Listening 2026-06 Test 10

You will hear a number of different recordings, and you will have to answer questions on what you hear. There will be time for you to read the instructions and questions, and you will have a chance to check your work. All the recordings will be played once only. The test is in four sections. At the end of the test, you will be given ten minutes to transfer your answers to an answer sheet. Now turn to section one. Section one. You will hear a man phoning to complain about a flight. First, you have some time to look at questions one to three. You will see that there is an example that has been done for you. On this occasion only, the conversation relating to this will be played first. Hello, you have reached the complaints department. How can I help you? Yes. Hello there. I am phoning to make a complaint regarding a flight that I took with you recently. Okay. There are some details I will need to take from you first. May I have your name please? Jack Dawson, that's D-A-W-S-O-N. The name of the man is Jack Dawson, so Dawson has been written in the space. Now we shall begin. You should answer the questions as you listen, because you will not hear the recording a second time. Hello, you have reached the complaints department. How can I help you? Yes. Hello there. I am phoning to make a complaint regarding a flight that I took with you recently. Okay. There are some details I will need to take from you first. May I have your name please? Jack Dawson, that's D-A-W-S-O-N. And your address? It's 33 Hillcrest Road, that's H-I-W-L-C-R-E-S-T. 33 Hillcrest Road, is that in Exeter? Yes. And what is the postcode of the residence? It's A-L-698-G-Q. Thank you. Do you have a telephone number? Yes. The number at my office is 754-688. That's good. And may I just take a home phone number for you in case of emergencies? No problem. It's 798-662. Are they both local numbers? Yes. Before you hear the rest of the conversation, you have some time to look at questions for to 10. Now, listen and answer questions for to 10. Okay. Great. Thank you for your patience. Now, what is the nature of your complaint? I'm phoning to complain about a flight I took recently. I always take certain measures to ensure that I will be comfortable. For example, I always pay the additional cost for extra legroom, and I always arrive punctually for the flight to make sure that I'm seated beneath an air conditioner. Unfortunately, I was disappointed to find that the air conditioning on the plane was broken. So I spent the entire flight in discomfort as it was too hot and the air was stuffy. I see. I do apologise for this fault with the air conditioning. Now, while I have you on the phone, would you mind answering a short questionnaire regarding your recent flight? Sure. Okay, let's get started. What did you think of the food that was served to you during the flight? I thought that it was inexpensive and quite delicious. However, I was still very hungry afterwards as it was a very small portion and more of a snack. Providing a snack for lunch is not reasonable. Okay. I have noted that down. What was your opinion of the quality of service that you received from our staff on board? The staff was very helpful but each time I pressed the button to request service, it took a long time for a staff member to arrive. I found this frustrating as they just weren't enough staff on board the flight to be able to serve all the customers. Okay, that's great. Thank you very much for answering those questions. Are there any other parts of your travel experience that you would like to comment on? Yep, the process of moving through security was very quick and helped to make my travel experience stress-free. Okay. Do you have any extra comments on the services you received during the flight? Yes, I thought that the seats were very uncomfortable and looked very old. They were also in need of repair as the reclined feature on my chair was broken so I could not go to sleep for the whole flight. Luckily, the entertainment facilities were very good so I was able to distract myself by watching movies. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer all of my questions. We would like to offer you some gifts as a goodwill gesture with a 20% discount on the cost of your hotel stay. We also appreciate that international calls to your home country can be expensive and we are sure that you would like to keep your family updated on your travels. So please accept a phone card which has a credit of £20. Oh, that's really great. Thank you so much for the gift. No problem. We look forward to having you travel with us again soon. Have a fantastic vacation. Thanks. Bye. That is the end of section 1. You now have half a minute to check your answers. Now turn to section 2. --- Part 2. You will hear a radio presenter interviewing someone about the Haggley Food Festival. First, you have some time to look at questions 11 to 13. Now listen and answer questions 11 to 13. Now, here's something that I'm very much looking forward to. Haggley Food Festival takes place this weekend and we're lucky to have Julie Smart with us in the studio today to tell us all about it. Welcome to the show, Julie. Another year and another great festival to look forward to. Good morning Tim. Yes, the festival has been such a huge success with the public that it's hard to believe it was first held just four years ago. In fact, there have been three events. This year's will be number four. Sadly, we had to cancel last year due to the terrible weather that weekend, but everything's looking good for this one. In fact, I'm really excited about this year's event. We've been fortunate enough to attract two new members to the Organizing Committee, one of whom has a wide range of experience in running festivals and the other has lots of industry contacts. Judging by the interest we've had, this year looks like being the busiest so far. We're expecting record crowds and we've planned loads of additional activities. So if your listeners are interested in coming, we'd suggest getting there nice and early to get the most from their visit. That's good to know. Planning such a large festival must involve a lot of work and a lot of people. Yes, it does, but we're lucky to have a brilliant team of volunteers. We couldn't manage without them. Before you hear the rest of the radio interview, you have some time to look at questions 14 to 20. Now listen and answer questions 14 to 20. So, when can we look forward to attending? Well, we can only start to get the site ready a day before the festival opens so our volunteers will be working all day on Thursday. That means the site will be closed to visitors until the next day, Friday the 30th, and then we'll be there right the way through until Sunday. We open at 12 pm on Friday and stay open until 10 pm every evening. We'd have liked an 11 o'clock closing time, but public transport stops running at 10.30. We're encouraging people to use buses and trains to reduce traffic in the area, which is why we're stopping early enough for people to get away in time. We've also tried to keep costs down, and this year for the first time we've introduced a weekend pass for 15 pounds per person and 10 pounds for children under the age of 16. Of course, you can pay by the day if you prefer. That's 10 pounds for adults and 6 pounds for children. The entrance fee covers things like the children's entertainment and access to all the cooking demonstrations, which we think are worth the entrance fee on their own. Oh, and before I forget, I've been asked to point out that we're offering free parking on site, and visitors are asked to use this rather than the streets in or near residential areas as we don't want to upset local people. For those traveling to the festival by train, we're running a shuttle service. That's a double-decker bus every half hour from the station to the site. This is also available to take people back to the station. Wonderful. So what kind of things will be taking place? Well, based on feedback from previous events, we've made a few changes this year. A significant development is that we've partnered with a local organization, Food for the Homeless, and there'll be several fundraising activities during the weekend that visitors can support. We've got some very famous chefs you'll recognize from TV giving demonstrations, and some of them will be signing copies of their latest book if you're interested in buying one. There will, of course, be a large number of stalls selling a huge variety of food from around the world. There's a slight change to the advertised program, as the Vietnamese stall won't be with us this year. One new idea we're trying out is a second-hand book stall. Pop along and pick up a bargain, or even better, donate some of your old books. What else? Oh, yes. We all know there's growing demand for organic food, and visitors will be able to purchase a variety of fruit and vegetables from our organic stall holders. Finally, in our children's area, there'll be lots of child-friendly activities, including coloring worksheets, to encourage them to learn how to cook. That all sounds brilliant, Julie. I can't wait for the weekend. It is the end of part two. You now have half a minute to check your answers. Now turn to part three. --- Section 3 First, you have some time to look at questions 21 to 25. Now listen carefully and answer a questions 21 to 25. Hi, Francis. Sam. So, how did you go with applying the different theoretical business tools for the report I asked you to write? It was interesting and made us really focus on which tool was best to use when analyzing a business. Good. So, tell me what you found out. We liked the theory behind pest analysis. That's political, economic, social and technological, although we're not sure if it was very applicable to our case. Some of the other groups had studies for which it worked really well and they said it was easy to use. But I felt it focused too much on the big picture and was unsuitable for our company. I agree. On the other hand, I enjoyed using the drill-down method. It was painstaking to do and we seemed to be working on it for ages. But the results were worth waiting for. Yes. I liked the way it eventually broke down complex problems. Yes. I much preferred doing the PMI analysis. It was so straightforward to break down into its three components, plus, minus and interesting implications. You just needed to brainstorm these components and then write them up. Fast and effective. And it didn't make your brain hurt doing it. I agree. And you don't need any special training at all. Anyone can use it. So was there any tool that you thought was superior to the others? In my opinion, the one tool that is critical to business, especially for larger companies, is Pareto Analysis. If they apply Pareto Analysis, they would see that by focusing on the critical 20% of their problems, they could generate 80% of the benefits. This would allow them to work faster, and it also reduces their workload. It's all about finding out what their basic problems are. I agree with Frances about Pareto, but my favourite was the SWOT analysis. You know, looking at the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. As it can be used in so many different situations, it works in large and small companies, and even down to departmental level. It was great for our case study. Yes, that's true. Before you hear the rest of the discussion, you have some time to look at questions 26 to 30 on page 6. Okay, I've read your draft report, but can you tell me a bit more about that company you focused on? Well, the company we used in our study was a manufacturing company who have relied on distributors to take their product to the end user. We did some analysis examining the possibility of them distributing their own products. We initially looked at their strengths. The company, although it is small, is well known and has a very good reputation. The management are very committed to increasing the company benefits and they are confident this move would be successful. Right, and the company has quite a lot of staff who have previously worked for distribution companies, so the knowledge is already there. That was something we didn't expect to find and is probably going to help them the most to achieve their goals. I was quite impressed by some of the opportunities you detailed. I did think you missed something quite pertinent to their future growth, however. What was that? You didn't consider the potential for establishing an offshore division. You talked about the company negotiating better terms with its suppliers. Most of these are based abroad and so if the company had a way of actually distributing the product there, this could be a tremendous opportunity and give them an edge over their competitors. That's a good point. So what did you think about the threats we identified? I thought you did a good job. I was really pleased to see that you considered how the government's planned environmental policy could really affect the viability of this venture. With this law being introduced next year, they might need to find new ways of using their existing technology. It's easy to identify what your competitors are doing, but it's the bigger picture that often gets ignored. So Sam, what did you learn from this assignment? I guess I hadn't realized how much time it takes to ensure your company survives and profits. It was great to study the different tools in books, but applying them in the real world was much harder than I thought. It was a great learning experience. I'm glad I could make your assignment relevant. I'm basically happy with your report. You've got the format correct, with the necessary headings, etc. And you've got sufficient details under the different headings. Just remember to state whether or not you think the company should go ahead with a new venture. But you've done a good job so far. That is the end of section 3. You now have half a minute to check your answers. Now turn to section 4. --- Good morning. Today I'd like to discuss the results of our patient survey. We have reviewed the data collected in order to measure the strengths and weaknesses of our hospital and to determine potential future plans for improvement. The first question on the survey attempted to determine the main reason that patients choose to come to our hospital for treatment rather than others in the vicinity. The data showed that even though our hospital is not as centrally located as others, we offer a very good transportation service that enables patients to travel here by bus or train free of charge. Despite there being other hospitals that are larger with more facilities than ours, we still have higher patient numbers. The second question on the survey asked what quality patients hoped for most when visiting the hospital. There were five choice options, including short waiting times and friendly service from nurses. However, the data collected showed that most patients hoped that the hospital is clean when they visited. It seemed that patients were not concerned with the clarity of signs and notices in the hospital, as this option got the smallest number of votes. They were, however, very keen to be given prior information by the staff about hospital treatments. Using the data collected from our survey, we have developed a list of actions that will be adopted within the next year. A main focus of these improvements is our website, which is currently very outdated. We will not only update our in-hospital service for the use of the medical staff, but also our main service so that local residents can also benefit from it. We hope that this new service will attract a large number of new patients. It is clear from the feedback that many members of staff are unhelpful towards patients and inefficient when carrying out their tasks. We feel that some incentive is needed to boost motivation to perform better. And so we are implementing a system whereby staff will be awarded an extra bonus for their success. The member of staff who has received the most bonuses at the end of the year will be announced as staff member of the year. We will continue to monitor progress on this issue through patient feedback forms so that the opinions of our visitors will constantly be taken into consideration. Another issue that the survey has brought to light is the long delays experienced by visitors awaiting treatment, with some visitors reporting waiting times of up to five hours. This is unacceptable. We need to improve the effectiveness of communication between patients, doctors and staff, so we have decided to implement a ticketing system. This means that patients are seen on a first-come first-served basis and will never have to wait more than two hours to be seen by a doctor. The final topic that I want to cover in the lecture is the recommendations that we have put forward for future improvements to the hospital. Firstly, we intend to be the first hospital in the country to build a new unit for those suffering from sleep disturbance, which is a relatively common illness affecting up to 6% of the population. Whilst we are a hospital primarily treating patients with illnesses and injuries, we cannot ignore the significant income that those in need of plastic surgery could bring to the hospital. We will therefore also be proposing a new ward to give patients access to this increasingly popular treatment. After much discussion about the quality and suitability of our equipment, we have decided that it is advanced enough to cope with the treatments that we offer, and that our spending should be directed to other areas, where it will have a more significant impact. We feel that more effective planning is needed to improve the efficiency of the forms of communication that patients have with us. Therefore, patients who have received treatment will receive an email link to a survey that they can fill out online. This will eradicate meaningless paperwork and will also enable us to digitally monitor the data collected. Now, if anyone has any questions?