of its construction, the instrument is surprisingly light, making it easy for the Nabungda tribe to use it at its various social functions and annual celebrations.

24 B   25 B   26 A   27 C

28 A   29 C   30 B

Audioscripts

FA = Flight Attendant     P = Passenger

FA:   Sorry, you’ll have to leave by the door at the front, sir.

P:   OK, and thanks for everything.

FA:   Have a good holiday, sir.

P:   Well, actually I’m not exactly on holiday.

FA:   Oh? Do you live here?

P:   Well, that’s what I’m planning to do. I’m visiting a friend who says he can get me a job. So, I’m going to be around this area for a bit. Is this your last flight today?

FA:   I wish it was. I’ve already been ‘on’ for five hours and I’ve got the return flight to come.

P:   So, have you got another five hours ahead of you?

FA:   More like five and a half and that’s if there are no delays!

P:   So, the return flight is longer?

FA:   Well, it’s the same distance but from London to Athens we have a tail wind which makes it quicker … but on the way back that becomes a head wind which slows us down.

P:   That’s a long day. Do you work any longer days?

FA:   Well, the longest working day is about twelve hours … but if there are delays at either end, it can soon mount up.

P:   Is that twelve hours – actually in the air?

FA:   No, it’s not actually flying time. There’s a one-hour pre-flight and post-flight routine that we have to go through.

P:   Oh, I don’t envy you. Mind you, I used to work nights in a hotel and that was often twelve hours or more. But at least it was on the ground. I hope you don’t mind me asking … what do you do on longer flights?

FA:   Well, actually they’re better … um … anything over four and a half hours is rostered as a stop over … so you do the outflight on one day and we fly back on the next. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you even get a two-night stop-over.

P:   Does that happen often?

FA:   About once a week usually. I’m doing Moscow tomorrow, that’s one … and it’s a nice place … but it’s a bit chilly around this time of year.

P:   The weather there must be very cold. Do you stay there often?

FA:   Not very often. But you are right; it’s not the best place to be in in the winter!

P:   I like warm weather. Spain, Greece and Italy are my favourite countries.