Listening 2026-05 Test 19

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, this is Medical Help Direct. How can I help you? Oh, hello. I've got a problem with my back with it being the middle of the night. I can't go to the doctor. I wonder if you can give me some advice. Certainly. But first, can I have your telephone number, please? It's 03786-439251. The man's telephone number is 03786-439251. So 03786-439251 has been written in the space. Now we shall begin. You should answer the questions as you listen, because you are recording a second time. Listen carefully and answer questions 1. With my back with it being the middle of the night, I can't go to the doctor and I wonder if you can give me some advice. Certainly. But first, can I have your telephone number, please? It's 03786-439251. OK. And if you could give me your first name, please. Robert. And your surname? Ridiard. That's RIDYARD. And now you're addressed, please. It's 27 station road. OK. More town. And you need the postcode? Yes, please. VP175HJ. And your date of birth? The 25th of February, 1975. Fine. Now I just need to take details of your doctor. She's called Dr. Craven. And the surgery? It's more town health centre. Thanks. Now can you tell me a bit more about what the problem is? Well, like I said, it's my back. OK. Can you tell me which part of the back? Lower. And have you had any problems with your back before? Yes, I had a bit of trouble last year in June, I think. Or was it July? No, we went on holiday at the beginning of July, and it had cleared up by then. And when did it start this time? Has it just come on? No, I've had it-- let's see. Since Monday, so that's three days now. But it wasn't too bad at first. I mean, I could just about get around, though. I couldn't drive the car or anything. Then this afternoon, the patient suddenly got so bad that I was dead, I've been better since, but that hasn't helped. And do you have any pain elsewhere in your stomach or abdomen, for example? No. Before you hear the rest of the conversation, you have some time to look at questions 7 to 10 on page 2. Now, listen and answer questions 7 to 10. OK. Now, have you any idea what caused the problem? Well, I was tidying up my office, and I lifted a box up from the floor that was heavier than I thought, and I think that's what did it. Yes, it's easily done, isn't it? So you're in bed now. Yes. Have you tried applying heat to the back? Yes, I've got a hot water bottle. That's usually the first thing I try. And have you taken any painkillers? Yes. And other than that, you feel quite well. I do, yes. Right. Now, I can't diagnose or prescribe any medication, but I can offer you some advice. One thing you could do now is to see if ice makes any difference. That sometimes helps. But don't put it directly onto your skin. Wrap it up in a towel or something. And don't leave it on for longer than 20 minutes. All right. I haven't tried that before. It can be useful sometimes. Now, have you seen your doctor about this? No, I just thought, well, everyone has back pain, but I've never had it as bad as this before. I think you should go and see your doctor tomorrow. And she may be able to give you something to help. OK, I'll do that. I'm actually feeling a bit better now. Good. And you might get some advice from her about exercise. That's often the best way of dealing with this sort of problem. OK, I'll ask her. Right. Now, if you're worried about anything before tomorrow, you can always phone back our lines are open 24 hours. Thanks very much. That is the end of section one. You now have half a minute to check your answers. Now turn to section two on page three. --- Section 2. You will hear the chairperson of the Middletown Urban Farming Scheme, talking to a group of people who are interested in joining the scheme. First, you have some time to look at questions 11-16 on page 3. I'm Chris Butcher, the chairperson of the Middletown Urban Farming Scheme. Now, listen carefully and answer questions 11-16. I'm Chris Butcher, the chairperson of the Middletown Urban Farming Scheme. Or MUFS for short, a highly successful program which encourages city dwellers to grow their own fruit and vegetables, to become city farmers if you will. Who started it all with us? Well, the idea of Urban Farming has been around for quite a while, particularly among town planners. But it was actually a group of Middletown business people, including myself, who decided to get it going. We became a non-profit and University Agricultural Specialists got involved later. Now initially, the aim was not some eco-friendly goal of reducing carbon emissions caused by the transport of food from different areas. It was simply to maximise the utilisation of the shrinking or idle land that lies within the city. Of course, later we realised that an additional benefit might be a healthier diet for the local people. Let me tell you a bit about the groups who have joined so far. We've got any number of primary schools involved, loads of corporate offices, so our message seems to have been well received there. For this coming year, we're going to concentrate on getting various community sectors, especially the senior citizens to join, because so far they've been somewhat slow to take up the scheme. Now, the core community of the MUFS is a group of dedicated gardeners. You probably won't be familiar with your specific plot of land. They're mostly allotment gardeners, but they are the people who know the ins and outs of gardening. They will be happy to sit down with any MUFS member and make some hands-on suggestions about gardening. But I only said some. They don't know the answers to technical questions, like the Latin names, plus… The MUFS are keen to support members who are physically disabled. We're looking at the possibility of providing specially adapted gardening tools, similar to ones that members who can't cope with standard tools use. That's not happening yet, but we do have some window boxes, as well as larger containers, which we can distribute free of charge to these members, although they will have to provide their own soil and compost themselves. I'm especially proud of the work we've done with the local schools, both grade school level and high schools. The teachers say that they knew the scheme would be of some practical use in science classes, like biology. Despite the original hopes of some, the fruit and vegetable plots have not provided cheaper lunches for their students. But what they didn't anticipate was the change in attitude that the scheme has created amongst their students. They say the students have become much more conscious of their surrounding environment. Before we hear the rest of the talk, you have some time to look at Question 17-20 on page 4. Now, listen and answer questions 17-20. Now a number of local organisations and businesses provide our members with free goods and services. Let me go through some of them. The city hospital, as you might expect, has to provide thousands of meals to patients, so the manager of its kitchen runs a course for our members on how to use vegetables in a huge variety of dishes. The local government found it had a large glass building, which the parks department used to start off flower seeds in, to raise plants during the winter. They agreed to allow our members to use this free of charge to get their own vegetable seeds off to a good start. Another thing, the university has agreed that if members send them a sample of their soil, they will do a series of tests on it, indicating what kind of plants grow best, and what types of fertiliser or nutrients would be best to use. I just want to make sure our members know what's good for them. A supermarket is offering a series of classes on how to lose weight, stay healthy by having a sensible diet. Now let's talk about the practicalities. That is the end of section 2. You now have half a minute to check your answers. --- 3. You will hear two architecture students called Luke and Millie discussing their assignment above the use of plastic as a building material. First, you have some time to look at questions 21-24. Hi, Millie. Hi, Luke. So we're here to talk over our first assignment on alternative building materials. Yeah, I think it will be really interesting to learn more about how plastic has been used. I found lots of information from the 1960s. So did you find out why the idea of plastic buildings wasn't popular with the public at that time? It wasn't the materials environmental credentials. The concept of plastic houses was just too futuristic. So you mean it was their appearance? No. People liked their modern design, but the idea of that sort of building as a home just didn't appeal. Right. I did some research on the kind of problems engineers had with the old plastics in the 1960s and 1970s. What did you learn? Well, firstly, because plastic doesn't weigh very much, the buildings weren't very good in windy weather. They managed to fix that by amending the shape of the buildings, but the real disadvantage was that when the plastic was exposed to the light, it developed fine cracks, and when rain got into these cracks, the plastic would deform and lose its strength. Right. I wonder where we can find some more information about the situation nowadays. Maybe we could ask one of the PhD students. I expect they'll be too busy. Yeah, that's true. Well, we could always use the internet. Maybe we should research more academic sources like the journals we have in the library. Okay. That way we can reference everything properly at the end of the assignment. Have you read Peterson's article about plastic houses? Yeah, it was really good. But it didn't have enough illustrations of the houses. That was a shame. They'd have been useful for us as examples in our presentation. I liked the way it was organised, though. That was really clear. Yeah, and it wasn't too technical, but you did need to know a bit about plastic houses before you read it to get the most out of it. That's true. Before you hear the rest of the discussion, you have some time to look at questions 25-30. Okay. Well, shall we start comparing our findings, then? Sure. I'll make some notes. Well, the earliest one I read about was a plastic house called The House of the Future that was built in 1957, though no one actually lived in it. It was on show at a theme park in America for 10 years. After that, they demolished it, but they had a hard time. It was really built to last. They couldn't break the plastic up. Was that the one that had an ultrasonic dishwashing machine? Yes, that would still be pretty revolutionary today. Did you read about The Wonder House? It was designed in 1964 by an industrial designer called Alfred Nois. Oh, the one with the roof like a sort of tent or an umbrella. That's right. The roof was made of fiberglass and it curved down to the ground at each corner in closing a big central space. Then the sides were filled with glass or plastic. It was a really innovative idea for the time, but Nois only made a small model and the design wasn't implemented. Hmm, pity. What about those spaceship houses they built between 1968 and 1978, like flying sources? They built over 100 of them. I don't know if I'd want to live in one. The living area was quite limited and they had really low ceilings, but they do look really futuristic, don't they? Are there white walls and circular shape, yes? But the plastic houses I like are the foam houses they built between 1979 and 1983. They've got really curvy shapes. They built them by spraying foam over a great big balloon. They were partly built to show what computers could do in the home, things like controlling heat and light and so on. Quite new ideas at the time. And they were very well insulated as well, so they saved energy. People were just beginning to get into that. I read about a plastic exhibition hall that can all be packed away in a relatively small container. You just put it on a truck and take it to wherever you want it, then inflate it. You know, fill it up with air and there's room for hundreds of people. And when the exhibition or whatever's over, you just take it down again and you can reuse it again and again. And there's a house in New Zealand that's built from household and industrial waste like plastic boxes. They say it's a much better construction material than bricks from the point of view of insulation. Yes, they're using that idea to build houses in other parts of the world too. Okay, well, it looks as if we've got plenty of stuff. That is the end of Part 3. You now have 30 seconds to check your answers to Part 3. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] --- Part 4. You will hear part of the presentation about the early history of salt. First, you have some time to look at questions 31 to 40. You have some time to look at questions 31 to 40. You have some time to look at questions 31 to 40. You have some time to look at questions 31 to 40. You have some time to look at questions 31 to 40. You have some time to look at questions 31 to 40. You have some time to look at questions 31 to 40. You have some time to look at questions 31 to 40. Now, listen carefully and answer questions 31 to 40. In my presentation, I'm going to talk about salt. In modern times, when we talk about salt, people may associate it with high blood pressure or increased heart risk and many health experts warn that we should use less salt in our meals and dishes. However, we should not ignore its importance in our cuisine and even in early human history. Salt is one of the oldest, most ubiquitous food seasonings. The taste of salt is one of the basic human tastes. More importantly, salt plays an indispensable role in the health of human beings. For example, it regulates the body's acid base balance. Because of its importance to survival, salt has often been considered a valuable commodity during human history. This can be tracked all the way back to ancient Greece, ancient Egypt and ancient Rome when salt was highly valued and used as a method of trade and currency. In ancient Rome, the busiest road leading to the city was the Via Solaria, which means the salt route in English. A soldier's pay, which partly consists of salt, was known as Solarium Argentum in Latin, from which we derived the English word "salary". A soldier's salary was cut if he was not worth his salt and expression still used today. In fact, salt was not only the first condiment discovered but also the first preservative. We know today that food goes bad because microorganisms in the food multiply in abundance and a high salt environment is not conducive to microbial reproduction. Extremely high concentrations of salt can even kill microorganisms in the food. The ancients certainly didn't know this but they did know that salted food can be preserved for a long time. The use of salt as a preservative can be traced to ancient Sweden. At first, hunting was the principal means of livelihood. In this case, meat supplies were unlikely to be frequent. What's more, fewer animals were available for hunting. In order to ensure the supply of meat, many families in Sweden began to raise animals in the surrounding forests during the summer when the weather was suitable for animals to survive. These animals were fed every day until about three to four months later. That's in October, they were ready to be butchered for meat and that was the only month when ancient Swedish people had fresh meat on their table. Then, with the continuous increase in productivity, people finally had some meat left. However, how to store the meat had become a headache until someone invented a whole new way to preserve food, salting. People tried to keep meat from going bad by adding some salt to it and it could be preserved for several months and even years. There was evidence that salt was widely used to preserve meat. Historical documents in 1573 recorded the Swedish kings everyday meals, mentioning that 175 pounds of meat was consumed each year but over 150 pounds was salty. From this, we can clearly see the importance of salt in Sweden at that time. In addition, the documents also noted the annual sales of beer in Sweden soared during that period and this must be related to high levels of salt in their food. Now, let's turn to the sources of salt, where is salt from? Well, salt is common in nature. It has long been found that salt can be extracted from seawater, mineral deposits, saline lakes, brine, spring, etc. Among which the two most important ones are oceans and basins. On the floor of the latter often lie deserts where traces of salt can be found such as the Sahara. Furthermore, the quality of different salt types varies a lot. For example, salt from seawater is always mixed with impurities so after the salt is dried the sediments and other chemicals need to be purified before eating. However, this is not the case with salt from spring water. We can hardly find any impurities and the salt level is much more concentrated. Then, how did people distribute salt around the world? Of course, in modern times we have various ways of transporting goods but in ancient times it was not the case. Take ancient Sweden, we mentioned before as an example. Because of the heavy use of salt in the diet, Sweden could not feed itself and had to import large amounts of salt from other countries. In order to make sure they could buy enough salt from abroad, the Swedish had to attach great importance to shipping and keep it undamaged as it was the most crucial way at that time. While in other ancient countries, in order to distribute salt to other places, groups of men were employed. They put bags of salt on their shoulders or bags and moved them to the surrounding regions, and gradually these people were considered as a mode of transport in early times. Later, with the improvement of traffic conditions, salt trade between different regions was boosted, and long distance food trade was also promoted, making communication between different cultures more frequent and... That is the end of part 4. You now have one minute to check.