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IELTS Listening — Practice Test 28

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Section 1 A parent phones a schoolwear shop to order uniform items · Assistant, Parent

Questions 1-7

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

1Customer surname: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

2Mobile number: 0798 244 ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

3Blazer size: age ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

4Knitwear item ordered: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

5Name for embroidery on PE bag: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

6Colour of PE bag: ______

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 will the parent receive the uniform order?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

9By what date must embroidered orders now be placed?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

10What must the parent bring when collecting the order?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

Section 2 An organiser explains the arrangements for a summer open-air cinema season · Organiser

Questions 11-13

Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.

11What has happened to the first screening of the season?

A It has been cancelled. B It will take place on a later date. C It will open with a different film.

12Where must people with full-height chairs sit?

A behind the rope line B in front of the rope line C on the raised platform

13How can tickets for the films be obtained?

A online, before the event B in cash at the gate C from the box office on the night

Questions 14-17

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

Plan of Millbrook Park — you enter by the east gate on Bramley Road; the main avenue runs west towards the lake, passing a fountain halfway along.

A = beside the east gate B = left of the avenue, just past the fountain C = on the north lawn D = on the western side, by the lake E = in the south corner, next to the walled garden F = halfway along the avenue, at the fountain

A beside the east gate
B left of the avenue, just past the fountain
C on the north lawn
D on the western side, by the lake
E in the south corner, next to the walled garden
F halfway along the avenue, at the fountain

14box office

15food vans

16accessible viewing platform

17toilets

Questions 18-20

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

18Gates open ______ before every screening.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

19Picnics are permitted, but no ______ may be brought onto the grass.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

20In bad weather, a decision about cancellation is posted on the ______ by 4 pm.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

Section 4 A lecture on permafrost, the carbon it stores, and what happens as it thaws · Lecturer

Questions 31-40

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

31Permafrost is defined by temperature: the ground does not need to contain any ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

32The surface layer that thaws every summer is called the ______ layer.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

33Permafrost soils hold about twice as much carbon as the ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

34The lecturer rejects the popular image of a sudden methane ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

35Most permafrost carbon will escape gradually, over ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

36Much of the release will be carbon dioxide produced by ______ breaking down thawed matter.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

37Land that collapses as ice-rich ground melts is known as ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

38New ponds are dark, so they take in extra ______ and speed up nearby thaw.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

39Ground temperatures are recorded at depth in a global network of ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

40This century, permafrost emissions are expected to match those of a large industrial ______.

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 parent phones a schoolwear shop to order uniform items

Assistant:Good afternoon, Kingsway Schoolwear, Martha speaking. How can I help?

Parent:Oh, hello. My daughter's starting at Hillcrest Academy in September, and the school said you're the official supplier. Could I order her uniform over the phone?

Assistant:Of course. Let me set up the order. Could I take your surname first?

Parent:It's Renshaw. R-E-N-S-H-A-W.

Assistant:R-E-N-S-H-A-W, thank you. And the best contact number?

Parent:My mobile — it's oh-seven-nine-eight, two-four-four, six-three-one... no, hang on, sorry, I always muddle the last bit. It ends six-three-seven, not six-three-one. So oh-seven-nine-eight, two-four-four, six-three-seven.

Assistant:Six-three-seven at the end. Got it. Now, what does she need?

Parent:The blazer, to start with. She's eleven, but she's quite tall for her age.

Assistant:Then I wouldn't order the age-eleven — it's snug on tall children, and they've grown out of it by Christmas. Hmm... for Hillcrest the cut runs fairly generous, so the age-twelve should see her right through the year.

Parent:The age-twelve, then. That's thirty-eight pounds, isn't it?

Assistant:Thirty-six, actually — thirty-eight is the senior cut for the older years. Now, for the top half, the school allows either the knitted jumper or the zipped sweatshirt.

Parent:Which do most parents go for?

Assistant:Honestly, the sweatshirt washes better, but Hillcrest only permits it in Years Ten and Eleven. For Year Seven it has to be the jumper, I'm afraid.

Parent:The jumper it is. And she'll need the PE bag — the one with the name embroidered on the front.

Assistant:Certainly. What name shall we stitch?

Parent:Her first name — Keira.

Assistant:Lovely. That's K-I-E-R-A?

Parent:No — everyone does that. It's K-E-I-R-A. The E comes before the I.

Assistant:K-E-I-R-A. I'll make sure it's printed on your confirmation so you can check it too. And the bag comes in black or navy.

Parent:Which does the school ask for?

Assistant:The PE kit list says navy. We do sell the black, but the PE staff will send it home, so navy's the safe choice.

Parent:Navy, please. Now, can you post everything to us?

Assistant:We can — delivery's six pounds fifty, but with embroidered items it's taking about ten days at the moment. Or you can collect from the shop for free, and collection orders are usually ready in five.

Parent:Ten days is cutting it a bit fine. I'll collect, thanks.

Assistant:Collection it is. One thing to flag — embroidered orders normally close on the fifteenth of August, but our machine's booked solid this summer, so the deadline's been brought forward to the eighth. You're well inside that today.

Parent:The eighth — noted. What do I need to bring when I pick it up?

Assistant:Just your order number — it'll be on the confirmation email. And do check the embroidery before you leave the shop.

Parent:Will do. So what's the total?

Assistant:Blazer thirty-six, jumper fourteen, and the bag with embroidery is nine fifty. That comes to fifty-nine pounds fifty.

Parent:Fifty-nine fifty. Thank you, Martha, you've been very helpful.

Assistant:A pleasure, Mrs Renshaw. We'll email you as soon as it's ready.

Section 2 — An organiser explains the arrangements for a summer open-air cinema season

Organiser:Good evening, everyone. I'm Priya, coordinator of this summer's open-air cinema in Millbrook Park, and before tickets go on general sale I'll run through the season and how the site works.

Organiser:First, the basics. We're showing six films this year, one every second Saturday from June through to August, all starting at sunset. Now — the opening night. We had planned to open on Saturday the fourth with the musical, but the new projector we ordered is still sitting in a container at the port, so the first screening has been moved to Sunday the twelfth. It's the same film and the same start time, and I want to be clear: nothing has been cancelled, whatever you may have seen online.

Organiser:Let me walk you round the site plan on the screen behind me. You'll all come in through the east gate on Bramley Road. From there, the main avenue runs west, straight through the park towards the lake, and the cinema screen itself stands right over on the western side, with its back to the water.

Organiser:The box office is immediately beside the east gate, on your right as you come in. But do note — it's for collecting pre-booked wristbands only. All tickets are sold online in advance; there are no sales at the gate and we can't take cash anywhere on site.

Organiser:Food. We did originally plan to line the food vans up along the main avenue near the fountain, but that would have blocked the walkway, so instead they'll be set up on the north lawn. It's a short stroll from the seating area, and it keeps the queues well away from the screen.

Organiser:If you or anyone in your group uses a wheelchair, we've built a raised viewing platform this year. You'll find it on the left of the avenue, just past the fountain — book a free space when you buy your tickets.

Organiser:Seating. In front of the rope line it's blankets and low-backed chairs only, so everyone can see. Full-height folding chairs are absolutely fine, but they must go behind the rope. Picnics are welcome, by the way, though we don't allow any glass on the grass — cans and plastic only, please. Bins are by the gate, but ideally take your rubbish home with you.

Organiser:Toilets and first aid are together in the south corner of the park, next to the walled garden. They're signposted from the avenue, and there's an accessible unit there too.

Organiser:Two practical points to finish. Gates open ninety minutes before each screening — honestly, arriving early with a picnic is half the fun. And we do go ahead in light rain, but if the forecast is truly awful we'll make a decision by four o'clock on the day, and it'll be posted on the website. Don't ring the community centre — they won't know. Right, any questions before I talk about volunteering?

Section 3 — Two students and their tutor design a study on gaming and concentration

Dr Alvarez:Right, come in. So — your study on video gaming and concentration. Talk me through where the design's got to.

Tom:The question is whether a short gaming session affects how well people concentrate immediately afterwards. Our first plan was just to give people a questionnaire — you know, rate your own focus before and after playing.

Megan:But we've dropped that as the only measure. I found a review showing people are surprisingly bad judges of their own concentration — heavy gamers in particular tend to overrate it. So self-report alone wouldn't really tell us anything.

Dr Alvarez:Good instinct. What replaces it?

Megan:A computerised attention test — a continuous performance task on the lab machines. Participants respond to targets on screen for a few minutes and the software scores accuracy and reaction time. We'd still keep a short questionnaire alongside it, but the test is the real measure.

Tom:Where we haven't agreed is location. I'd rather run the whole thing online — people play at home, do the test at home, and we'd recruit far more of them.

Megan:And I think that's a false economy. At home someone's got messages pinging, a flatmate wandering in... we'd have no idea what we were measuring.

Dr Alvarez:I'm with Megan here. Your whole outcome is concentration — you can't have uncontrolled distractions baked into the setting. Numbers matter less than clean conditions for this design.

Tom:Hmm. Yeah, okay — that's fair. Lab sessions it is. Now, each session: participants play for forty-five minutes and then...

Megan:Forty-five? The papers we cited all used much shorter blocks — fatigue starts contaminating the attention scores after about half an hour.

Tom:Sorry, you're right — I was thinking of the pilot for the other module. Twenty-five minutes of play, then the test straight after.

Dr Alvarez:Twenty-five is defensible. One refinement: don't test them the instant the game ends. Give everyone a two-minute rest first, or you're partly measuring adrenaline rather than attention.

Megan:Okay, a standard two-minute break for every participant. What about recruitment? Tom suggested going through the gaming society.

Dr Alvarez:I'd be careful there. If you only recruit society members, you get people who are far more practised than the average student, and your results won't say anything about students in general. Put the sign-up on the first-year participation pool and the library noticeboards as well.

Tom:Fine — society members can take part, but not only them.

Dr Alvarez:Exactly. Now, ethics. You were working towards the end-of-month deadline, weren't you? The committee's changed its schedule this term — they meet earlier now, so applications have to be in by the twelfth of October. Miss that and you lose a whole month.

Megan:The twelfth?! That's next week. We'd better finish the consent forms tonight.

Dr Alvarez:You'll manage — the form's mostly written. Shall we review the pilot data when we next meet? I had us down for Friday.

Tom:Could we make it Thursday instead? Friday I'm invigilating all afternoon.

Dr Alvarez:Thursday works — same time, my office. Bring the draft ethics form and I'll sign it off then.

Section 4 — A lecture on permafrost, the carbon it stores, and what happens as it thaws

Lecturer:This week we turn to permafrost — what it is, what it holds, and why engineers and climate scientists are equally worried about it, though for rather different reasons.

Lecturer:First, the definition, because it's widely misunderstood. Permafrost is any ground that has remained at or below zero degrees Celsius for at least two consecutive years. Notice that the definition is entirely about temperature. Frozen bedrock with no moisture in it at all still counts — permafrost need not contain any ice. Above it sits a surface layer that thaws each summer and refreezes each winter; we call this the active layer, and everything that grows in the Arctic grows in it.

Lecturer:Why does this frozen ground matter beyond the Arctic? Storage. Over thousands of years, dead plant material has been locked into the frozen ground before it could rot. Current estimates put around one thousand six hundred billion tonnes of organic carbon in permafrost soils — roughly twice as much as the atmosphere currently holds. Keep that ratio in mind; it explains most of the anxiety in the field.

Lecturer:Now, the popular framing. You've probably met the phrase 'methane bomb' — the idea that warming will trigger one sudden, catastrophic belch of gas and cook the planet within a decade. The measurements simply don't support that. As permafrost thaws, most of its carbon will seep out gradually, over centuries, not overnight. And the larger share is expected to emerge not as methane at all, but as carbon dioxide, produced as microbes digest the thawed organic matter. That's genuinely serious — a slow, persistent addition to emissions — but it is a leak, not an explosion, and the distinction matters for policy.

Lecturer:I should qualify the word 'gradual', though, because thaw is not always gentle. Where the ground is rich in ice, melting removes the structure that holds the land up, and the surface collapses into pits, gullies and new lakes. The technical name for this collapsed landscape is thermokarst. It matters because of a feedback: those new ponds are dark, so they absorb more heat than the pale ground around them, and that warmth accelerates the thaw beneath and beside them. Abrupt thaw of this kind could roughly double the carbon released from the affected regions.

Lecturer:How do we actually watch this happening? Two instruments, essentially. On the ground, there's an international network of boreholes — hundreds of drilled shafts where thermometers record temperatures at depth, some with records going back forty years, and nearly all of them warming. From orbit, satellites track subsidence — the slow sinking of the land surface — across regions no field team could ever cover.

Lecturer:And the human cost is not hypothetical. Roads, runways and pipelines across the north were built on the assumption that the ground beneath them would stay solid; as it softens, they crack and tilt. In some Arctic cities, a substantial share of apartment buildings already show structural damage. Adapting or relocating that infrastructure will likely cost tens of billions of dollars.

Lecturer:So, a sober summary. The methane bomb makes a good headline and bad science. The realistic projection is that permafrost emissions this century will resemble those of a large industrial country — persistent, significant, and largely irreversible once under way, but not, on their own, apocalyptic. Next week we'll look at what this means for global carbon budgets.