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IELTS Listening — Practice Test 8

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Section 1 A guest phones a hotel to change an existing booking · Receptionist, Guest

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

2Booking reference: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

3New arrival date: ______ September

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

4Number of nights: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

5Type of room: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

6Meal added to booking: ______ (£12 per night)

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

7Payment card now ends: ______

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 hotel send the new confirmation?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

9Which street is the entrance to the hotel car park on?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

10What must guests show at breakfast?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

Section 2 A guide welcomes visitors to a city museum and explains the floor plan · Guide

Questions 11-13

Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.

11What does the guide say about the museum building?

A It was built to house the museum's collection. B It was originally used as a courthouse. C It had to be rebuilt after a fire.

12What does the guide say about the Egyptian collection?

A Its most famous objects are on show in another gallery. B It has been placed in storage during roof repairs. C It will be back on display in the autumn.

13What must visitors leave in the cloakroom?

A their coats B large bags C their valuables

Questions 14-17

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

Plan of the Whitfield Museum — you are in the entrance hall at the southern end of the building; the ground-floor corridor runs north and the main staircase leads to the first floor.

A = on the right-hand side of the entrance hall B = at the far end of the ground floor, past the sculpture court C = at the top of the main staircase, on the first floor D = at the end of the west corridor, on the first floor E = in the basement, beside the lift stairs F = to the left of the entrance

A on the right-hand side of the entrance hall
B at the far end of the ground floor, past the sculpture court
C at the top of the main staircase, on the first floor
D at the end of the west corridor, on the first floor
E in the basement, beside the lift stairs
F to the left of the entrance

14Café

15Ceramics Gallery

16Egyptian collection (temporary location)

17Children's Discovery Zone

Questions 18-20

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

18The Egyptian Gallery is now expected to reopen in the ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

19To use a locker, visitors need a ______ coin, which is returned to them.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

20When taking photographs, visitors must not use ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

Section 4 A lecture on crowd behaviour and the design of safe stadiums · Lecturer

Questions 31-40

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

31The press usually reports a crowd disaster as a '______', but researchers have abandoned the term.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

32The key measure of risk is the crowd's ______ — people per square metre.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

33Above about five people per square metre, the crowd begins to behave like a ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

34The violent, unpredictable waves seen at extreme densities are called crowd ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

35Most deaths in crowd disasters result from ______ rather than from being trampled.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

36In the faster-is-slower effect, pushing bodies form an ______ around a doorway, like grains in an hourglass.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

37Flow through an exit can be improved by placing a ______ a short distance in front of it.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

38Arches and pressure develop wherever escape routes narrow suddenly — that is, at ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

39Stadiums now track density in real time using ______ linked to software.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

40Peak crowding is reduced by staggering ______, for example by opening gates early.

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 guest phones a hotel to change an existing booking

Receptionist:Good afternoon, Rosendale Hotel reservations, Karen speaking. How can I help you today?

Guest:Hello. I've got a booking with you next month, and I'm afraid I need to change it — my conference dates have shifted.

Receptionist:No problem at all. Can I take the surname on the booking?

Guest:It's Haywood. Marcus Haywood.

Receptionist:Let me just find that... is it H-E-Y-W-O-O-D?

Guest:No, with an A — H-A-Y-W-O-O-D. It gets misspelled all the time.

Receptionist:H-A-Y-W-O-O-D, thank you. And do you have the booking reference? It was on your confirmation.

Guest:Yes — it's JX, then three, three, five. JX335.

Receptionist:Found it. A standard double, arriving Friday the fourteenth of September, staying three nights.

Guest:That's the one. The conference has been pushed back, so I now need to arrive on the eighteenth of September instead.

Receptionist:The eighteenth... yes, we do have availability. And still three nights?

Guest:Actually no — just the two. I'm flying home on the twentieth.

Receptionist:So that's two nights from the eighteenth. Now, while I've got you — we're running a promotion this month. For thirty pounds a night extra, I could move you into a deluxe room with a balcony overlooking the river.

Guest:Hmm. The balcony does sound nice... but the company only reimburses the standard rate, so I'd better stay with the standard double.

Receptionist:Of course, standard double it is. Is there anything you'd like to add? Most guests take breakfast — it's twelve pounds a night if you book it now, rather than sixteen if you just pay in the restaurant.

Guest:Go on then — add breakfast for both mornings.

Receptionist:Done. Now, the card we hold to guarantee the booking. I have one ending four, seven, one, five — but it seems that card expires this month.

Guest:Oh, that's right, the bank sent me a replacement. The new one ends four, seven, two, five. Everything else is the same — same name, same billing address.

Receptionist:Ending four-seven-two-five — that's updated. You won't be charged until you check out, of course.

Guest:Great. Will I get something confirming all this? Last time I think you posted a letter.

Receptionist:We've actually stopped doing that — everything goes by email now, so you'll have the new confirmation within the hour.

Guest:Perfect. One more question — I'll be driving down this time. What's the parking situation?

Receptionist:We have a small car park behind the hotel. The entrance is on Mill Street — it's quite narrow, so do watch the pillars. It's eight pounds a night, or there's free parking on the street after six, but honestly those spaces fill up fast.

Guest:I'll take the car park. Do I need to reserve a space?

Receptionist:No need — just give us your registration at the desk when you arrive. Oh, and for breakfast, do bring your room card down with you; the restaurant staff will ask to see it.

Guest:Room card at breakfast, got it. Thanks very much, Karen.

Receptionist:You're welcome, Mr Haywood. We'll see you on the eighteenth.

Section 2 — A guide welcomes visitors to a city museum and explains the floor plan

Guide:Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Whitfield Museum. I'm Grace, one of the volunteer guides, and before you wander off I'll take five minutes to explain the layout and one or two changes this week.

Guide:First, the building itself. Visitors often assume it was purpose-built as a museum — it certainly has that grand look. In fact it started life in the 1840s as the city courthouse, and trials were held here right up until the 1960s. You can still see the judge's bench, preserved in the entrance hall. And no, despite what one popular guidebook claims, it was never seriously damaged by fire — the blaze of 1926 was put out before it reached the main rooms.

Guide:Now, the thing many of you will have come for: the Egyptian collection. I have to tell you that the Egyptian Gallery itself is closed at the moment — we're repairing the roof directly above it. The good news is that the best-known pieces, including the painted coffins, haven't gone into storage. They're on display in the Long Gallery for the time being, so you can still see them today. We had hoped to reopen the gallery this autumn, but the repairs have uncovered more problems than expected, so reopening has been put back to the spring.

Guide:Let me orient you on the floor plan you picked up at the desk. You're standing in the entrance hall at the southern end of the building, with the information desk directly in front of you. The shop is to the left of the entrance, and the cloakroom is on the right-hand side of the hall.

Guide:From here, the ground-floor corridor runs north. Walk on past the sculpture court, and right at the far end of the ground floor you'll find the café — it serves hot lunches until two-thirty and cakes all day.

Guide:Take the main staircase up, and at the top of the stairs, straight ahead of you on the first floor, is the Ceramics Gallery. That's my personal favourite — the eighteenth-century porcelain is world class.

Guide:If you turn left at the top of the staircase instead, and follow the west corridor all the way along, at the end of the west corridor you'll come to the Long Gallery — and that, remember, is where the Egyptian pieces are living for now.

Guide:Families should know that the Children's Discovery Zone is down in the basement — take the stairs beside the lift. Everything down there can be touched, which is not true anywhere else in this building!

Guide:A few practical rules. Large bags and backpacks can't be taken into the galleries — anything bigger than a sheet of A4 paper, roughly — so please leave them at the cloakroom. That's free. For valuables there are lockers, which take a one-pound coin, and you get the coin back when you open the locker again. Coats you're welcome to keep with you.

Guide:Photography is allowed everywhere except the coin room, but please don't use flash — it damages the pigments, and the attendants will remind you, politely, exactly once.

Guide:Finally, the free highlights tour leaves from the information desk at eleven and again at two, and it's included in your ticket. Enjoy your visit — and do ask anyone in a red lanyard if you get lost.

Section 3 — Two engineering students and their tutor plan the load test of a competition bridge

Dr Okafor:Right, you two — the load test for your competition bridge. Where do things stand?

Maya:The deck's finished, and it came in under the weight limit — one point nine kilos, and the rules allow two.

Liam:The joints are the open question. As you know, the 3D-printed nylon ones failed in our trial run.

Dr Okafor:Remind me what happened there.

Liam:They didn't bend or give any warning — they just cracked, all at once, at about sixty kilos. Nylon's cheap and quick to print, but we can't risk a sudden failure on the day.

Maya:So we've had new joints machined from aluminium. They cost more — nearly triple — and we waited a week for the workshop to cut them, but they deform slowly rather than snapping, so you can see trouble coming.

Dr Okafor:Sensible — predictable beats cheap and brittle. Now, where will you run the test? You mentioned the materials lab originally.

Maya:We've been rethinking that. The lab bench is only a metre and a half long, and with the supports at each end there's no room left for the weights.

Liam:And I did look at the courtyard — plenty of space, but any wind makes the load swing, and the rules say the test has to be indoors anyway.

Maya:So it has to be the main workshop. The real advantage is the hydraulic rig — we can apply the load smoothly and just read the force off the gauge, instead of stacking plates on by hand.

Dr Okafor:Agreed — book the workshop, and the rig with it. Have you spoken to Mr Price about safety?

Liam:Briefly. He's given us a checklist: goggles for everyone, the guard screens go around the rig, and the loading has to go up in five-kilo steps — no, sorry, I'm wrong, it's two-kilo steps. Two kilograms at a time, with a pause to inspect the joints between each one.

Dr Okafor:And the paperwork?

Maya:Everyone in the room has to sign the risk assessment form, including any visitors. I'll print copies for the day.

Dr Okafor:Good. One suggestion: before you load anything, do a dry run — go through the whole procedure once with no weight on the bridge. Most accidents happen because a clamp was never tightened.

Liam:Fair enough. Now, recording. I was planning to film it on my phone — it's simple, and we can start straight away.

Maya:A phone won't tell us anything useful, though. If a joint goes, it goes in a fraction of a second. The department's high-speed camera would show us exactly which face cracks first — and that's the data the report needs.

Liam:Hmm. It takes an hour to set up... but you're right. If we only get one test, we should get everything from it. High-speed camera it is.

Dr Okafor:I'll countersign the camera loan. And the date — you said the twelfth of May?

Maya:That was the plan, but Mr Price is away on leave that whole week, and we're not allowed to run the rig without him. So we've moved it to the nineteenth of May.

Dr Okafor:The nineteenth works — it still leaves a fortnight before the competition. And remember, to score at all, the bridge has to carry ninety kilograms for a full minute.

Liam:Ninety, for sixty seconds. It's written on the workshop wall by now.

Dr Okafor:Then I'll see you both — and the camera — on the nineteenth.

Section 4 — A lecture on crowd behaviour and the design of safe stadiums

Lecturer:This week we turn to crowd behaviour — specifically, what happens when tens of thousands of people leave a stadium at the same time, and how design determines whether that moment is routine or fatal.

Lecturer:Let me start by clearing away a word. When a crowd disaster is reported, the press almost always calls it a stampede. The image is of a panicked herd trampling the fallen. But decades of research, and video from real events, tell a different story. People in dense crowds are overwhelmingly cooperative — they help strangers, they pass children overhead to safety. Victims are rarely trampled by people running; the forces involved come from compression. So specialists have largely abandoned that word, and I'd encourage you to do the same.

Lecturer:What actually matters is density — the number of people occupying each square metre. Up to about two per square metre, walking is comfortable. At around four, you can no longer choose your own pace. And above roughly five people per square metre, something strange happens: individuals lose the ability to move independently, and the crowd as a whole starts to behave like a fluid. Waves pass through it. Nobody is deliberately pushing, yet everyone feels pushed.

Lecturer:At the most extreme densities these waves become violent and unpredictable — people are lifted off their feet, shoes come off, and a surge can sweep someone several metres sideways. Researchers call this state crowd turbulence, and it is the signature of nearly every major crush of the past forty years. In that state the danger is not falling and being stepped on; it is that the chest cannot expand. Most deaths in crowd disasters are caused by pressure, not by trampling — which is why the stampede story is not just wrong but harmful: it blames victims for a physics problem.

Lecturer:Now, to design. The intuition is that people escape fastest when they move fastest — so build wider doors, and let everybody hurry. Experiments with real crowds and with simulations reveal what's called the faster-is-slower effect. When everyone pushes toward a doorway, bodies form an arch around the opening — exactly like grains jamming in the neck of an hourglass — and the arch holds until it collapses, releasing people in bursts. The harder the crowd pushes, the stronger the arch, and the more slowly the exit empties.

Lecturer:This leads to some wonderfully counterintuitive fixes. Placing a column a couple of metres in front of an exit — an obstacle, quite deliberately — can actually raise the flow rate, because it breaks up the pressure before it reaches the doorway. And in most cases the layout matters more than sheer width: escape routes must never narrow suddenly, because it is precisely at bottlenecks that arches form and pressure builds.

Lecturer:Prevention, though, tends to beat geometry. Modern stadiums now monitor density in real time, using cameras linked to software that flags dangerous build-ups minutes before they become critical. And the simplest tool of all is timing: clubs increasingly flatten the evening peak by staggering arrivals — opening the gates early, scheduling entertainment before kick-off — so that the same number of people pass through the same gates over a much longer period.

Lecturer:Next week we'll ask how far these models transfer, or fail to transfer, to the emergency evacuation of high-rise buildings.