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IELTS Listening — Practice Test 12

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Section 1 A caller registers for a charity fun run · 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

2Contact number: 0781 446 ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

3Distance entered: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

4T-shirt size: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

5Start time of all races: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

6Entry fee for this distance: £ ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

7Registration and bag drop: at the ______

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 entrants pay for their place?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

9Where should runners park on race day?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

10What must runners show when collecting their race number?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

Section 2 The director introduces a newly opened arts centre · Director

Questions 11-13

Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.

11What was the building originally used for?

A storing grain B storing wool C repairing river barges

12What is happening to the photography exhibition?

A It will run longer than planned. B It is moving to a different room. C It will close at the end of August.

13What benefit do members of the centre receive?

A free parking on event days B discounts on concert tickets C invitations to exhibition previews

Questions 14-17

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

Plan of the Granary Arts Centre — you enter through the main entrance into the foyer; a corridor runs straight ahead, away from the entrance, and the river is at the far end of the building.

A = to the left of the main entrance, beside the box office B = at the far end of the ground-floor corridor, overlooking the river C = on the first floor, directly above the entrance D = in the basement, at the bottom of the spiral stairs E = across the courtyard, in the old stables F = on the first floor, next to the lift

A to the left of the main entrance, beside the box office
B at the far end of the ground-floor corridor, overlooking the river
C on the first floor, directly above the entrance
D in the basement, at the bottom of the spiral stairs
E across the courtyard, in the old stables
F on the first floor, next to the lift

14Shop

15Café

16Main gallery

17Studio theatre

Questions 18-20

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

18This week's weaving workshop will now take place in the ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

19The lift cannot be used until ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

20Tickets for Saturday's opening concert cost £ ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

Section 4 A lecture on why languages disappear · Lecturer

Questions 31-40

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

31A language effectively dies when children stop learning it at home — a break in ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

32Parents usually switch languages because the dominant one carries greater ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

33In the twentieth century, many children were punished for using their home language in the ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

34The press most commonly blames ______ for the loss of small languages.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

35Some of the fastest declines happened in villages that had no ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

36The strongest driver of language shift is families moving to cities for ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

37In cities, a language can shrink to being spoken only by the ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

38Documentation involves recordings, a grammar and a ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

39Māori preschools staffed by elders became known as language ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

40The Welsh example shows that a long decline can be ______.

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 registers for a charity fun run

Organiser:Good afternoon, Harefield Fun Run entries, this is Grace speaking.

Caller:Oh, hi. I'd like to register for the run in May, please — I saw the poster in the library.

Organiser:Lovely. Can I take your full name?

Caller:Yes, it's Anna Leyburn.

Organiser:Leyburn... is that L-A-Y-B-U-R-N?

Caller:Not quite — it's L-E-Y, then B-U-R-N. It's a village in Yorkshire, actually.

Organiser:L-E-Y-B-U-R-N, thank you. And a contact number, in case anything changes on the day?

Caller:It's oh-seven-eight-one, four-four-six, nine-six-three. Hang on — sorry, that's wrong, I always mix up the last bit. It ends nine-five-three, not nine-six-three.

Organiser:So that's oh-seven-eight-one, four-four-six, nine-five-three?

Caller:That's it, yes.

Organiser:Now, we've got three distances this year: a two-K family walk, the five-K, and the ten-K road race. Which would you like?

Caller:My sister's doing the five-K and she keeps saying I should run with her... but honestly, I've been training all winter, so I'll go for the ten-K.

Organiser:Ten-K it is. Every runner gets a t-shirt with their entry — what size shall I put down?

Caller:I normally wear a small, but running tops always come up tight, so put me down for a medium, please.

Organiser:Medium, done. Now, one important thing: the start time. The leaflets and the posters all say half past nine, but the council wants the roads closed for a shorter period this year, so all three races now start at ten.

Caller:Ten o'clock — actually that suits me better. And what's the entry fee for the ten-K?

Organiser:That's fifteen pounds — oh, wait, forgive me, I'm looking at last year's sheet. The fees went up in January, so it's eighteen pounds now. That does include a three-pound donation to the hospice on Mill Lane, which the run supports.

Caller:Eighteen pounds, that's fine — it's for a good cause. Where do we register on the day?

Organiser:At the sports pavilion, on the edge of the park. That's also where the bag drop is, so you can leave your things there while you run.

Caller:The sports pavilion, great. Can I pay you over the phone now?

Organiser:I'm afraid not — we stopped taking card payments by phone this year, too many mistakes. Everything's done online now, through the run's website, and your place isn't confirmed until the payment goes through.

Caller:Online, no problem, I'll do it tonight. Is there anywhere to park nearby?

Organiser:The park gates are shut to traffic on race day, so please use the primary school on Weston Road — it's two minutes from the start, and marshals will be there to direct you.

Caller:The primary school, lovely. Anything I need to bring with me?

Organiser:Just your booking reference. Show it at the pavilion and they'll hand you your race number and your timing chip. The reference is emailed to you as soon as you've paid.

Caller:My booking reference, got it. Thanks so much, Grace.

Organiser:Thank you, Anna — and good luck with the ten-K!

Section 2 — The director introduces a newly opened arts centre

Director:Hello everyone, and thank you for coming along to our very first open day. I'm Karen Doyle, the director here at the Granary Arts Centre, and before you wander off and explore, let me tell you a little about the building and what's on this month.

Director:First, the building itself. People look at the thick stone walls and the old loading doors and assume this place was a wool warehouse — we're in sheep country, after all. In fact it never stored wool at all. It was built in the eighteen-forties to hold grain, which came up the river by barge and was winched into the upper floors. It then stood empty for thirty years before the arts trust took it over.

Director:Now, let me orient you, because the layout does confuse people on a first visit. You've come in through the main entrance, and you're standing in the foyer. Immediately to your left, beside the box office, is the shop. It sells prints and cards by the artists we exhibit, so do have a browse on your way out.

Director:From the foyer, a corridor runs straight ahead, away from the entrance. Walk all the way down it, and right at the end you'll come to the café. It has big windows looking out over the river, and I'd say it's the best view in the building.

Director:The main gallery is on the first floor, directly above the entrance — take the staircase on your right and you'll walk straight into it. That's where our opening exhibition is: a hundred years of local photography. We had planned to close that show at the end of August, but bookings have been so strong that we're keeping it up until the end of September, so you have more time than the printed programme suggests.

Director:Below us, at the bottom of the spiral stairs in the basement, is the studio theatre. It seats ninety, and from October it will be showing films every Wednesday evening.

Director:One apology while we're on the theatre. The architect's talk this evening was supposed to take place down there, but the seating hasn't been delivered yet, so the talk will happen in the main gallery instead, at six o'clock, among the photographs — which is rather fitting, really.

Director:Across the courtyard, in the old stables, we've set up a room for children's activities — messy painting, clay, that sort of thing, every Saturday morning. And a second change of plan: this week's weaving workshop, which was advertised for the studio theatre, has been moved as well. It will now run in the stables, tomorrow at two o'clock, and there are still a few places left.

Director:A couple of practical notes. The lift is being repaired — the engineers can't come until Thursday, so I'm afraid it's out of use until Friday. If stairs are difficult for you, please ask a member of staff.

Director:Finally, tickets and membership. The opening concert on Saturday costs twelve pounds, and I should be clear that members pay the same — being a member doesn't get you money off, I'm afraid. What it does get you is an invitation to a preview evening before each new exhibition opens, plus our monthly newsletter. Membership forms are at the box office. Right — enjoy your visit.

Section 3 — Two students and their tutor plan a chemistry poster presentation

Dr Hartman:Right, you two — the poster session is a fortnight away. How is the vitamin C project shaping up?

Mia:The data's all in. We measured how storage affects the vitamin C in orange juice — in the fridge, at room temperature, and in direct sunlight, over ten days.

Ben:And the headline is that temperature mattered far more than light. Everyone told us sunlight would destroy it fastest, but the juice on the sunny windowsill did no worse than the juice at room temperature — heat was the real culprit.

Dr Hartman:That's a nice, arguable finding. So what actually goes on the poster?

Ben:Well, I've drafted a layout with all twelve graphs — one per condition per batch. I think it shows how thorough we were.

Mia:And I keep telling you it looks like wallpaper. Nobody at a poster session reads twelve graphs. I think we show three — one curve per storage condition — and put the rest in a handout.

Ben:But then people might think we're hiding the messy data...

Dr Hartman:Can I put a question to you, Ben? At a poster session, how far away is your reader standing? A metre, at least. Twelve small charts will simply be unreadable at that distance.

Ben:Hmm. All right, that's fair — three big graphs, and I'll print the full set as a handout. Fine.

Dr Hartman:Good. And the method section — please don't write it as paragraphs of text.

Mia:We weren't planning to. My idea is a flow diagram — sample, titrate, record, repeat — five boxes running across the bottom, so people can follow the whole method in ten seconds.

Dr Hartman:Perfect. And keep every bit of text at twenty-eight point or larger — anything smaller just vanishes at a metre. Now, remind me of the actual numbers.

Mia:Fresh juice started at about sixty milligrams per hundred millilitres — sorry, no, I'm thinking of the fortified carton we compared. Ours started at fifty. And after ten days in the warm it had lost nearly half of that.

Dr Hartman:Fifty, dropping by half — put those two figures in a very large font in your results box. Numbers like that stop people walking past. Now, printing. Have you booked the department plotter?

Ben:That's the problem. I'd assumed it was broken, because there's a sign on it — but the technician says it's working fine; it's just fully booked until after our deadline. Every group had the same idea.

Dr Hartman:Then use the library print service instead. They print A0 overnight, and honestly the colour quality is better than our plotter's.

Mia:A0 — that's the size the session requires anyway, isn't it?

Dr Hartman:It is. The library charges fifteen pounds, which you can split between you. They only accept PDF files, mind.

Ben:I can deal with that — I'll convert the file and send it over to them on Monday.

Dr Hartman:One more thing. My checking session with you — I'd said Friday at two, but I've been called into a faculty meeting, so I'm moving it to Thursday, same time. Bring a draft printed on A4 and we'll mark it up together.

Mia:Thursday at two — in the lab?

Dr Hartman:In my office. And do think about your title. Make it a question — something like 'Does sunlight really destroy vitamin C?' People stop to answer a question; they walk straight past a statement.

Section 4 — A lecture on why languages disappear

Lecturer:Of the roughly seven thousand languages spoken in the world today, linguists expect somewhere near half to fall silent within a century. Today I want to ask why that happens — and what, if anything, can reverse it.

Lecturer:The first thing to understand is that a language doesn't die when its last speaker dies. It dies a generation earlier, at the moment children stop learning it at home. Linguists call this a break in transmission, and it is the single event that every case of language death has in common. Once transmission stops, the rest is simply waiting.

Lecturer:So why do parents stop passing on a language they themselves speak fluently? Almost never because they are forced to, and almost never overnight. The commonest reason is prestige. When one language opens doors — to jobs, to the courts, to the universities — and the other is treated as a badge of poverty, parents make a painful calculation on their children's behalf.

Lecturer:Schooling sharpened that calculation. For much of the twentieth century, schools on several continents punished children for speaking their home language in the classroom — sometimes physically. What children absorbed wasn't just a second language; it was the idea that their first one was something to grow out of.

Lecturer:Now, the explanation you will hear most often in the press is a different one. Television — and these days the internet — supposedly pours the dominant language into every home and simply washes the small language away. It's a tidy story, but the evidence is against it. Surveys in the Pacific and in South America found that some of the fastest declines happened in villages with no electricity at all, while some communities with satellite dishes on every roof held their language firmly. Broadcasting changes what people watch; it does not decide what they speak to their babies.

Lecturer:What does decide it, again and again, is movement — families migrating to cities for work. In a city, the home language loses its village: its ceremonies, its market days, its gossip. Within a single generation it can shrink to a language of grandparents, spoken to children only in fragments at holidays.

Lecturer:Can anything be done? Here we need to separate two responses that are constantly confused. Documentation is the scientific rescue: recording the remaining speakers, writing a grammar, compiling a dictionary. It is essential work — but a language stored in an archive is preserved, not alive. Documentation, on its own, produces no new speakers.

Lecturer:Revitalisation is the harder and rarer thing. The best-known model comes from New Zealand, where Māori communities built preschools staffed entirely by elders, so that toddlers heard nothing but Māori all day — the famous language nests. Hawaii copied the model; so, in a different form, did Wales. And Welsh is the case worth remembering: after a century of decline, the number of young speakers has stabilised, and in some districts it has actually grown. The decline, in other words, can be reversed — not easily, not everywhere, and usually only partly. But it is not a law of nature.

Lecturer:Next week we'll ask what exactly is lost when a language goes — and why a dictionary captures far less of it than you might hope.