Listening 2026-06 Test 7

"Oh hi, Anna. How's it going? I haven't seen you since graduation." Hi, Bradley. Things are great. I've been traveling around Europe for the last month, but now that I'm back, I really need to find a job so I can start renting my own place. "Yeah, me too. My mum's driving me crazy. I've got an interview on Thursday at a company called Power. I'm pretty nervous." "Don't worry. I'm sure you'll do great. Do you know what the job involves?" "Well, the company has many sections, like sourcing materials and taking care of waste management. But I'm interviewing for a job in the warehouse section." "Wow. I bet that will be really interesting." "You should apply too. They still have a couple of jobs left. I found the job I'm interviewing for on their website. The reference is SW35FT." "Thanks, Bradley. That's really nice of you. I'll apply later today. Is there a contact I could ask for?" "The manager is Susan Fatcher. But you should contact her personal assistant. Her name is Jane Hitcher." "How do you spell this surname for me, please?" "Yes. It's H-I-T-C-H-E-R." "Okay, great. I actually found a job listing for a place at Cotton, but the work hours don't suit me. You should look into it." "Ah. That's the grocery company, right? I heard that the jobs in their distribution office are really well paid." The advertisement I saw was looking for people to work in the supermarket office, but the pay still looked very good. "Was there a description of the job?" The company is looking to increase their production of cakes and pastries, so you would be working as a cook in the bakery. After a month, they evaluate your performance, and there's potentially an opportunity for promotion to a management position. "That sounds like a great opportunity. I'll definitely look into it. Do you have the reference number? I'll write it down in my notebook." "Sure. I also have the reference for a job at the Art Museum. I'll give you the reference for that first. It's S-G-H-667." "Great. That's really near my house. And what's the reference number for the bakery job at Cotton?" "The reference is AR-W-204." "I'll send them my application this afternoon. Who's the contact?" The name on the advert was Melanie, but it specifically said not to contact her in person. You should use the office as your contact, so just post your application there directly. Now listen and answer questions 6-10. You seem to have found way more job listings than I have. Where are you finding them all? At first I was keeping an eye out for listings on the internet, but all of the jobs listed there were in the city. I found that the best place to find local jobs was in magazine and adverts. "Adverts?" "You know, the section at the back of Job Plus magazine." "Where can I buy that?" "You don't buy it. It's a free magazine. Just go to your nearest corner shop and buy the newspaper. The magazine comes with it." "Oh, I never realized. My mum buys the newspaper every week, so there's probably a copy lying around at home somewhere. I'll have a look for it when I get back. All this job hunting is so stressful and time-consuming." "I can't wait until it's over either. I'm so tempted just to pay someone to do all this for me." "What do you mean?" "I could go to a recruitment seminar or to an agency." "The agency sounds like a great idea. They charge a fee before taking you on as a client, though, plus only large corporations hire new employees through an agency." "Well, I think it would be exciting." "If you decide to go to an agency, make sure you take your student card with you. Your student status is valid for another month, and agencies often give students a 10% discount." "Okay, great. I'll remember that." "All of the plays on months I've applied to require a referee. I've never had a job before, so I don't know who to ask. Who did you use?" "I had a summer job working as a waitress, so I asked my old boss. I got on with him really well, so I trusted him to give me a good reference. If you haven't had a job before, you should ask one of your tutors." "That's a really good idea. I used to really enjoy my history classes with Mr. Fredericks. Perhaps I'll ask him." "I miss being a student. I don't feel mature enough to be earning money and finding a place of my own." "Yeah, university was great. Have you heard about their summer program? I'm thinking of applying for the art course." "That sounds like fun. Do you have to pay?" "No, the tutors are running it as a research project. You just need to fill out a feedback form at the end." "Great. Well, I'll see you there. Good luck with your job hunting." "Thanks. Good luck to you too. See you soon." --- Now listen carefully and answer questions 11 to 16. Good evening, my name's Alan, and I'm so pleased to be here to talk to you about volunteering. With busy lives, it can be hard to find time to volunteer. However, the benefits of doing so are enormous to you, your family, and your community. Let me start by telling you about my own experience. I've done various types of volunteering over the last few years. At the moment, for example, I spend every Saturday morning in our local folk museum. My earliest experience was when I was still at school, when I used to go to the hospital one evening a week to take a trolley of library books round the wards. I moved on from that to spending my university summer vacations helping out at a zoo. That was amazing fun. My own decision to volunteer came as a result of a lesson at school when one of my classmates told us all about his holiday volunteering as a swimming pool lifeguard. When I told my mother I wanted to do something similar the following summer, she suggested I got started a bit sooner than that. So the next day I asked our class teacher what other volunteering opportunities there might be for me, and that's what got me going. There are many advantages to volunteering, which you experience depends to some extent on the kind of activity you opt for. Though, of course, whatever you do, you can enjoy feeling you're making a valuable contribution to society. It may give you the opportunity to learn how to do all sorts of useful and interesting things. As far as I'm concerned, the key things being the joy of getting to know people who I wouldn't otherwise have had the chance to meet. I'm frequently asked whether there are any opportunities for doing voluntary work in your own home. There are a few, mainly involving writing, graphic design, or various types of handicraft. It obviously doesn't fit with everyone's lifestyle, but it amazes me how many people do opt for this route. In general, there are lots of things to ask yourself when deciding what type of volunteering will be right for you. Most people know it's important to take their own skills into account. They know they need to think about whether they have what it takes to do the work they're considering. They're also aware of what it might mean in terms of hours, and whether this will be possible for them, given any other commitments they may have. But sometimes people don't give any thought to the degree of independence they'd like. For example, some people want to be in charge while others prefer not to have to make decisions. So what advice would I give about making the most of a volunteering experience? Well, the first thing I'd say is things may well not be quite what you expected, but stick at it. You'll find it's almost always possible to have fun, and that, after all, is also a valuable part of the point of getting involved in volunteering. Before you hear the rest of the talk, you have some time to look at question 17-20. Now listen and answer a question 17-20. I'd like now to talk more specifically about a volunteer called Anna, who spent a year abroad volunteering on a Caribbean island. At first, it was a culture shock, but she soon settled in and really enjoyed herself. Anna got involved in different activities while she was abroad. She'd expected she'd probably be teaching on the island, but they were still building the school, so she was asked to be a nursing auxiliary at the local clinic. She got very good at taking blood pressures and temperatures. She also helped with harvesting bananas at the farm where she was lodging, and another volunteer staying at the same place helped set up a library in the village. Anna came back enormously enthusiastic about volunteering and wants to promote the idea. You may have read an interview she did with a reporter in the local paper about her voluntary work. If you'd like to read more about her experiences, then I'll give you the link for a wonderful site she set up for school children who are considering volunteering. She's going to be talking about her experiences next month at a conference for people interested in volunteering, and any of you would be welcome to go to that too. Just have a word with me. Section 2. You'll hear a talk by a security worker from Sydney Airport, who is introducing the day-to-day operations of the Australian quarantine service. First, you have some time to look at questions 11 to 17. Now, listen carefully and answer questions 11 to 17. Hi everyone and welcome to Sydney Airport. Today I'll be giving you the inside information on the day-to-day operations of the Australian quarantine service here. We hope to provide you with a better understanding of why such heavy security regulations are necessary by educating you on how we operate and why we do the things we do. We're not here to try to persuade you to fly through Sydney Airport that we hope you'll find your experience relatively stress-free and comfortable. First things first are personnel. Can anyone guess how many people work at Sydney Airport? We have 200 alone working in Terminal 2, so can you guess how many in the whole airport? I heard someone say 360, that's getting closer. What? Did someone say 2000? That's way too high. Sydney Airport actually employs 440 people. A lot, right? And about half of those employees work in security related matters. Moving on to our not-so-human employees, let's come and see our favourite pooch, Milton. Milton is our best drug-sniffing dog on the force. He's friendly to most people, you can even come pet him at the end of our tour. Burnouts, beware though, he'll find everything. Notice that even though there are so many of us around him, Milton stays quite calm. This is the precise reason he was chosen for the job. Dogs that are chosen are not predisposed to sniff out different narcotics. That's something we teach them already. So here's a part of the airport most people never notice. The cargo transport terminal. This is where packages are shipped to and from. Normally we ship around 4400 packages per month. In this airport alone, over 52,000 packages were shipped in and out over the past year. We ship to and from 170 different countries, not bad, eh? Probably it will go up to over 72,000 packages this year. And despite over 100 flights in and out of here daily, the number of lost or delayed packages is impressively low. If you send your package through here, rest assured we'll get it where it's going. Let's move on to the area most of us are familiar with the passenger terminals. In order to be allowed into this area, you must pass through security with your ticket and if you're travelling internationally, your passport. If you're travelling domestically, you just need a legal form of ID. If you don't have those, you will not be allowed to pass through security and board your flight. During the security scan, your carry-on items will be checked for dangerous items such as weapons, sharp objects and liquids that exceed our specified limit. If you attempt to pass any of the prohibited items on this list, posted at the entrance, you are still allowed to board a plane, but you'll be given a warning and your item will be confiscated. Don't worry, we will not arrest you for having too much shampoo in your bag or anything like that. We also search your carry-ons and parcels for any perishable items. We prohibit the transportation of local vegetation and prohibit parcels containing any insects in them. You may or may not have learnt about this in biology class, but when some plants are introduced to a new environment, they spread wildly and wipe out the current species around it. It is important to control the introduction of new plants into an ecosystem so we must prohibit the transport of any fertile seeds. So what happens to parcels containing possibly suspicious items? It's of course something we do not take lightly here. If an object passes through the scanner that appears suspicious in any way, it is separated out for manual search by a member of our trained security personnel. If an illegal plant or simple sharp object like a pocket knife is found, it is simply disposed of in our bio-hazard waste containers and the package itself is returned to the sender or passenger if it is for a passenger flight. More serious weapons are reported to higher authorities for investigation. Before you hear the rest of the talk, you have some time to look at questions 18 to 20. Now listen and answer questions 18 to 20. As far as parcel security, the material of the parcel is important. For shipped goods, the most common material used and the most widely accepted is paper. Make sure it is packed sturdy enough with no rips or tears. We've definitely had packages rip open before due to haphazard packing. A more common problem though is the package labels. When an item does not make it to the right place, this is the most common reason. The label may not be in the right place or marked clearly enough. If you're receiving any items from abroad that must be declared, please remember our guidelines in order to ensure the time and delivery of your item. Make sure it is packed correctly and we ask that you notify customs between two and ten days within the items scheduled arrival date. Okay, before we move on are there any questions? That is the end of section two. You now have half a minute to check your answers. Now turn to section three. --- Business students, called Janet and Michael, discussing their research into the marketing of different kinds of shampoo. First you have some time to look at questions 21 to 26. You Hi Janet, how are you getting on with the shampoo marketing project? Hi Michael, it's interesting. I've read how shampoo marketing has developed over the last 100 years. Oh, I didn't think we needed to do that. True, but I'm interested anyway. Basically, what was once sold as an economical way of getting your hair clean has evolved into a beauty product. And shampoo is interesting because it's a key influence in how we see ourselves. You've heard of bad hair days. When your hair looks bad, maybe you didn't wash it and you feel bad about it. Should of them, yes, had one, no, don't think they're real, bad hair days come on. Well, whatever you want to call them, that's not what research from Yale is suggesting. They're not just imagined and both sexes are equally affected by them. And when they happen, people tend to perform and feel worse than usual. Right. And I've been reading about shampoo ingredients, chemicals like sodium laurel sulfate, methyl chloride. Many of the manufacturers tend to use these or others like them, though they keep it quiet. Right. When it comes to the product packaging, they're strangely silent about it. Another area it would be interesting to investigate is the labeling on bottles. Apparently printing directly onto the bottles costs about 50% less than sticking a printed label on because it's a much quicker process. But manufacturers are lukewarm about this because it doesn't enhance the visual impact of the bottle. It comes across as a bit cheap. We need to think about environmental issues. I was surprised how little recycled plastic goes into the bottles. I think it's because light colored plastic is more difficult to make from recycled stuff. Yeah, but manufacturers can make their packaging more environmentally friendly just by making it less heavy. I'd like to find out whether some of them actually do when we do the research. Yes, that's worth looking into. Thinking about you as a customer, what's important when choosing shampoo? I'm always wary of special offers when something's flagged as being half price. It rarely is, really. But if there's a make I've never seen before, I'm usually up for giving it a go rather than sticking to one or two favorite brands all my life. Interesting. Before you hear the rest of the discussion, you have some time to look at questions 27 to 30. Now listen and answer questions 27 to 30. Now we discuss some of these shampoo advertisements then and try and identify what sort of psychological response each one is trying to get from the viewer. Okay. What about Zing? Well, it would probably appeal equally to men and women. In the ad we see this happy family, lovely home, healthy, good looking children with clean hair. Obviously, yes. And I think we're supposed to watch the ad and think, wow, if only my life was like that. Yeah, I know what you mean. I think the advertisers want the viewers to almost wish they were the people in the ad. Sure. I mean, that's very common in advertising. But not universal. You know that ad for splash shampoo that lasts about 5 minutes and where there's a story? Oh, yes, the commercial about the couple and all through the commercial. It's not clear if they're going to break up or stay together. Exactly. Well, I think the marketing's been done very cleverly there. I don't think we're supposed to want to be the characters in the commercial, but we're supposed to get to know them a bit. Yes. Well, I thought the story was effective. You're glad to learn when it's over that they're obviously going to stay together. But I think the role of the shampoo and the story was a bit thin to say the least. Maybe. I suppose some manufacturers don't want to bore people with all the science. Sure. And then there's the just-go advertisement. Yes. That had lots of technical information about what the shampoo actually consists of. I suppose they want customers to feel confident that when they buy just-go, they are at least making an informed decision. Yes. They're buying something that will do the job they wanted to. That's it. I've read one of the most effective shampoo ads in recent times was the one for browsing. Yes, but there's no commentary, just images of the shampoo and lots of clean hair. I suppose the effect, though, is very calming with soft music and very peaceful imagery. Yes, but at the end of the ad, we've hardly learned anything about the product, have we? No, I suppose not. But isn't it interesting how much the ads for what are essentially very similar products vary so much? That is the end of Part 3. You now have 30 seconds to check your answers to Part 3. Thank you. Thank you. --- Good afternoon! This is the third session of the series of lectures on wildlife. For this lecture, we're going to look at two studies on the habitats of birds and protection measures taken in Australia, including the basic methodology and related areas of research. Now, let me give you some background information about the first research project on birds. The study was carried out by R.B. Cunningham, and his team from the Australian National University in 1995. The primary goal was to detect the breeding habits and resting sites of some birds, especially those protected species in urban regions. These species included birds like peregrine falcon, etc. in Australia. The bird dataset consisted of a total of 153 species recorded from 946 sites. One might expect that in order to obtain valid data on their distribution patterns and population densities, researchers had to count through binoculars. Instead, they managed to estimate with various standard distance sampling methods like random sampling. In addition, a mapping system was used to study their companionship behaviour. It recorded proposed birds' nesting sites to monitor the mating behaviour of targeted species. To obtain valid data of birds' whereabouts, researchers attached identity tags to bird's legs transmitting radio signals. The tagging process was done when the birds were between five and seven days of age. After the initial tagging, data was collected from subsets of radio tagged birds, making it possible to assess the trends of birds over 15 months. So, what did they find? Well, as it turned out, many of the birds tagged had the tendency to nest in the same habitat where they grew up. Their nesting sites were quite varied and included fresh water read beds, tidal read beds, agricultural crops and man-made sites. Even though naturally occurring nests were common, birds sometimes accidentally nested in man-made devices like power towers, chimneys and tunnels. This research also studied the impact of humans on bird communities and found out that pollution had contributed greatly to the declining birth rates of some species, which were considered to be extinct or threatened to vanish from the study area. These species are dependent on natural forests because of their breeding holes. They will become extinct when local natural forests continue to be polluted heavily. A number of measures were thus taken by members from local animal conservation organizations to boost their alarming survival rates. Firstly, breeding boxes were placed in trees taking on the role of breeding holes that were contaminated. Protection guidelines were also introduced to strictly prohibiting killing, disturbance and habitat destruction. A further measure was taken to ensure the safety of birds from wind farms. In fact, birds are sometimes shedded by wind turbine blades. A great deal of work was done on how to prevent them from colliding with turbines. A case in point was protecting space for bird migration by ensuring that migratory roots were kept free. Falcons generally cope well with wind turbines, but not in weather conditions where visibility is bad. So, with knowledge of how fast Falcons fly, bird stations in northern Australia can notify wind farms further south of the Falcons approach so that turbines can be shut down as they pass by. Then, another piece of research was done a couple of years later by Conway in 2006. His team detected the calling frequency of sea birds flying at night. Acoustic signals are important communication tools for birds. These signals can indicate social cohesion, pray location and breeding behaviour. Courtship songs are common among various species during mating seasons. Males produce calling songs that attract distant females, and then courtship songs will induce nearby females to respond. Seveurs also took recordings of the sounds of all the individual birds detected. A tablet PC was used to process detailed information like sound pitch, spectrum, length and timing of surveys. To minimise the disturbance on the bird community, all the sounds were recorded from a distance using microphones to detect noise. They found that the probability of call events was much higher for solitary birds communicating early and late in the day. [BLANK_AUDIO]