Đề thi thật IELTS Listening — tháng 10/2026 Test 9

Part one. You will hear a student asking a cinema employee for information about joining a film club. First, you have some time to look at questions one to four. Now listen carefully and answer questions one to four. Hi, can I help you? Yeah. I saw on the Internet that you have a film club here at the cinema, uh, but there wasn't a lot about it. Can you tell me a bit more? Yes. We're still setting up the webpage. Sorry about that. We only started the club a few months ago. It's been very popular right from the beginning. We have regular film showings, and there are lots of other benefits. How often does the club meet? Um, every two weeks on Thursday nights. Okay. And I'm 16, so could I join? Sure. People of any age can join. Right. Uh, so how much does it cost to join? Well, it depends. The basic charge is £24 a season, but for people eligible for concessions, it's £21.50. Oh, I'm a student. You'd get the concession rate then. [chuckles] That's good. That entitles you to free entry to the club films and also to £2 off tickets for all other films on at the cinema, so you'd pay £4.50 instead of £6.50. Great. Okay. Now, I don't know if this applies to you, but club members are also eligible for three hours complimentary parking when there's a film on. Well, I don't drive, but my girlfriend does, so it might be useful, yes. Okay. Uh, well, I'd definitely like to join. Before you hear the rest of the conversation, you have some time to look at questions five to ten. Now listen and answer questions five to ten. Can you give me any information about the next few films you're showing? I'm afraid we've run out of leaflets for this season, so I'll tell you about the next few films, and hopefully we'll have all the details on the Internet soon. So the next meeting's this Thursday, October the 14th, and that's a film called Pablo. Ah, I read the reviews of that. It's set in Argentina, isn't it? Mm. About a child who's run away from home? That's right. It just came out recently. And the kid somehow gets on TV, and he wins a dance competition or something. A singing competition, yeah. I haven't seen it either, but it tells you on the posters. Yes, it sounds really good. Well, I definitely want to see that. What's on after that? On October the 28th, there's an American film called The Soldier. That's an old silent movie, but in this showing, we have someone who'll accompany it on the piano, just like they used to in the old cinemas, though it was sometimes an organ accompaniment in those days. Must be a pretty old film then. When did they release the first talkies? Was it 1926 or '27? Yes. Well, this was made in 1922, so well before, though I think they had short feature films with sound by 1923, actually. So what sort of film is it? Well, it's billed as a comedy, though you'd think it was a war film [chuckles] from the title. I don't know much about the plot. We don't have much information, but you could always look it up on the Internet. Yeah, I'll do that. Then the next film after that, so that'll be... let's see, the 11th of November, is a film about animals, and it's just called Tiger, and that's a cartoon film, which makes it sound as if it's for children, but actually it's aimed at adults, and it's really quite frightening in places. I saw it when it first came out. What's it about? It's got no humans in it at all. It's just about the effect of environmental changes millions of years ago on the animals who lived then. It's a really strange film. There's a talk afterwards given by the director, so that should be very popular. You'll need to book early for that, I should think. Right. Well, thanks for all that. Now, if you can give me the application form- Sure That is the end of part one. You now have one minute to check your answers to part one. --- You will hear a company manager talking to staff about procedures to follow if a fire breaks out at work. First, you have some time to look at questions eleven to fourteen on page three. Now listen carefully and answer questions eleven to fourteen. Hello, and thanks to everyone for being on time. The meeting will be fairly short and we'll only be looking at fire procedures. I had a similar meeting with the senior fire officers earlier today, but you're all here because you've volunteered to act as fire wardens for your own particular department. And for some of you, this will be your first time in the role. Although you'll probably have taken part in several fire drills since you've been here. But now the construction work is finished and we have a couple of new corridors and stairways, we need the meeting to update everyone. And before I forget, you might have noticed a bit of upgrading last week. The handheld fire extinguishers, the standard ones on the wall, the report says they're all working well, as is the overhead sprinkler system. But the old alarm system has been replaced and should be a lot more reliable. Anyway, as fire wardens, you have a number of responsibilities. Okay. Those wardens responsible for the factory buildings, you'll remember we had a minor fire back in January. Luckily, the fire doors around the room stopped most of the smoke from getting out, but the alarm should have been pressed a lot earlier. From what I understand, staff felt somewhat reluctant to activate it themselves and were looking for someone senior. So please ensure that everyone knows it's their responsibility to take action immediately. Can you also make sure that if anyone new has been hired since then that they've read the fire notices? And wardens for office departments, you'll also have to have a word with your staff. When the fire alarm went off in January in that minor fire, people got out of the office building pretty quickly. That was fine, but once they were out, they stood right in front of the doors. So if the fire crews had needed to access the offices, they would have been prevented. Good to see that everyone had left their bags and stuff behind, though. Before you hear the rest of the talk, you have some time to look at questions fifteen to twenty on page four. Now listen and answer questions fifteen to twenty. Okay. Next on the agenda, there's a few aspects of fire safety that we need to go through with all you wardens. Firstly, we want to make sure that when we have the next fire drill, there's nothing blocking the way in the escape routes. No obstacles, I mean. So please have a look at that as soon as possible. We want to be able to get outside very quickly. One thing that should definitely be on your to-do list is making sure no one's locked the fire doors and that it's easy enough to get through them. Now, you might remember that last year we had a fire officer come and visit and show us what to do if we see a colleague starting to suffer from the effects of smoke inhalation. Well, the same officer's coming back to lead another session. Another issue is how to handle the fire extinguishers. Someone from the local fire department has booked in to teach people how to do that. I think it would be a good idea if fire wardens and department staff attended those sessions. Let's see, what else is on the list? Oh, yes, the evacuation points. The green area behind the main car park, the pavement on Hunter Street, and the unused area behind the factory car park. Fire wardens need to make sure all staff are familiar with these locations for evacuation. So please send out emails directly after the meeting. And the last point is to do with flammable liquids. I believe there have been a few concerns about where they were being stored in the warehouse, but that's been resolved now. However, if anyone has anything else to report, do let me know. That is the end of section two. You now have half a minute to check your answers. --- Section three. You are here with two students called Ruth and Edward discussing their assignment about a conservation issue involving elephants in Kenya. First, you have some time to look at the questions twenty-one to twenty-four. Now, listen carefully and answer questions twenty-one to twenty-four. Right, Edward. I've got some notes here for our conservation assignment. I had a look at the research you mentioned in Kenya. I hadn't realized that farmers were having so many problems with elephants eating their crops there. Yes. The trouble is when elephants get into farmers' field and destroy their crops, that has all sorts of other results. I don't suppose the farmers can just get up and go somewhere else? No, but it's a real problem because farmers are shooting the elephants to keep their crops safe, and then the other elephants are affected and become very hostile to humans. But you can see for the farmers, it's not homes and families that have been threatened. And it's understandable that farmers don't feel like supporting elephant conservation if their own livelihood is being destroyed. You feel you have the right to defend your property. Exactly. So I thought for our assignment, we can start with the problem, then introduce the solutions they've been experimenting with. So now we get onto the bees. I never thought elephants would be afraid of bees. But I suppose even if you're as big as an elephant, a bee sting can still hurt. Well, I think it depends. Bees can't sting through the thick skin on an adult elephant's body, but they target the sensitive areas, like near the eyes. Oh, that must really hurt. And I heard they get right inside the elephant's trunk and sting there. Yes. And then there are the baby elephants, the calves, which have thinner skin, so they can be really badly affected, especially if they get attacked by a whole swarm of bees. So elephants with babies may be threatened by bees even if they don't get stung themselves. Before you hear the rest of the discussion, you have some time to read questions twenty- five to thirty. Now listen and answer questions twenty-five to thirty. Okay, so next week we can go on to describe the experiments based on this fear that elephants have of bees. So there was one way. They hung containers full of bees in trees near the farms. And they listened in trees without containers? And they found the elephants trampled down the trees that didn't have any containers. And stayed well away from the ones with the bees in. Okay. So did you read the articles about the experiment where it was done with the audio recording of bees instead of real bees? No. Well, they've got a recording of a swarm of angry bees, and they played it to herds of elephants out in the wild, and they all stopped what they were doing immediately and stood erect with their heads up and their ears extended. They must have been really aware there was danger somewhere. But not the sort of danger that they can face up to and charge. So they dashed off in the opposite direction. They kept turning their heads around. Presumably looking for the swarm of bees, which wasn't there. Yes. And researchers tested eighteen different herds of the elephants, and all but one responded in a same way. Maybe that herd just didn't hear it properly. It seems a very small exception to the main finding. I think researchers actually concluded that this particular herd lacked any experience of bees. They've never encountered any, so they weren't afraid of the recording. Right. Oh, so that was the reason. Exactly. But what surprised the researchers was from the seventeen herds they did take action when they heard the recording, they found almost fifty percent of the herds did this very quickly, within ten seconds of hearing the recording. Ah, that's interesting. Right. So playing the recordings of bees could be a good deterrent to elephants, but it's not all that straightforward, actually. Yes. You've got to have the electricity to run the machinery. No, that's okay. It can run on batteries. But the whole thing's quite difficult for electrical outlet, which might be easy, and then someone's got to set it all out and make sure it's working. That's not difficult, but it's really a job. They're trying other methods as well, like electric fences to keep the elephants away from the crops. They haven't had much success. But when they hang cowbells on the fences, that seemed to scare them off. Yes. I've read they tried chili peppers as a deterrent too, but that didn't scare the elephants at all. Right. So I think we've got plenty of information. That is the end of section three. You now have half a minute to check your answers. --- Part four. You will hear a researcher giving a talk about a study on children's humor. First, you have some time to look at questions thirty-one to forty. Now listen carefully and answer questions thirty-one to forty. We all think we know what makes children laugh, but can we really explain it? And is it useful for educators to be aware of how children's humor works? Well, to answer these questions, I'd like to tell you about the large-scale study on the humor of primary school children that I was commissioned to carry out two years ago. The aim of the study was to find out what children find funny in their everyday lives, both at school and at home. We wanted to know how children used humor to interact with each other. For example, when they were in the playground, we wanted to know what sort of jokes they told one another and which ones were most popular. Some research was done in this area about fifty years ago, but it's never been followed up. So that's one area that we wanted to find out more about in our research. And we also wanted to find out about what children find funny when they're at home watching television, since many children spend quite a significant amount of time doing this. So how did we go about finding out this information? Well, we interviewed a total of a hundred and fifty children in six different primary schools around the city. We had originally intended to have one-to-one interviews, but we decided that this would be too time-consuming and also might be stressful for the children. So instead, each interviewer had several groups, each consisting of three or four children. They were asked questions like, "What was the last thing that made you laugh?" and, "Do you know any funny stories?" Then another method we used to collect information about what makes children laugh was through the use of humor diaries. So we asked the parents of some of the children to keep a diary like this for six months and to describe situations in which their children had laughed. So what were the main findings? Well, some of them weren't quite what you'd have expected. You'd think that people laugh when things are funny, but that's not always the case. One thing we found was that children nearly always laugh if they're in a situation which is unfamiliar to them. They're a bit nervous because they're not sure what sort of action it's appropriate for them to take, so they laugh. Another type of situation in which we found children often laughed was when people did things which were surprising. If someone's walking down the street with a dog on a lead, that's quite unsurprising. But if someone's got a chicken on a lead, the child will laugh because the usual conventions that govern our behavior aren't being followed. It's funny because it's surprising. Another interesting area is what sort of person makes children laugh most, and here we found that nearly all primary school children find situations particularly humorous if they involve people looking foolish, and particularly if these are adults. The children probably find this empowering to see them at a disadvantage for once. One thing that was observed frequently in the humor diaries was that laughter often erupted spontaneously during pretend games and role-play. Our research showed there's a strong link between laughter and being creative. It's an area that's received little attention to date, maybe because this type of humor isn't often observed in research situations. As well as these, there were other findings that we made during the research process. One quite surprising finding was the fact that when looking at what children find funny, there seems to be hardly any difference between boys and girls. So the children's gender doesn't seem to be significant. Boys sometimes show a slight preference for physical humor, but there's nothing much in it. For educators, as well as for those involved in children's media, it's worth stressing that children still find many of the same things funny as they did in the past. There hasn't been much change in what they laugh at over the years. If you look at what makes children laugh in the twenty-first century, there's really not much difference from what made their grandparents laugh in the twentieth century. They still react positively to the same sort of things. So for example, in the media, they enjoy humor which is non-verbal, where the humor comes from pictures rather than words. And one of the most striking findings that came out of our research, both the interviews and the diaries, is that just as in their grandparents' generation, what children find incredibly funny is humor that is founded on some kind of danger. The fact that they know it isn't real gives them permission to laugh somehow. So what we can conclude from all this is that humor is incredibly important to children. It plays a crucial role. That is the end of part four. You now have forty-five seconds to check your answers to part four.