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IELTS Listening — Practice Test 3

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Section 1 A passenger telephones a railway station to report a bag left on a train · Assistant, 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

2Contact number: 0772 483 ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

3Colour of bag: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

4Train taken: the ______ from Exeter

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

5Bag was left in the ______ near the doors

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

6Valuable item inside: a ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

7Item needed urgently for work: ______

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 much does delivery by courier cost?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

9The lost property office is opposite which platform?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

10At what time does the office close on weekdays?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

Section 2 A coordinator gives an induction talk to new volunteers at a community food bank · Coordinator

Questions 11-13

Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.

11What does Dan say about the people the food bank supports?

A Most of them are homeless. B Most of them are families with jobs. C Most of them come in without an appointment.

12Which donation is the food bank most short of?

A pasta B tinned vegetables C UHT milk

13What has recently changed about the Saturday shift?

A It has been divided into two shorter shifts. B It now finishes later in the day. C It has been cancelled for this month.

Questions 14-17

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

Plan of the Millbrook Food Bank warehouse — you are just inside the main entrance, facing the length of the warehouse; the loading doors are at the far end.

A = immediately to the right of the entrance B = along the left-hand wall C = in the back left corner D = in the centre of the floor E = at the back right, beside the loading doors F = on the mezzanine level above the office

A immediately to the right of the entrance
B along the left-hand wall
C in the back left corner
D in the centre of the floor
E at the back right, beside the loading doors
F on the mezzanine level above the office

14Sign-in point

15Sorting area

16Chilled store

17Parcels awaiting delivery

Questions 18-20

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

18Volunteers must always wear ______ when they handle food.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

19Items within ______ of their best-before date are placed on the red shelf.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

20Each week the new rota is displayed on the ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

Section 4 A lecture on the history of refrigeration and the global cold chain · Lecturer

Questions 31-40

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

31Traditional preservation relied on salting, drying and ______, all of which altered the food.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

32Frederic Tudor eventually shipped New England ice as far as ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

33Winter ice was kept through summer in insulated buildings known as ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

34The first commercial buyers of refrigeration machines were ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

35Ammonia performed well as a refrigerant but was ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

36In the 1920s, CFCs were marketed as completely ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

37From the 1880s, refrigerated ships allowed ______ to be traded across oceans.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

38The unbroken chilled link between a farm and a fridge is called the ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

39In poorer countries, food losses happen mainly before produce reaches the ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

40Extending the cold chain would cut losses but increase demand for ______.

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 passenger telephones a railway station to report a bag left on a train

Assistant:Lost property, Northgate station, good afternoon.

Caller:Oh, hello. I think I left a bag on a train this morning, and I'm really hoping it's been handed in.

Assistant:Let's get a report started either way. Your name, please?

Caller:Claire Beaumont.

Assistant:Beaumont... is that B-O-M-O-N-T?

Caller:No — it's the French spelling. B-E-A-U-M-O-N-T.

Assistant:B-E-A-U-M-O-N-T. Thank you. And a number we can reach you on?

Caller:My mobile. It's oh-seven-seven-two, four-eight-three, six-oh-five... oh, sorry, no — six-one-five. I always swap those two round. Four-eight-three, six-one-five.

Assistant:Zero seven seven two, four eight three, six one five. Right. Now, describe the bag for me.

Caller:It's a canvas holdall. Most people would probably call it black, because it looks black indoors — but it's actually a very dark green. You can tell in daylight.

Assistant:I'll put dark green, then — that's exactly the sort of detail that helps us match it. Any name tag on it?

Caller:No, sadly. There's a small red ribbon tied round one handle, though, if that helps.

Assistant:It all helps. Which train were you on?

Caller:The ten-fifteen from Exeter... no — wait, hang on. My meeting got brought forward, so I caught the earlier one in the end. The nine forty-five. Definitely the nine forty-five.

Assistant:The nine forty-five from Exeter, arriving here just before eleven. And where exactly was the bag? Under your seat?

Caller:No, that's the thing — if it had been under my seat I'd have seen it. I put it up in the luggage rack by the doors and just... walked off without it. I was in the last carriage, if that narrows it down.

Assistant:It happens a dozen times a day, honestly. Now, what's inside? Anything valuable?

Caller:Mostly clothes, a novel, an umbrella. No money, thankfully — my purse was on me. But my camera's in the side pocket. That's the thing I'd really hate to lose.

Assistant:A camera, noted. Anything you need urgently, before valuables?

Caller:Oh — my glasses! They're in the front pouch, and I need them for work tomorrow. I can't read a screen without them.

Assistant:Understood. Now — potentially good news. A canvas holdall matching that description came in off the Exeter service around midday. I can't confirm it's yours until you identify it, but I'd say the odds are good.

Caller:Oh, thank goodness for that.

Assistant:There are two ways to get it back. We can send it out by courier — that costs ten pounds, and it normally arrives within two days. Or you can collect it from us here, free of charge.

Caller:Ten pounds to have it brought to the door is tempting... but actually, no. I'm back at the station on Thursday anyway, so I'll just collect it.

Assistant:Collection it is. The lost property office is opposite Platform 4 — right next to the coffee kiosk, you can't miss it. Bring some photo ID with you, and quote the reference number... let me see... eight-four-one-nine.

Caller:Opposite Platform 4, reference eight-four-one-nine. And what are your opening hours?

Assistant:On weekdays we're open from eight in the morning until six in the evening. Saturdays we close early, at one o'clock — and we're shut on Sundays altogether.

Caller:Open until six on a weekday — that's fine, I finish work at five. Thank you so much, you've saved my week.

Assistant:You're very welcome. See you on Thursday, Ms Beaumont.

Section 2 — A coordinator gives an induction talk to new volunteers at a community food bank

Coordinator:Morning, everyone, and thank you for giving up a Saturday. I'm Dan, the warehouse coordinator here at Millbrook, and by the end of this induction you'll know where everything lives and what we'll ask you to do.

Coordinator:Before the tour, one thing I say to every new group. When people picture a food bank, they usually picture homeless users. In fact, fewer than one in ten of the people we support are homeless. The majority are working families — people with jobs whose wages simply don't stretch to the end of the month. And nobody just walks in off the street: everyone comes to us with a referral from an agency, such as a school, a GP surgery or Citizens Advice.

Coordinator:Donations next. We are — believe it or not — drowning in pasta. Please, no more pasta. And we've a healthy wall of tinned vegetables. What we never, ever have enough of is UHT milk. It goes out as fast as it comes in — if anyone asks what to give, that's the answer. Toiletries run short too, but milk is the persistent gap.

Coordinator:Now, the geography of the place. You've just come in through the main entrance. Immediately on your right is the office — that's where you sign in and out, every shift, no exceptions, because that sheet doubles as our fire register.

Coordinator:Ahead of you, running all along the left-hand wall, is the dry-goods shelving — everything sorted by type and by date. And in the centre of the floor you can see the big sorting tables. That's where most of you will spend your first few shifts: weighing donations, checking dates, and sorting items into crates.

Coordinator:In the back left corner is the chilled store — the walk-in fridges. Only volunteers who've completed the food hygiene module go in there, so for now, admire it from a distance. At the back right, beside the loading doors, is where the completed parcels wait for the delivery vans — drivers collect from there twice a day. And up the metal stairs, above the office, there's a mezzanine with a small kitchen. That's where breaks happen; the tea and coffee are on us.

Coordinator:A couple of rules that we take seriously. Whenever you're handling food, you must wear gloves — there are boxes of them on every table, no charge, take a fresh pair each shift. And dates: we run a traffic-light system here. Anything within three months of its best-before date goes on the red shelf, so it's sent out first. If something is actually past its date, don't bin it — bring it to the office, because the rules differ by product.

Coordinator:One recent change you should know about. The Saturday shift used to run as a single block, nine till three, which people found a long day on their feet. So from this month we've split it into two shorter shifts — nine till twelve, and twelve till three. You can sign up for either, or for both if you're feeling heroic.

Coordinator:Finally, the rota. It goes up every Friday afternoon on the noticeboard beside the office door. We don't email it out, so do check the board before you leave each week. Right — grab a hi-vis vest from the pegs by the door, and let's walk the floor.

Section 3 — Two business students plan their marketing presentation for a client project

Sofia:Okay — let's actually nail the presentation plan today.

Ben:Agreed. First thing — who are we talking to? Physically it's the class, obviously, but...

Sofia:But we're marked as if we're pitching to Brightside's people. The thing is, I'd been drafting it at classmate level — explaining what a conversion rate is.

Ben:See, I read the brief again last night, and it literally says 'address the client'. If we explain the basics to a room of marketing professionals, we'll come across as...

Sofia:...patronising. Yes. All right, you've won me over — I'll cut the definitions. We pitch to the client's marketing team.

Ben:Good. Next: the survey. The plan was to survey shoppers outside their store.

Sofia:I've gone cold on that, honestly. We present in two weeks. By the time the ethics form clears, we'd have one weekend of data at best — and last year a group tried exactly this and got nine responses.

Ben:Nine! You can't argue anything from nine people. Okay, scrap the survey. So the evidence base becomes the published industry reports, plus — what if I interview the store manager? I don't think one expert interview needs the full ethics process... actually, I'd better check that rather than assume.

Sofia:Do check, but yes — reports plus the manager. Now, slides. I went through our draft deck and, Ben, it's a wall of words. Slide four has nine bullet points on it.

Ben:Guilty. I write my whole script onto the slides — bad habit.

Sofia:One idea per slide, and the script goes into our speaker notes instead. I'll rebuild the deck tonight.

Ben:Fine. And on the demo — I know you wanted to show their website live on screen, but remember the conference wifi dying on us last term? I suggest we use screenshots instead. Screenshots can't fail.

Sofia:Reluctantly agreed. Screenshots it is. Oh — the opening. I still think we start with that thirty-second clip of their TV advert, and then ask the room what it's actually selling.

Ben:My worry was always time — but if it's the thirty-second cut and not the full two minutes... okay, actually, that's a strong opening. Keep it.

Sofia:And one more from me: when we practise, we run the whole thing against a timer, every time — we always overrun because we never rehearse with the clock on.

Ben:Deal. Speaking of time — we've got fifteen minutes in total, so that's... sorry, twelve, I mean. I keep saying fifteen; they cut it back in week three. Twelve minutes, so six each.

Sofia:Six each. And does the ad clip sit inside your half or mine?

Ben:Yours, since you're introducing the brand. I'll take the recommendations half. And I'll do the handout — a single page with the three recommendations and the key figures, printed for everyone.

Sofia:Perfect. Should we list our sources anywhere, do you think?

Ben:Funny you say that — I'd written exactly the same note last night. A final slide of sources, so the client can see the evidence isn't just our opinion.

Sofia:Snap. Right — rehearsal. We said Thursday in the seminar room, didn't we?

Ben:Ah, slight problem. The drama society now has that room every Thursday, so I've rebooked us for Tuesday — same room, five o'clock. It actually buys us a spare day.

Sofia:Tuesday's better anyway. Timer on, screenshots ready, twelve minutes.

Section 4 — A lecture on the history of refrigeration and the global cold chain

Lecturer:Few machines have changed daily life as quietly as the refrigerator. Today I'll trace how we got from cutting ice from frozen lakes to a refrigerated planet, and what that says about food, trade and energy.

Lecturer:For most of human history, keeping food meant transforming it. The main preservation methods — salting, drying and smoking — all worked, but each changed the food's taste and texture. Fresh was a luxury measured in hours. Cool cellars and winter snow helped at the margins, but cold on demand did not exist.

Lecturer:The first business to treat cold itself as a commodity was the ice trade. From 1806, a Boston merchant named Frederic Tudor began cutting winter ice from New England lakes and shipping it south — first to the Caribbean, and eventually, remarkably, all the way to India. The voyage to Calcutta took four months and roughly half of each cargo melted — yet Tudor still made a fortune, because the ice that survived sold at a premium.

Lecturer:On land, winter ice was stored through the summer in thick-walled buildings called ice houses, insulated with sawdust and straw. By the late nineteenth century the American 'icebox' — a kitchen cabinet cooled by a delivered block — was ordinary furniture.

Lecturer:Then came machines — and a popular assumption I need to correct: that mechanical refrigeration was invented for the home. The record says otherwise. The first commercial customers were breweries. Lager fermentation demands steady, low temperatures all year round, and it was brewing money that paid for Carl von Linde's pioneering machines in the 1870s. Households came half a century later: the early machinery was far too large, and too dangerous, for a kitchen.

Lecturer:Dangerous because of what circulated inside. Early refrigerants — ammonia chief among them — were thermodynamically excellent but toxic, and a leak in a crowded building occasionally killed. The industry's answer, in the nineteen-twenties, was the family of CFCs, sold as Freon and marketed as completely safe — non-flammable, non-toxic, inert. At the human scale, they were. It took until the 1980s to discover the price: the same inert molecules were drifting into the stratosphere and destroying the ozone layer. Because they caused no immediate harm, they spread worldwide before anyone looked for a distant effect.

Lecturer:Meanwhile, refrigeration was redrawing the map of food. From the 1880s, refrigerated ships meant that meat — frozen lamb from New Zealand, chilled beef from Argentina — could cross an ocean and still be worth eating, undercutting farmers in Europe. Whole national economies reorganised around that single technology.

Lecturer:The modern descendant is what the industry calls the cold chain — the unbroken sequence of refrigerated storage and transport that connects a farm to your fridge. It is a chain: if any link breaks, even briefly, the food is compromised.

Lecturer:Now a striking asymmetry: where food is lost differs sharply with wealth. In rich countries, most waste happens at the end — in shops and, above all, in homes. In poorer countries the pattern reverses: the losses occur mainly before food ever reaches the market, precisely because the cold chain is missing. Extending it would cut global food losses substantially — but refrigeration already consumes a significant share of the world's electricity, and every new link adds to that demand. Solving one problem with cold always creates the next. More next week.