Listening 2026-09 Test 2

PART 1 Part one. You will hear a woman phoning a travel agent to inquire about plane tickets. First, you have some time to look at questions one to six. Now listen carefully and answer questions one to six. Hello, Bakewell Travel. How can I help? Oh, hello. My name's Sarah Carter. I wonder if you could tell me about the price of plane tickets to Dubai. Our computers are down, so what I can do is take some details about you and your travel plans. Then when everything's okay again, I can call you back. All right? Okay, then. Right. So some details first. Your name was Sarah Carter, wasn't it? That's right. And can I take a contact phone number? Oh seven nine five eight eight four seven two double two. Now, I'll probably need to get back to you on this. Shall I call you back tomorrow morning? Uh, I work on Wednesdays. Uh, can you call me back on Thursday before twelve? Fine. Okay. So, Mrs. Carter, how many tickets will you need? Three adults and four children. So seven altogether. Are all the children under the age of fourteen? They are, yes. Which date do you wish to travel on? Well, uh, we definitely need to be there for the twenty-fourth. So if we leave the UK on the twenty-second, we'll have time to recover on the twenty-third. So the twenty-second of October? Not this month. Next month, November. Not this month. Next month, November. Right. And I assume these are return tickets. Yes, we want to fly back on the Tuesday. Is that the twenty-fifth or the twenty-sixth? It's the twenty-fifth, so it's going to be a short holiday. We're going to a wedding. We're not going for a holiday. Oh, that's nice. Now, do any travelers have any special requirements? You know, special assistance with mobility and that sort of thing. Oh, uh, well, actually, yes, my son's allergic to cheese. It makes him really, really ill. Fine. So as soon as I can, I'll look into finding some tickets for you. Before you hear the rest of the conversation, you have some time to look at questions seven to ten on page two. Now listen and answer questions seven to ten. Now, I wonder if I could just ask you a couple of questions as part of our market research. Would you be happy to do that? Will this take long? Just a couple of minutes, that's all. Okay. So how many foreign visits have you made in the last twelve months? About six, I suppose. And where was your last foreign trip? Well, I was in Egypt in May. Then most recently, India. Oh, nice. Yes, I'm off for some IT training in Bangalore next month, actually. Uh, and was that a vacation? I'd love to go back there for a holiday, but it was for business this time. And I presume you use the Internet. I do, yes. And so you've seen our website? Yes, I had a look this morning, actually. Well, we had it redesigned a month ago, and we're keen to get feedback on how our customers find it, so. Oh, right. Uh, uh, okay. Well, I have to say I found it terribly slow, so I just gave up and thought I'd give you a call. Oh, well, I'm sorry to hear that. But yes, it does happen sometimes. Um, would it be okay for us to email you with any promotional PART 2 Part two. You will hear a radio host interviewing a restaurant manager called Claire about afternoon tea at a hotel. First, you have some time to look at questions eleven to fourteen. Now listen carefully and answer questions eleven to fourteen. Our special guest today is Claire Benatal, the restaurant manager of the Emperor Hotel here in town. She's here to tell us about their famous afternoon teas in the restaurant. Welcome. Thanks, Peter. Tell us about what makes afternoon tea so special. Well, it's been a time-honored tradition for over a century. At the Emperor Hotel, we've been serving tea to royalty, dignitaries, and movie stars in the grandest tradition. A lot of people come to see the expensive fabrics, antique carpets, and beautiful handmade furniture we have here. Our waiters serve tea against the picturesque backdrop of the boats on the harbor. We're busy, so we strongly recommend making reservations. However, we rarely turn guests away. Tea is always an event here. Of course, we serve the Emperor tea blend, which is created exclusively for the hotel by the Metropolitan Tea Company. This famous blend comes from more than six different places all over the world. That's why the taste is so special. I also have some interesting facts about our tea tables. During our dining room renovation, we kept the wood from the original floor and used it to make our tea tables. You can now say you were eating off the floor. They always have white tablecloths on them, which is, of course, normal in the better hotels. We'll finish renovating next year by covering the chairs in a shade of red to match the walls. These days, we serve about half a million cups of tea every year. Our waiting staff have over forty-two years of combined service with us. The original cups and saucers were first used by the hotel back in nineteen thirty-nine for a visit by the King and Queen of England. Today, the pattern is still made by the Midland China Company exclusively for us and is available for sale in the hotel store and online. Before you hear the rest of the talk, you have some time to look at questions fifteen to twenty. Now listen and answer questions fifteen to twenty. Would you describe your afternoon tea parties for our listeners? Sure. The hotel has several different kinds of tea parties. We have a special afternoon tea for children known as the Playtime Tea. Children can enjoy bubblegum tea and cookies inside a little children's castle. We give them crowns and dress-up clothes to wear. This gives them the experience of being kings and queens. Our bridal tea can be customized for any upcoming marriage. It's a traditional afternoon where women, friends, and family get together and shower the bride with gifts. Our photographer will be there to take many pictures of the best moments of the day to remind the bride and her friends of something special that they can look back at. The summer tea is served out in the lovely hotel grounds. We spread a souvenir blanket for you under a tree. A basket is prepared for you. Inside, it has four local Salt Spring Island cheeses with fresh honey that's made from the chef's own beehives. Our Canadian tea is the most popular one with our international visitors. It includes strawberries and peaches grown in the neighborhood, which we serve with special sandwiches and jam made with raspberries from our own backyard. The farmer's tea is our most famous party. Guests love having a satisfying tea where our famous drink is served with a variety of meat and egg pies hot from the oven, along with our homemade bread. And don't forget the farm-style fruit pies for dessert. And finally, back by popular demand is our seniors tea. If you're sixty or older you can enjoy afternoon tea in our cozy library. While there, you can look at the photos of famous actors and musicians that have visited our hotel and read what they said about the hotel. Our chef and restaurant staff serve handmade scones, delicious pastries, and sweets freshly baked in our restaurant daily. It's wonderful. That is the end of part two. You now have forty-five seconds to check your answers to part two. PART 3 Part three. You will hear a trainee teacher called Eve talking to her university tutor about her preparations for teaching practice. Before you listen, you have some time to look at questions twenty-one to twenty-five. Now listen and answer questions twenty-one to twenty-five. Hello, Eve. Come in and sit down. How's it going? Fine, thanks. I'm looking forward to my teaching practice next week. Good. Now, you've got two classes, haven't you? Year three and year six. Have you done your lesson plans? Well, I've decided to take the topic of renewable energy. I haven't done a lesson plan for year six yet, but I thought I'd base their lesson on an example of very simple technology. So I've brought this diagram to show you. I got it from the Internet. Let's see. A biogas plant. So this is equipment for producing fuel from organic waste. Yes. The smaller container on the left is where you put the waste you've collected. Right. And from there, it's piped into the larger tank. That's right. And that's slurry on the base of the larger tank. Right. And what exactly is slurry? It's a mixture of organic waste and water. So is that pipe at the bottom where the water comes in? Yes, it is. As the slurry mixture digests, it produces gas, and that rises to the top of the dome. Then, when it's needed, it can be piped off for use as fuel in homes or factories. It's very simple. I suppose there's some kind of safety valve to prevent pressure buildup. That's the overflow tank. That container on the right. As the slurry expands, some of it flows into that, and then once some of the gas has been piped off, the slurry level goes down again, and the overflow tank empties again. I see. Well, I think that's suitably simple for the age level it's for. I look forward to seeing the whole lesson plan. Thanks. And can I show you my ideas for the year three lesson? Of course. Let's look. Before you listen to the rest of the conversation, you have some time to look at questions twenty-six to thirty. Now listen and answer questions twenty-six to thirty. I thought I'd introduce the topic by writing the word energy on the board and reinforcing the spelling and the pronunciation. Then I'll do a little mime, you know, run on the spot or something to convey the sense. I'd keep it brief at this stage. Yes, I will. Then I'll wipe the word off and write the question, where does energy come from? And see what the pupils come up with. Fine. I'd suggest that you just brainstorm at this stage and don't reject any of their suggestions. Yes, that's what I was going to do. Then I've produced a set of simple statements like, energy makes cars move along the road, and energy makes our bodies grow. There are eight altogether. Are you going to give them out as a handout or write them up on the board? First, put them up on the board, and then I'll read them out loud. And I'll get the pupils to copy them out in their notebooks. I'll also ask them to think up one more similar statement by themselves and add it to the list. Good idea. After that, I thought I'd vary things a bit by sticking some pictures up of things like the sun and plants and food and petrol and a running child. And I'll get the pupils to work out what order the pictures should come in in terms of the energy chain. I think that's a very good idea. You could move the pictures around as the pupils give you directions. Yes, I think they'd enjoy that. And to finish off, I've made a gap fill exercise to give out. They'll be doing that individually, and while they're writing, I'll walk around and check their work. Good. And have you worked out the timing of all that? It'll probably take you right through to the end of the lesson. That is the end of part three. You now have half a minute to check your answers. PART 4 Section four. You will hear a lecture on a very popular Canadian food product called maple syrup. First, you have some time to look at questions thirty-one to forty on page seven. Now listen carefully and answer questions thirty-one to forty. Maple syrup can be described as very sweet. Canadians pour it generously over things like pancakes for breakfast. The syrup is produced from the maple tree, and it actually comes from the tree's sap, which is the watery substance that comes out of the trunk of the tree when this is cut. In order for enough sap to be produced, very special climate conditions are needed. In spring, the temperatures need to drop to well below zero at night, but then they need to rise sharply during the day, so they're hugely different over a twenty-four-hour period. And that's exactly what happens in northeastern Canada every spring. The indigenous peoples of North America, known as the First Nations, discovered the maple secret long before the Europeans arrived. Early folk stories say it was first discovered by a chief who threw his tomahawk, which is similar to an axe, into the trunk of a tree. Clear sap started to run from the cut. His wife used this sap to boil meat, and the heat turned it into a sweet syrup, which they found delicious. Whether or not that story is true, we do know that the maple tree was very important to First Nations peoples for hundreds of years. Collecting the sap each spring became a tradition among them. Whole families would migrate to the areas where the maple trees grew and set up camp there. They collected the sap from the trees using buckets. Then they needed to concentrate the sap, removing some of the water from it to create syrup. They had two ways of doing this. One way was to drop hot stones from a fire into the buckets to create steam. If repeated often enough, this would eventually concentrate the syrup. Another method that they used to concentrate the syrup was to leave the sap outside overnight, exposed to freezing temperatures. This would mean that a thick layer of ice would form on top, which could be discarded, leaving the sugary sap below. Again, this process could be repeated over several days, and eventually a sweet brown syrup was produced. The First Nations people had various uses for the sap and syrup. They drank the sap fresh from the tree as a tonic, knowing that it was an important source of energy. But for the most part, they reduced the syrup further and then cooled it so that it crystallized into sugar. This was easy to carry and kept indefinitely. European settlers who arrived in Canada began to learn about the syrup from First Nations peoples and further expanded its uses. For example, they incorporated it into medicine of different kinds. They also discovered that by adding yeast to the sap, they could make a maple drink. And by throwing the hot syrup into the snow, they could make a toffee-like candy. But like the First Nations, they turned most of their sap into maple sugar. For most people, it was the only type of sugar they could afford, since the only alternative was the sugar imported from the Caribbean, which was made from sugarcane. And this was very expensive. However, after eighteen eighty, the Canadian government decided to stop charging tax on Caribbean sugar, and this made it much cheaper. That meant it was no longer cost-effective to produce maple sugar. And so syrup making became the only viable industry remaining for Canadians, and that's what we've been doing ever since. At present, maple syrup is enjoying a boom. In the last two decades, production has doubled in Canada. However, serious threats remain. Like any agricultural product, the harvest is subject to such things as major storms or the arrival of invasive insects, both of which have happened, and these could destroy everything. It is predicted with some certainty that, in the longer term, climate change will also have an adverse effect on the sap run. Then there are the social factors. Producing maple syrup is a very labor-intensive process, making it an expensive purchase. And of equal concern is the fact that nowadays there's a lot of competition from cheaper, artificially flavored brands. Furthermore, we're at a time when obesity is a major issue, making a product that is sixty-seven percent sugar increasingly difficult to sell. Nevertheless, there are reasons to be optimistic. Producers are developing markets abroad. Our syrup is currently being exported to over fifty countries. Back here at home, chefs use it enthusiastically. Q40 It's certainly high in calories, but it also contains proteins, minerals, and antioxidants. As such, it is still relatively healthy when you compare it with sugar or corn syrup. Canadians are proud of maple syrup and its deep roots in our history and geography. However, the primary reason for maple syrup's success around the world remains its taste. There's nothing quite like it. That is the end of Section Four. You now have half a minute to check your answers.