Practice FCE (B2) Listening Test 25 with Answers and Audioscripts

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

Audioscripts

1   You hear a tour guide talking about her job.

Yes, I really love my job as a tour guide! Of course there are drawbacks, and though I get to see some amazing places, I also know some rather too well – sometimes you do end up wishing you could go somewhere new. My colleagues are great, though, they’re the best thing early, I wouldn’t still be doing this if they weren’t such fun to be with. I’ve had some memorable meals too, not always because I liked them, though! I suppose you do learn to enjoy different things, but I’m still quite a fussy eater so I probably don’t take full advantage of all the good things on offer.

2   You hear the start of a radio programme about cars.

Good evening, and welcome to a special edition of Driving Force, devoted this week to the issue of car security. Engineers are constantly working on the problem, but why is there an increase in the number of vehicles being stolen, despite technological advances in security systems? Can a stolen vehicle be tracked electronically? Do steering wheel locks really work? Can mechanics fit and update new security gadgets easily? With me to discuss these issues is Betty Crawford, designer of the new Vortex GT6, the car which was recently declared Car of the Year.

3   You hear a businesswoman talking to her assistant.    

Terry, you know that report from head office we were talking about? The cost-cutting exercise? Well I have to make a few phone calls now and I wonder if you could write a few notes summarising what we discussed? You could email it to HR so they’ll know what our position is on the proposed changes before Brenda talks to head office. It needs doing straight away because I know she’s in meetings from ten today, and I’d like to make sure our views are taken into account. If you could get on with that now, that would be great.

4   You hear two friends talking about an evening out.

A:   Wasn’t that great? I really enjoyed it!

B:   Yes, what an evening! I really hadn’t expected to enjoy myself so much.

A:   Oh good, I hoped you’d like it. I read some very good reviews of it on the internet, and those people I met at the party – you know, the ones I was telling you about this afternoon – well, they’d been and they said they’d loved it.

B:   Well, I’m very glad on insisted on going. I expected it to be really boring, but it was one of the most exciting plays I’ve ever seen!

5   You hear a man talking about his aunt.

My Aunt Maud was rather a rebel for her time. She grew up in the early part of the twentieth century, when women weren’t really expected to have any profession. At the time, the common belief in upper middle-class families was that girls couldn’t have a career in show business, so her parents were absolutely furious when she told them she had enrolled at drama school and was leaving home! I think they were relieved when her younger brother became a lawyer. And her older brother was a doctor, so that was fine too!

6   You hear a brother and sister talking about a present for their mother.

A:   Amanda, I got Mum’s birthday present, but are you sure she’s going to like it? A guide to Italy?

B:   But it’s a guide to the cooking in different parts of the country. You know how Mum likes to experiment with dishes, and she’s been getting really keen on Italian cooking.

A:   Ah – so she can read about the cooking and then try out the dishes on us.

B:   That’s right; there’s a recipe section in the back. She’ll love it! And we can watch that film you have about Italy when we all have time to sit down together!

7   You hear an announcement in a multiplex cinema.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Gallery Multiplex. Please check your tickets for the start times of the films, and make sure you go to the right section of the cinema. This evening we have Crow’s Nest just starting in Screen 1, and at 18.45 Hurricane starts in Screen 7. In just over 20 minutes, at 18.55, Racing Fever begins in Screen 6, and at the same time Details of the Fall starts in Screen 5. Don’t forget you can buy soft drinks and snacks in the foyer. We hope you have a very enjoyable evening.

8   You hear a ballet dancer talking about an injury.

I’m a professional ballet dancer, so I’m usually pretty careful about the kind of physical work I do away from rehearsals. I know it was a very stupid thing to do, but one day I needed to change the light bulb, and the ladder I used looked quite stable … I was just reaching my arm up to the bulb when it collapsed. All of a sudden, there I was on the ground! I’d never realised back pain could be so awful! Eventually, I painfully pulled myself to my feet and called an ambulance … It’s taken me a while to get myself fit enough for dancing again.

9 July   10 12 / twelve

11 railway / train station   12 underground

13 nurseries   14 fairground

15 7 / seven   16 Classic

17 flowers   18 ecology

Audioscripts

Good morning to you all. Thank you for attending this press conference. My name is David Barns and I’m director of Shopright Contractors, the company that will be constructing the new shopping mall. I’ll begin with some practical information. As you know, construction is set to begin next month, so I’d like to start by talking about when we expect building to finish and about the overall costs of the project. I’m going to stick my neck out and say we’ll meet the original targets, which is to have the mall open by July next year. I think that’s entirely manageable judging by the progress we’ve been making so far, which is thanks to the builders and design team working closely together.

As for the costs, well, again our estimate was £12 billion, and I’m pretty confident the final cost will not exceed that. I’d be happy to discuss further financial implications later on, if you could save any questions till the end.

I’d like to move on now to our investors. What can they expect to get for the kind of money they’re putting into the project? What is it that’s going to make this place special? What will attract customers to the mall? Well, lots of things! For a start, there’s a new railway station being built right next door, so people will be able to reach us from the city centre in under 20 minutes.

Of course, we need to provide parking space for those who’ll be driving to visit us. The underground car park we’ve designed has room for 3,000 vehicles, and we’re just off the motorway, too, which will mean easy access for customers living up to 100 kilometres from the mall. On top of that, we’ve put a great deal of thought into how to make shopping easier for families with small children. One excellent idea we have is to provide nurseries – three of them, in fact – so people can leave toddlers in the completely safe hands of qualified staff while they do their shopping. This means the kids are happy and the adults are content in the knowledge that their children are being well looked after.

It goes without saying that we’ll have the usual wide range of shopping facilities, from clothing and footwear to furniture and food, but we also intend to offer a range of other attractions in order to persuade customers to shop here.

Indeed, we’ve put a huge amount into providing those other attractions. There’s a fairground in one corner of the mall, which is aimed at providing a bit of fun for visitors. For people who aren’t actually shopping, we have some other fun things on offer. For example, we have seven cinemas showing a good range of modern films, including the latest releases. That should suit our younger visitors but we’ve also come up with an idea for the older generation – in one of the cinemas we’ll show classic films – from 40 or 50 years ago – twice a day, morning and afternoon. We’re confident that these facilities will make the mall suitable for people of all ages to enjoy together.

As you’ll have read in our earlier press statement, we’re also planning to make our shopping mall ‘greener’. Let me tell you a bit more about what I mean by that. People have become very demanding and prefer malls to have an open, airy atmosphere. So, we’re planning to have walkways between the different buildings, with flowers lining the paths, giving the impression that you’re actually outdoors. And we’re building a Nature Centre, where we’ll have a permanent exhibition about the ecology of the area. We’re going to have models, photographs and displays to inform people about the wildlife of the local area. So, you see, it isn’t simply a mall, but a day out for the whole family.

I’m going to wrap things up there, but before we finish, I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have about the project. Who would like to go first?

19 C   20 G   21 E   22 D   23 F

Audioscripts

Speaker 1

I’d always been desperate to work in the film industry but I knew directors’ jobs were hard to come by and jobs are rarely advertised. I went to loads of free networking events – with no success. Trying to get through to film companies on the phone was a waste of time, and there was little chance of managing to contact anyone influential directly. As with most things, it’s who you know that matters – and I was fortunate enough to meet someone based at a TV studio. In the end he put in a good word for me and I eventually got my first directing role on a low-budget TV film.

Speaker 2

I work as an insurance sales executive. It’s by no means the most glamorous of jobs and is something I never thought I’d end up doing, but anyway, it keeps a roof over my head! After school I applied for anything I saw advertised and I got a job in this insurance company as an office junior, doing all the mundane stuff. I slowly climbed the ladder and got to where I am today – I had a really encouraging manager who saw my potential and pushed me forward. The work’s satisfying in its own way and my colleagues are great – I’ve developed a good social life with them outside work too.

Speaker 3

I’m a web developer and design websites for all kinds of businesses in my local area. It can be difficult starting out after school as most employers want experience and most people don’t have any – unless they’ve done a bit of work experience for free or something. That wasn’t the case with me – I got my job through simple determination. I used to call companies all the time but I never got through to the manager, until one day she answered herself and offered me the job on the spot. There’s little chance of promotion in this line of work, but I’d like to run my own company one day.

Speaker 4

I’ve always been creative and did a degree in jewellery design. During my course, I did a work placement in a top design company which I was absolutely thrilled about, even though I didn’t get paid. I approached them after I’d finished my studies but there were no vacancies, so I had to start looking elsewhere. I then started selling my creations to my friends who loved my stuff. It was one of them who put me in touch with the creative director of a small jewellery shop, who was looking for new suppliers. Fortunately, my stuff was a huge success with customers and I’m now manager of my own company.

Speaker 5

It was tough changing careers after a lengthy period as a teacher, and I spent hours on the phone to various marketing companies asking whether they had any openings. I also used social media sites or asked friends if they’d heard of anything. I’d almost given up the idea of working in the field until I remembered about some short-term work I’d done years previously at a small advertising company. So, I drove to see the director and managed to get an appointment with him straightaway. I was pleased I’d taken the chance as they needed someone to start immediately. It was a case of right time, right place.

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

Audioscripts

Interviewer:   Today on Mind Matters I’m talking to Dr Ann Winters, an expert on human memory. Ann, welcome to the programme. Now, I suppose the first question everyone would ask is: what exactly is the human memory?

Ann Winters:   Well, like so many apparently ‘easy’ questions, the answer isn’t very simple at all! Basically, the human memory is a compartment in our brain, where we store images, rather like the hard drive in a computer – though we can’t confirm the brain’s limitations yet in terms of available storage space! Like a hard drive, however, our memories can become infected by viruses or even wiped out by accidents. But the comparison breaks down when we consider that we can train our memories to expand and work better – which computers can’t manage … yet!

Interviewer:   When you talk about memory being infected, do you mean by a disease?

Ann Winters:   Yes. For instance, people suffering from a physiological disease like Alzheimer’s forget things that happened in the past and they also forget how to perform straightforward tasks, like tying their shoelaces. This is of course, frustrating for both sufferers and care-givers alike. It can also be extremely difficult for family members who are no longer recognised by patients.

Interviewer:   Yes, indeed. But is there anything that can be done for sufferers?

Ann Winters:   Well, the good news is that brain exercises can keep the brain young. Research has shown that people who were more successful in education, and have more mentally active jobs, have a lower risk of developing the disease. It’s quite a startling discovery, actually, and one that fascinates me.

Interviewer:   Yes, that’s certainly very interesting. So, how can someone exercise their brain – by thinking a lot?

Ann Winters:   In a way, yes! Everyone has times where they feel overwhelmed because there are too many things to remember to do and something inevitably gets forgotten. But you can practise using your memory, which not only exercises your brain but also improves your ability to remember things. Unfortunately, a lot of devices in modern life are designed to make sure we don’t forget things, which can make our brain more idle and weaken our memory.

Interviewer:   Would you give us examples of how to exercise our memory?

Ann Winters:   Sure. There’s a very simple technique, although it works better for some people than for others. Whatever you want to remember, think of a physical thing it reminds you of. If I want to remember a date from history – let’s say 1066, the date of the Battle of Hastings – I might think that ‘battle’ reminds me of ‘bottle’. So I think of a bottle with the number 1066 written on the label, and I just picture that bottle in detail in my mind.

Interviewer:   Why is it easier to remember a physical thing than a sentence such as ‘the Battle of Hastings was in 1066’?

Ann Winters:   Because our brains are better at recalling pictures than abstract thought. That’s why I said it works better for some people than for others; some people are particularly good at seeing pictures in their minds – visualising ideas – and they are the ones that can remember things best using this technique.

Interviewer:   Is there anything else we can do to protect our brains?

Ann Winters:   You simply have to exercise your brain regularly with new, enjoyable and interesting activities, like learning a new language or playing a new computer game. One of the most successful activities – though it doesn’t appeal to everyone – is doing crosswords, which makes the brain more efficient.

Interviewer:   I’ll bear that in mind! Ann Winters, thanks very much for taking the time to be with us today.

Ann Winters:   You’re very welcome.