Listening 2025-10 Test 1

Part 1 You will hear a man who runs a volunteer agency interviewing a woman called Grace who is applying to do volunteer work. First you have some time to look at questions 1 to 5. Now listen carefully and answer questions 1 to 5. Hello Grace. I'm William. Thanks for coming in for this interview. It's very important for us to meet our volunteers in person. I understand. It's no problem at all. OK. Let's get started. What's the best phone number to contact you on? My mobile phone's probably best. The number's 021 636 7189. But I can't always answer it during the day. I'll give you my email address as well. I check it frequently. OK. I'll make a note that email's a good way to contact you. What's the address? It's graceb at travel dot co dot nz. I chose it when I was younger and I just haven't changed it since. It's easy to remember. Now do you have any particular qualifications Grace? I'm a housewife now but I used to be in teaching. I trained for that and got my diploma, although I haven't done it for years. Before having children I worked as a bank teller. All right. I need to find out when you'll be available during the week. You said you have children. Are they at school? Yes. Both of them are. So I can't start work before 8.15 in the morning or work past three o'clock in the afternoon. So you'd be looking for about four or five hours a day, say 9.15am to 2pm? That gives you time to get to and from school to work. That's perfect. It's important for me to be there for my children. Of course. And are you looking to work Monday to Friday? Yes. If it gets to be too much I can rethink it later. Now Grace, you obviously have a lot of work experience but have you done any volunteer work before? Um, during the Rugby World Cup there were many visitors who didn't know their way around or what they should see and do in Auckland City. So I worked as a guide to help introduce the city to tourists. I really enjoyed it. OK. Good. Have you done anything else? Perhaps when you were at school or university? Did you do any volunteer work there? When I was at university the manager of a netball team asked me to be the coach and I did that. Great. It sounds like you like your sports. I used to but not so much nowadays. OK. Before you hear the rest of the conversation, you have some time to look at questions 6-10. Now listen and answer questions 6-10. If not sports, do you have any other interests? Oh yes. I love to get out in my garden and I grow most of my own vegetables. I love flowers and flower arranging. But I don't suppose there's much volunteer work associated with those kinds of things. You'd be surprised. Any other hobbies? Like most people I guess. I like music. Actually, I can play the guitar but I haven't done much for a while so I'm a bit rusty. One day I'd like to have a go at the flute. OK. That gives me a good idea of the type of work you might be interested in. Ideally it'd be something that combines your experience and your hobbies. If you're interested in something outdoors, I have a position helping out on a farm. That's just for a month. It's not too physically demanding, though it does require you to be on your feet all day. And it'd be nice as long as the weather is fine. But I imagine it could be uncomfortable in the rain or the heat. In the past we've had many positions working in community centres. They've been working with the disabled or teens. The position we have available now is with elderly men and women. They have activities like flower arranging, music lessons, sing-alongs, things like that. Both of those sound great. I'm really open to anything. That's nice to know. Just a couple more questions. Why do you want to do volunteer work? Well, now that both my children are in school, I'd like to make some friends as I've got the time on my hands. Also, I like the idea of helping others. And last question, how did you find our agency? We aren't in the phone book. Did a friend tell you about us? No, I was on my way to school the other day and I saw your advertisement at the supermarket. It's good to know someone sees those ads. Thank you again for coming in. Thank you. Thank you. You are going to hear an introduction to some London parks. First look at questions 11-15. As you listen to the first part of the talk, answer questions 11-15. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the London Park Society. It's a lovely day. So in half an hour or so, we'll go outside and start our tour of some of London's famous royal parks. But for the next half an hour or so, while we enjoy our coffee and biscuits, I'll tell you something about some of these wonderful parks, a brief history, and some of their special attractions. I also have a few slides to show you. First, what do we mean by royal park? In short, they once belonged to or were established by order of a king or queen of England, or at least a member of the royal family. And it's a good job they did. They provide quiet and natural scenery, places that we might not be able to enjoy today if our former rulers had just put buildings everywhere. Let's start with the most famous, Hyde Park. This park offers some of London's finest scenery and covers 630 acres and a perimeter of 4 miles. I know we have friends from France here, so I'd better give it in metric. That's about 260 hectares and 6.5 kilometres. Hyde Park dates back to 1536, when King Henry VIII got the land from the monks of Westminster Abbey. Much of the later design, its layout, was done by the architect Decimus Burton in the 1820s, who took full advantage of the area's high and low land. It was the original site of the Crystal Palace, built for the Great Exhibition of 1851, the original ancestor of today's World Expos, like the one that will be held in Shanghai in 2010, I think. So it's been popular for a long time, and not only the people who live and work near the park like it. Many famous rock bands, like Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones, have put on big rock concerts here. I still remember the Rolling Stones concert there in, uh, I forget the exact year. It was around 1968, when I was a university student. Now look at questions 16 to 20. As the talk continues, answer questions 16 to 20. I mentioned the architect Decimus Burton. He designed the very impressive grand entrance to the park. The whole front is about 107 feet long. Look at the four magnificent pillars that support the central entrance, and that carving on the wall. Here's a close-up of a naval and military procession, and the gates made of iron and bronze, with a beautiful Greek-style flower design. One of the most popular sites in the park is Speaker's Corner, in the northeast corner, where you can hear British people exercise their right to free speech. There may be a dozen or more at any one time, each standing on a soapbox, and spouting, usually, controversial views on any topic you can think of. Religion, politics, fox hunting, trade unions, Europe, tourists, etc. Lots of arguing. It's great fun. And south of the Serpentine Lake is the memorial to Diana, Princess of Wales. It's an oval stone fountain that opened on July 6, 2004. Another memorial, in the southeast corner of the park, is the Albert Memorial, Queen Victoria's monument to her husband of that name. I see that time is getting short, so I'll be a bit briefer with the other parks that we'll see today and tomorrow. Regent's Park. It has a fantastic landscape, and is known as the Jewel in the Crown. Regent's Park covers 487 acres, that's 197 hectares, including Primrose Hill, and has the largest outdoor sports area in London. Rugby, basketball, soccer, netball, cricket, it's all here. St. James's Park, with its royal, political and literary associations, is at the very heart of London. It's overlooked by not one, but three royal palaces. The most ancient palace is Westminster, now known as the Houses of Parliament. Then there's St. James's Palace, which used to be the King or Queen's residence, despite the fact that the monarch has lived in the third palace, Buckingham Palace, since 1837. There's so much to see in or by St. James's Park. Bands give concerts twice a day in the park at weekends during the summer. And tomorrow is Saturday, so we're in luck. Then there's the changing of the guards. The Queen's lifeguard changes daily at Whitehall, just nearby, Monday to Saturday at 11am, an hour earlier on Sundays, and at Buckingham Palace every day at 11.30 in April, May and June, and on alternate days in July and March, if the weather is OK. Finally, we'll visit Greenwich Park, which is the oldest enclosed royal park. It's situated on a hilltop, with impressive views over the River Thames to the Docklands and the City of London. It contains several historic buildings, including the Old Royal Observatory, the Royal Naval College, the National Maritime Museum and the Queen's House. Well, it's time to go. A ten-minute walk and we'll be at Hyde Park. That is the end of Part 2. You now have 30 seconds to check your answers to Part 2. . . . . Part 3. You will hear an engineering student, called Cathy, discussing a piece of work with her tutor. First, you have some time to look at questions 21 to 26. . . . . . Now listen carefully and answer questions 21 to 26. Hello, Cathy. How's your dissertation on water pumps going? Not too bad, thanks. I'm getting on well with the literature review now, and my lab work's fine so far. Oh, that's good. Remember, you should aim to have your results section completed by the end of next month, so there's plenty of time to finalise the whole thing by the summer deadline. Anyway, looks like you're on track. I've been through your first chapter now and I was quite impressed. Oh, that's a relief. Sometimes your sentences are a little long and over-complex, but the overall structure of the piece is very clear. I'd recommend you get a critical friend to go through it with you. Then, once you've built in citations of other work in the field, I think it'll be pretty good. Oh, thanks. I was pleased I decided to focus on water pumps. You seem to be testing an appropriate range of pump design. Lots of students make the mistake of either restricting their range too much, or conversely, not narrowing it down enough. You've managed to avoid those twin traps. However, I think you'd get more convincing results if you took some additional measurements. I've noted exactly what I mean on your work. Yes, I thought that might be necessary, and I know I need to get down to some more library work too. Well, I don't think that's essential at the moment. Oh, right. So, what do you suggest I do next? Repeat my last experiment using different variables? Well, you could have a word with James Higgins tomorrow. He's coming here to give a lecture on hydraulics to the faculty, and it would be a great chance to have a chat with him. Especially as your experimental work has drawn so heavily from his last article in the British Engineering Journal. Oh, fantastic! And you never know how successful a chat with him might turn out to be. I got my first research post when I was a final year student and asked a visiting professor to explain what he meant in some article he'd written. So I urge all my students to take any such opportunity that arises. But times have changed. People like that are too busy to talk to mere students these days. I don't know about that. Anyway, is there anything else I can help with? Any practical information about layout, perhaps? Well, I suppose I'm a bit unsure about how the bibliography should be presented. Mind you, I can just check what's normally done in journal articles, so that's not something to bother you with. I'd welcome some guidance, though, about what I should or shouldn't include in the appendices. I know some things, some of my data tables or details of specs perhaps, are not really needed in the main body of the text and I'm likely to be pushed for words there. OK, I can certainly help you with that. But it will take a while, so can we deal with that next week? I've got that solar panel seminar to go into in a few minutes. There's plenty of work you can be carrying on with in the meantime. Sure, that's no problem. I think I'll go and investigate the latest version of the CAD software to see if it might help with my pump design experiments at all. 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. Before you go, though, I'd like quickly to run through what you should be doing over the next few months, not just for your dissertation, but also for your future research. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them in the Q&A section. What you should be doing over the next few months, not just for your dissertation, but also to help your chances of getting the research post you'd like. Is that OK with you? Yes, that would be really helpful. Well, you certainly need to become a member of the Mechanical Engineers Society, and then you'll be able to go along to their meetings. There you must make a point of making yourself known to various people, like Professor Jones. He's a brilliant president and is very approachable. OK, so I could do some networking there. Exactly. Also, I think you should try to set up some visits to industry. Go to a lot of different workplaces just to see how things are done. It's actually a very good way of making sure you're familiar with the cutting edge of what's going on. Textbooks, even academic articles, sometimes lag behind industry. That's really interesting. Also, I'd love the chance to do a bit of work abroad for a while. Well, that's actually the next thing I was going to recommend. I'm sure we could set up a month for you in either the States or Canada, and that would be a great way to find out how things are done elsewhere. That'd be good. Thank you. And the last thing I was going to suggest was that you could go to the European Water Engineering Conference being held in Spain in May. I could even present my dissertation there. Yes. Oh, thank you so much. That's all really helpful. Good. That is the end of Part 3. You now have 30 seconds to check your answers to Part 3. 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 falcons and ostrils 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 birds' legs transmitting radio signals. The tagging process was done when the birds were between 5 and 7 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 freshwater reedbeds, tidal reedbeds, 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 organisations 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, 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 routes 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 falcon's 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 seabirds flying at night. Acoustic signals are important communication tools for birds. These signals can indicate social cohesion, prey 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. Surveyors 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. .