Questions
Part one
Part two
Part three
Part four
Listening Material
PART ONE
Woman: Hello! Welcome to the travel depot! How can I help you?
Man: Well, I'm looking for a reasonably priced holiday. I went to South Africa for a month last year and I'd like to see North America this time maybe Canada.
The customer says he went to South Africa last year so the correct answer is C. Now we shall begin, you should answer the questions as you listen because you will not hear the recording a second time. Listen carefully and answer questions 1 to 6.
Woman: Hello! Welcome to the travel Depot! How can I help you?
Man: Well I'm looking for a reasonably priced holiday. I went to South Africa for a month last year and I'd like to see North America, this time maybe Canada but I'm also interested in Europe if the prices to Canada are too expensive. I'm on quite a tight budget, you see.
Woman: Well, you could go to Europe but I'll get some prices for Canada first. I've been to Vancouver, it's lovely at this time of year. And we have some special offers on at the moment.
Man: Ok, well I have some relatives over in Vancouver so that would be good. I can always travel around Europe next year. Besides, it may be a bit too hot for me at this time.
Woman: Right! Let's have a look at some prices then. When would you like to go?
Man: Sometime at the end of next month if possible but I'm quite flexible any time between the 24th and the 31st. I'd like to go for 3 weeks.
Woman: Well, there's lots of availability for those dates. Now if you're concerned about the cost, it's cheaper if you don't mind not flying direct.
Man: Sorry, what do you mean?
Woman: Well, if you don't mind changing planes then it's cheaper.
Man: Oh, well I don't mind changing things.
Woman: In that case, the cheapest flight I have leaves on the 25th and changes in New York. It's only a short stop. You'll be in the airport for two and a half hours. How does that sound?
Man: Sounds good! But what's the price?
Woman: That's four hundred and twelve pounds for a return flight but that doesn't include airport tax. Would you like to arrange any accommodation?
Man: No, I have a cousin I can stay with. All I need is the flight so think I'll take that one.
Woman: Right, I'll just check availability for your return. Three weeks did you say?
Man: Yes, that's right!
Woman: Okay, well there are seats available on the 14th or the 15th. Which one would you prefer?
Man: The 14th sounds good. Yes, from the 25th to the 14th sounds fine.
Woman: Our reserve that for you then. Can you tell me your name, please?
Man: Jim Jackson.
Woman: Is that J A C K S O N?
Man: That's right!
Woman: And can I take an address and contact number?
Man: Yes, it's 10 Allen Road, Oldham. Do you want a home number or my mobile?
Woman: Either's fine.
Man: Well, my home number is 051 433 398.
Woman: Okay, so you booked on flight number VN217 to Vancouver, leaving London Heathrow at 11:35 in the morning on the 25th, and returning on the 14th. So that's 20 nights. Now one more thing.
You now have some time to read questions 7 to 10. You now listen carefully and answer questions 7 to 10.
Woman: Now one more thing, do you have any travel insurance? We recommend all our clients take out some kind of cover even though most people don't end up needing it. Most people have it just for peace of mind.
Man: Well, what type of cover do you have?
Woman: There are two choices, the gold star and the silver star. Our most comprehensive cover is the gold star which will cost twenty-one pounds for the period you are away. It's a good policy because it covers almost all eventualities even extreme sports such as snowboarding and skydiving.
Man: Mm-hmm. What about the silver star?
Woman: That's 18 pounds but it doesn't cover you for any dangerous sports
Man: Well, for three pounds I think I'll take the first one, the gold cover please.
Woman: Right, and is there anything else I can help you with?
Man: Well, do you have any information about what to do in Vancouver?
Woman: Yes, I'm sure there's something on the computer that can help. Ah yes, there's a Shakespeare play at the theater but at $54. It's quite expensive. That starts at 8:00 p.m. The City Museum is really popular too, if you like that kind of thing. They have a special exhibition of Japanese armor next month. The entrance is free and the museum is open from 9 to 4:30 Monday to Saturday. Would you be interested in either of those?
Man: Oh well, maybe.
Woman: Well, I'm sure you can arrange that when you get there anyway. So, it's the flight and the gold star insurance, that's 433 pounds in total.
Man: Can I pay by Visa?
Woman: Yes, of course! If you start….
That is the end of Part 1. You now have half a minute to check your answers. Now turn to Part 2.
PART TWO
Woman: Thank you very much for inviting me here today. I understand that you all own your own home and some of you may be interested in buy an additional property here in the city so I hope you will find the information I am going to share with you useful and informative. I'm going to talk about the situation with property here in the city. The city center of any area is obviously going to have the highest prices and as more and more people are competing for houses in this area, both renting and buying are becoming increasingly difficult. It is most people's dream to one day own their own house. House ownership gives us a feeling of having achieved something and we can see clearly what we have worked so hard for all our lives. It can give us a sense of security for our old age and a knowledge that we will hopefully have something to pass on to our children. However, buying a house, particularly for first-time buyers is becoming more and more difficult. Not only due to increasing prices but also because of the need for a substantial deposit. For younger people, buying their first home is very difficult and often impossible. Young couples who cannot get the deposit together, need to rent for a long time and sometimes forever. While traditionally, homes near the center of the city have been the most desirable people are now looking further a field. This has happened for a number of reasons, the main one being that our style of work is changing along with that of other countries such as the USA. In certain professions, for example sales and computing, it is no longer necessary for people to be based in an office full-time. More and more people are beginning to work from home which means they can avoid the hustle and bustle of rush-hour traffic jams and to work and have more freedom to choose to live in a more rural and peaceful location. My company deals with finding property for both purchasers and renters in the city area. One of my main roles within the company is to find investment properties for people who wish to ahead for their future.
Woman: An investment property is usually at the cheaper end of the market. People buy investment properties not to live in but in addition to their own home in order to rent it out to other people. The advantage of putting your savings into property for the future is that you can be pretty certain that as a long-term investment. Your money will safely increase in value in line with inflation. Many people are turning to property investment instead of pension schemes as we hear the horror stories of countries such as the UK where people have invested all their lives into their pension schemes to find that now their money is relatively worthless. Houses automatically earn what is known as capital gains. That is for every year you owned the property it becomes more valuable and often gives a better rate of interest on your money than most banks do. However, that is not to say there are no risks. There are people who buy property when the market is high and prices are inflated beyond their true value, only to find that when the housing market slows down, they are in a state of negative equity. Negative equity is a situation that arises when you owe more for the house than the house itself is worth. In short, the best devices to be aware of the ups and downs of the housing market. property investment if handled correctly can be enormously satisfying. I hope that this has given you an insight into the basics of the property market. Thank you for listening! Please raise your hand if you have any questions and I will try to be of assistance.
PART THREE
Woman: Thank you very much for tuning in today to listen to our weekly hour on conservation issues. Last week, we spoke about the impact of environmental changes on primates and this week to continue the theme. We have invited Ana specialists by the name of Professor Andrew Ripley all the way from USA to tell us more about the problems faced by the cat family. Professor Ripley thank you very much for joining us today.
Man: It's my pleasure, thank you very much for inviting me.
Woman: So, I understand that you spent a great proportion of your time traveling the globe and monitoring changes in population levels of the cat family.
Man: Yes, that's correct. Of course, we're not talking about the domestic cat here but there man just a cousin such as the lion tiger and Jaguar to name but a few.
Woman: Which member of the cat family do you yourself find to be the most fascinating?
Man: Well, I've spent a lot of time recently studying Jaguars but the lion is still my personal favorite. It is the world's most social cat and unusual in the way in which it chooses to group together with others of its species. Pride of lions basking in the sunshine probably one of people's most vivid perceptions of the African bush.
Woman: Yes, certainly. I totally agree with you.
You now have some time to read questions 25 to 30. Now listen carefully and answer questions 25 to 30.
Woman: Can you tell me the current lion population in Africa these days.
Man: Well, it's very difficult to measure it accurately. The figures range from 100,000 to as few as 30,000 but it's generally estimated that there are 50,000. In order to maintain the population and protect the species from poachers, many move to protected areas.
Woman: Which member of the cat family do you feel is most at risk?
Man: For different reasons, a number of species of the cat family are endangered sometimes due to natural predators or environmental changes but mainly because of the threat of hunters. For example, I'm sure you're aware the bones and body parts of tigers have been and still are traditionally used in medicines in the Far East. Because of this and the demand for medicine made from tiger parts, their numbers have been falling for some time. And to date there are fewer than 6,000 tigers living in their natural habitat of the forests and plains of Asia.
Woman: What is being done to curb the population decrease?
Man: Well, specialists such as myself work closely with conservationists groups such as the World Wildlife Federation or WWF to protect tigers from illegal hunting. WWF considers the drop in tiger numbers to be catastrophic and they're working hard to conserve the populations in China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Russia.
Woman: I understand that the poaching is not the only problem faced by the leopard. Let me get this right! Is it the Snow Leopard which lives in the mountains in Asia?
Man: Yes, it is. The poaching has been a problem but not the most important. Its natural prey the animals at hunts is declining too. Its natural habitat in high-altitude area specifically the pastures as threatened by the growth of agriculture. It is the main problem for the Snow Leopard. It's going to be extremely difficult for numbers to recover, but again the WWF has been working hard to continue to fund projects to aid the snow leopard in Nepal and Pakistan and hopefully Bhutan very soon.
Woman: Well, this is fascinating information you are giving us, Professor. We are just going into a short commercial break when we come back, I have a few questions for you about the Puma and the Jaguar. Remember lessness there will be an opportunity to phone in and voice any opinions or questions you may have for the Professor in ten minutes.
PART FOUR
Woman: Good afternoon, I'm pleased to see so many of you here today as I told you all on Monday the lecture on overpopulation has been postponed until next week as we have a guest speaker today. I'd like to introduce you all to Donald Mackenzie who has recently returned from a 12-month research project in America. He is here to share with us some of the results of his studies into the problem of illiteracy
Man: Hello, now as sociology students I have no doubt that you are aware that it is commonly believed that one indicator of a developed country, the level of education of its citizens. Now most of these nations have free compulsory education for all and strict teacher certification requirements, so it would logically follow that people from countries such as America would be highly educated. Yet, this isn't always so. In America alone, 42 million adults cannot read and 50 million can recognize so few printed words. They each have the reading ability of a ten-year-old frightening statistics indeed, but not as frightening as the trend suggested by current estimates, the number of illiterate adults is increasing by approximately two and a quarter million people each year and although global statistics have not been compiled as it suggests an extremely disturbing figure. Inevitably, this is having an impact on employment. In America the annual cost and welfare programs and unemployment compensation due to a literacy stands at six billion US dollars and an additional 237 billion a year in unrealized earnings is forfeited by people who let basic reading skills. There is also the cost of post school literacy programs which have been put in place in order to counter this increasing figure. A conservative estimate places the cost of these programs at 10 billion dollars each year and growing steadily.
Moving on, I'd like to talk about some of the causes of this increasing illiteracy. Children were taught to read by first learning the alphabet then the sounds of each letter, how they blended into syllables and how those syllables made up words. They were taught that English spelling is logical and systematic, and that to become a fluent reader it was necessary to master the alphabetic code in which English words are written. To the point where the code is used automatically with little conscious thought given to it. And to make myself to you, I mean readers could sound out the letters, spelling them phonetically. Once a child learned this ability, attention could be turned to more advanced content. It seldom if I ever occurred to teachers to give children word lists to read or to make beginner level readers memorize whole words before learning the components of those words or to memorize whole stories as today's proponents of the whole language approach recommend.
Several recent studies have found that 90% of remedial reading students and developed countries are not able to decode fluently, accurately and at an automatic level of response. The currently used whole language method was originally conceived then used in the early 1800s to teach the deaf how to read, a method which is long since being discarded by the teachers of the deaf themselves as inadequate and out murdered. English is an alphabetic language that when written uses letters to represent speech sounds when students were taught to read, they consciously identified the speech sounds and learned to recognize the letters used to represent them. They were then trained to apply this information to decode the names of unwritten words, understand their meaning and comprehend the information presented as a complete thought. The English language contains approximately half a million words. On these words, about 300 compose about three-quarters of the words that we use regularly. As I said in schools where the whole language method is taught, children are constantly memorizing sight words during the first three or four grades of school but I never taught how to unlock the meaning of the other 499 thousand seven hundred or more words. Whole language learning causes frustration, poor spelling and hostility towards reading. Very bright children who can't memorize long lists of words and retain their meaning are placed in special education. When all they need is to be taught that 26 letters of the alphabet, the 44 sounds they make, and the seventy common ways to spell those sounds.
Some researchers believe dyslexia and the symptoms of attention deficit disorder actually caused by this reversal of the normal learning sequence. So, why do faulty reading methods continue to be used? Well, in short, it's big business. The sale of instructional reading programs is big business today. Each year publishing companies compete for the adoption of reading programs and workbooks which have to be replaced annually concentrating on phonics would seriously reduce the cost of education.
Main Focus：SPELLING AND NUMBERS
spelling：name，address，flight number, the spelling of words
numbers ：contact number， passport
NOTES:
420 pounds
jim jackson
0151433398
Z127
21-24
weekly hour
cat family
lion - most social animal
threat of hunters
snow napital
speech soudn
represent
decode
sounds
common ways
Synonyms
expansion of agriculture
growth of agriculture
Phrase/Vacabulary
Part one
- a reasonably priced holiday
- a tight budget
- special offers on at the moment
- lots of availability for those dates
- return flight
- airport tax
- travel insurance
- peace of mind
- extreme sports
- snowboarding
- skydiving
Part two
- house ownership
- a substantial deposit
- young couples
- centers of the city
- a number of reasons
- company deals
- property investment
- housing market
Part three
- weekly hour
- conservation issues
- cat family
- personal favorite
- vivid perceptions
- conservationists groups
- illegal hunting
- commercial break
Part four
- overpopulation
- the problem of illiteracy
- sociology
- free compulsory education
- highly educated
- frightening statistics
- an extremely disturbing figure
- annual cost
- welfare programs
- growing steadily
- alphabet
- alphabetic
- little conscious
- phonetically
-sight words
None familiar Vocabulary
Part one
- Vancouver
- London Heathrow
- eventualities
Part two
- psychological factors
- hustle and bustle of rush-hour traffic jams
- the cheaper end of the market
- increase in value in line with inflation
- pension schemes
- capital gains
- negative equity
- enormously satisfying
Part three
- primate
- a great proportion of your time traveling the global
- monitoring changes in population levels of the cat family
- Jaguar
- fascinating
- pride of lions
- natural predators
- the natural habitat of the forests and plains of Asia
- curb the population decrease
- catastrophic
- poaching
- leopard
- snow leopard
- natural prey
- pastures
- fascinating information
- Puma
- voice any opinions or questions
- remember lessness??
Part four
- unemployment compensation
- forfeit
- syllables
- seldom
- remedial reading
- inadequate
- whole language learning
- hostility towards reading
- dyslexia
- deficit
- adoption of reading programs
Results: 5.5/9 - 21/40
Red: numbers - listen carefully
Yellow：wrong spelling of words
Blue: only need to focus on keywords
If you have missed one part, then you can choose the word that you heard in the recording. Don't guess!!
Source
https://ieltsonlinetests.com/ielts-mock-test-2020-february-listening-practice-test-1