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IELTS Listening — Practice Test 1

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Section 1 A caller books a stall at a weekend craft market · Organiser, Caller

Questions 1-7

Complete the form below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

1Surname: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

2Mobile number: 0770 339 ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

3Product category: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

4Date of market: ______ June

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

5Type of stall booked: ______ stall

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

6Extra service required: ______ (£5)

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

7Total cost: £ ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

Questions 8-10

Answer the questions below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

8How must stallholders now pay for their booking?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

9Which road do stallholders use to drive in and unload?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

10What must stallholders bring if they use power?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

Section 2 A warden welcomes visitors to a wetland nature reserve · Warden

Questions 11-13

Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.

11What does the warden say about the lagoons?

A They were artificially created. B They have always been part of the marsh. C They were formed when the river changed course.

12Which animal are visitors most likely to see today?

A otters B marsh harriers C kingfishers

13What has happened to today's guided walk?

A It has been cancelled. B It will start later than usual. C It will leave from a different reserve.

Questions 14-17

Where are the following places? Choose the correct letter, A–F, from the plan description below.

Plan of Alderfen Reserve — you are at the visitor centre at the southern entrance; the main path runs north towards the river.

A = directly behind the visitor centre B = left of the main path, after the wooden bridge C = east of the fork, along the boardwalk D = up the rise on the left branch after the fork E = on the north shore F = beside the reserve gate

A directly behind the visitor centre
B left of the main path, after the wooden bridge
C east of the fork, along the boardwalk
D up the rise on the left branch after the fork
E on the north shore
F beside the reserve gate

14Reed Hide

15Dragonfly Pools

16Osprey Tower

17Café

Questions 18-20

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

18The opening of the floating hide has been delayed until the ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

19The guided walk is limited to ______ people.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

20Visitors can hire ______ at the desk for £3.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

Section 4 A lecture on how urban birds adapt their songs to city noise · Lecturer

Questions 31-40

Complete the notes below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer.

31Traffic noise occupies mainly the ______ frequencies also used by songbirds.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

32When noise drowns out a signal without silencing it, researchers call this ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

33In a comparison of ten cities, urban great tits sang at a higher ______ than forest birds.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

34Singing more loudly in noise is known as the ______ effect.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

35In some cities, robins now do much of their singing at ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

36Night singing is more strongly linked to noise than to ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

37Females of several species prefer songs with a ______ pitch.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

38A Berlin study found noisy-territory males fed their ______ less often.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

39Birds whose songs are fixed at birth are vanishing fastest because noise acts as a ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

40During a road closure for a marathon, sparrows lowered their pitch within a single ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

Audio script / transcript

Trace every answer back to the exact words. Distractors — changes of mind, corrections, rejected options — are part of the recording, so read the whole exchange, not just one line.

Section 1 — A caller books a stall at a weekend craft market

Organiser:Good morning, Bridgewater Craft Market, Helen speaking. How can I help?

Caller:Oh, hello. I make ceramics, and a friend suggested I book a stall at your market. Could you take my details?

Organiser:Of course. Can I start with your name?

Caller:It's Daniel Mercer.

Organiser:Is that M-E-R-S-E-R?

Caller:Actually no, it's M-E-R-C-E-R. People often get that wrong.

Organiser:M-E-R-C-E-R, got it. And the best phone number for you?

Caller:My mobile. It's oh-seven-seven-oh, double three, nine, one, eight, six. Oh wait, sorry — I gave you my old one. It ends one-eight-two, not one-eight-six. So oh-seven-seven-oh, three-three-nine, one-eight-two.

Organiser:Zero seven seven zero, three three nine, one eight two. Lovely. And what would you be selling? We keep the mix balanced, so I have to record a category.

Caller:Mostly bowls and mugs — so pottery, I suppose. I do bring a few prints of my sketches, but the ceramics are the main thing.

Organiser:I'll put you down as pottery then, because we already have a lot of print sellers. Now, which market were you thinking of? We run one on the first Saturday of every month, and a bigger one each season.

Caller:I was hoping for the Saturday one on the third of June.

Organiser:Ah — the June market has actually been moved, because the square is being resurfaced. It'll be on the tenth of June instead. Does that still work?

Caller:The tenth. Yes, that's fine.

Organiser:Good. Now, stalls. A standard stall is three metres wide and costs forty-five pounds for the day. There's also a corner stall at sixty pounds, which gets you display space on two sides.

Caller:Hmm. The corner sounds tempting... but for my first time, I'll keep the costs down and take the standard one.

Organiser:Standard stall, forty-five pounds. If you become a regular, that drops to forty, by the way. Do you need a table? We hire them for eight pounds.

Caller:No thanks, I've got a folding one. But I will need power — I bring a small lamp to light the glazes.

Organiser:Electricity is an extra five pounds, and you must bring your own extension lead — we don't supply those. So your total for June comes to fifty pounds.

Caller:Fifty, understood. How do I pay?

Organiser:We used to take payment on the day, but we've had too many no-shows, so now everything's paid in advance through the website. Bookings close on the Wednesday before the market.

Caller:Right, I'll do it online tonight. One last thing — where do I unload? Parking near the square is terrible.

Organiser:Stallholders can drive in from Chapel Lane between seven and eight thirty in the morning. After that the square is pedestrians only, so don't arrive late. The nearest all-day car park is on Station Road.

Caller:Chapel Lane before eight thirty, park on Station Road. Perfect, thanks, Helen.

Organiser:You're welcome, Daniel. We'll see you on the tenth.

Section 2 — A warden welcomes visitors to a wetland nature reserve

Warden:Good morning everyone, and welcome to Alderfen Wetland Reserve. I'm Tom, one of the wardens, and before you head out I'll give you a quick picture of the site and what's on today.

Warden:First, a little background. The reserve was created in the nineteen-eighties on what used to be farmland. A lot of people assume it was always a wild marsh, but in fact the lagoons you'll see were dug out when the land was returned to wetland. The river was here all along, of course, but the pools themselves are man-made.

Warden:Now, the most common question I get: what will I actually see today? Everyone wants the otters. I have to be honest — they're mostly active at dawn and after dark, so daytime sightings are rare. What you will almost certainly see, at this time of year, are the marsh harriers. They're hunting over the reedbeds all day at the moment, and honestly they're the star attraction this month. Kingfishers are about too, but you'll need patience and a bit of luck.

Warden:Let me walk you round the map you were given at the gate. You're standing at the visitor centre, right at the southern entrance. The main path runs north from the centre, straight up towards the river.

Warden:If you follow that main path, the first building you reach, on your left just after the wooden bridge, is the Reed Hide. It looks west over the largest lagoon, and that's the best spot for the harriers.

Warden:Carry on north and the path forks at a big oak. People often turn right here thinking it leads to the café — it doesn't, I'm afraid. The right-hand branch takes you east to the Dragonfly Pools. In summer that boardwalk is wonderful, but do keep children's hands out of the water.

Warden:Take the left branch instead and you climb a slight rise to the Osprey Tower. It's our tallest structure, three storeys, and on a clear day you can see the coast. The stairs are steep, though — there's no lift, so bear that in mind.

Warden:The café, since I mentioned it, is not out on the trails at all. It's the timber building directly behind the visitor centre — behind where you're standing now — so save your appetite for when you loop back. It closes at four, half an hour before the reserve itself.

Warden:Two more things. We had planned to open the new floating hide on the north shore this month, but the pontoons failed their safety check, so that opening has been pushed back to the autumn. You'll see it from the tower, but please don't go past the barriers.

Warden:And finally, today's guided walk. It normally starts at eleven, but our volunteer leader is stuck in traffic, so we've put it back to eleven thirty. It leaves from the noticeboard beside the visitor centre — not from the Reed Hide, which is where it used to start in previous seasons. It's free, but numbers are capped at fifteen, so put your name on the sheet inside.

Warden:Right — binoculars can be hired at the desk for three pounds, sightings go on the whiteboard by the door, and enjoy your visit.

Section 3 — Two students and their tutor plan a survey on plastic-free packaging

Dr Rees:Come in, both of you. So — your project on shoppers' attitudes to plastic-free packaging. Where have you got to?

Priya:We've read about twenty studies now. The surprising thing is how consistent they are: people say they want less packaging, but their buying behaviour doesn't really change.

Jack:Which is exactly the gap we want to look at — the difference between what people report and what they actually do.

Dr Rees:Good. That's a genuine question, not just a description. And how will you collect your data? Last week you were talking about interviews.

Jack:We were, but we've gone off the idea. Interviews would give us depth, but with the time we've got we'd manage fifteen, maybe twenty people, and we couldn't claim much from that.

Priya:So we're going with an online questionnaire instead. We can reach a few hundred students that way.

Dr Rees:A questionnaire is sensible, though I'd push back on one thing. If you only survey students, you can't say anything about shoppers in general — students barely do the household shopping. Could you recruit through the supermarket itself?

Jack:We did ask the manager at the Greenfield store. She was happy for us to stand outside, but head office said no to anything at the tills.

Dr Rees:Outside the store is fine. Hand out a card with the survey link. You'll get a much broader sample that way, even if the response rate is lower.

Priya:Okay, so recruitment outside the store, not just around campus. Now, about the questions themselves. Jack wants to open with the attitude statements, but I think we should start by asking what people actually bought today, while they still remember.

Jack:Hmm... actually, that's fair. If we ask attitudes first, we might prime them to describe their shopping as greener than it was. Fine — behaviour questions first, then attitudes.

Dr Rees:I agree with Priya on the ordering, and the priming point is exactly the right reason. One caution though: keep the whole thing under ten minutes. Your pilot showed fifteen, didn't it?

Priya:Fourteen and a half, on average. We've already cut the demographic section down — we really only need age and whether they're the main shopper in their household.

Dr Rees:Drop the income question too. People abandon surveys at that point, and you don't need it to answer your research question.

Jack:Noted. There's one more thing we disagreed about — the prize draw. I thought a voucher would boost responses, but Priya thinks it attracts people who just click through for the reward.

Dr Rees:The evidence goes both ways, but on balance a small incentive raises numbers more than it damages quality. I'd keep it — just make it modest. A ten-pound voucher, not fifty.

Priya:All right, I can live with that. So for the timeline: pilot revisions this week, collect responses over the next three weeks, then analysis.

Dr Rees:And when you write it up, remember your limitation section. A questionnaire tells you what people say they do. Pair it with the till-receipt idea in your appendix if you want a stronger claim — but that's optional, not required, given your deadline.

Jack:Understood. Same time in three weeks to look at the first data?

Dr Rees:Make it two. If the response rate is low, we'll still have time to fix it. Two weeks, this office.

Section 4 — A lecture on how urban birds adapt their songs to city noise

Lecturer:Today I want to look at what cities are doing to birdsong — and what birdsong, in turn, tells us about how animals adapt to environments we have built.

Lecturer:Start with the problem. Most traffic noise sits at low frequencies. Unfortunately, that's exactly the band many songbirds use, so a male singing to defend a territory or attract a mate is, in effect, competing with the morning rush hour. Researchers call this masking: the signal isn't silenced, it's drowned.

Lecturer:The best-studied response comes from the great tit. In a landmark comparison of ten European cities, urban males consistently sang at a higher pitch than their forest counterparts. Shifting the song upwards moves it out of the traffic band, so more of it gets through. That finding has now been replicated in dozens of species.

Lecturer:Pitch is not the only adjustment. Some species simply sing louder — the so-called Lombard effect, which humans show too when we raise our voices in a noisy restaurant. Others change their schedule rather than their song. In several large cities, robins have shifted a substantial part of their singing to the night, when the streets finally fall quiet. For a long time people blamed streetlights for this nocturnal singing, but the data point more strongly to noise: the night singers cluster in the loudest districts, not the brightest ones.

Lecturer:So the birds are coping. The harder question is what these adjustments cost. And here the picture darkens somewhat. In several species, females prefer low-pitched songs — deeper songs correlate with larger, older males. A male who shifts upwards to beat the traffic may therefore become easier to hear but less attractive. He is trading audibility against appeal, and we don't yet know where that trade settles over generations.

Lecturer:There's also an energetic cost. Singing louder for hours, day after day, consumes reserves that would otherwise go into foraging or feeding chicks. One Berlin study found that males in the noisiest territories fed their nestlings measurably less often. The noise doesn't kill anything directly; it quietly taxes everything.

Lecturer:Now, an important qualification. Not every species can make these adjustments. Species with flexible, learned songs — the great tit again, or blackbirds — cope reasonably well. But birds whose songs are largely fixed at birth have far less room to manoeuvre, and it is precisely those inflexible singers that are disappearing fastest from city centres. Urban noise, in other words, acts as a filter: it doesn't just change communities, it selects them.

Lecturer:What can be done? The encouraging news is that the fixes are mundane. Quieter road surfaces and lower speed limits cut the low-frequency load at source. Even small pockets of quiet matter: parks screened by earth banks or dense planting hold richer bird communities than parks of the same size beside open roads. One study made the point elegantly — during a citywide road closure for a marathon, sparrows dropped the pitch of their songs within a single morning. The adaptability that lets birds survive our noise also lets them recover from it, almost immediately, when we turn the volume down.

Lecturer:Next week we'll extend this to marine noise and whale song, where the same logic plays out over far greater distances.