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IELTS Listening — Practice Test 26

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Section 1 A caller arranges to hire a car for a holiday · Agent, Customer

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: 0794 883 ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

3Class of car: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

4Collection branch: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

5Collection time: ______

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

6Extra requested: ______ (£6 per day)

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.

8What must both drivers bring when collecting the car?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

9Where should the keys be left if the car is returned after closing time?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

10What must the car have when it is returned?

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

Section 2 An education officer welcomes visitors to an evening at an astronomical observatory · Guide

Questions 11-13

Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.

11What does the guide say about the observatory's origins?

A It was built to attract paying visitors. B It was established for university research. C It only began scientific work in 2005.

12What will visitors be able to observe through the telescope tonight?

A the Moon B Saturn C a comet

13What does the guide say about photography?

A It is not allowed anywhere after dark. B It is allowed everywhere except during the telescope session. C It is only permitted in the exhibition hall.

Questions 14-17

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

Plan of Harlow Hill Observatory — you are in the entrance courtyard on the west side of the site; the main path runs east up the slope.

A = directly behind the ticket office B = on the north side of the courtyard C = on the left of the main path, past the sundial D = at the far end of the main path, at the top of the slope E = beside the car park F = at the foot of the slope, right of the path

A directly behind the ticket office
B on the north side of the courtyard
C on the left of the main path, past the sundial
D at the far end of the main path, at the top of the slope
E beside the car park
F at the foot of the slope, right of the path

14Shop

15Planetarium

16Exhibition hall

17Main dome

Questions 18-20

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

18Because of cloud, the telescope session will now begin at ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

19Tonight the shop will stay open until ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

20Visitors who need a light can borrow a ______ from the desk.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER

Section 4 A lecture on salt marshes as natural coastal defences · Lecturer

Questions 31-40

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

31Salt marshes are flooded and drained twice daily by the ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

32The gradual weakening of waves crossing a marsh is called wave ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

33Plant stems and leaves create ______, which removes energy from the water.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

34Every flooding tide brings in ______, which the plants trap, raising the marsh surface.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

35Walls reflect wave energy, causing ______ at their base.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

36Unlike walls, marshes are ______ after storm damage.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

37Breaching old walls and moving defences inland is known as managed ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

38New marsh forms quickly only where the water supplies enough ______.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

39Carbon captured by coastal ecosystems is called ______ carbon.

NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS

40Where space is limited, engineers combine a marsh and a wall in ______ schemes.

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 arranges to hire a car for a holiday

Agent:Good afternoon, Hartfield Car Hire, Rachel speaking. What can I do for you?

Customer:Hi. I'm going to the Lake District at the end of the month and I'd like to hire a car for the trip. Can we set that up now?

Agent:Certainly. Let me open a booking. Could I take your surname first?

Customer:It's Deakin.

Agent:Is that D-E-E-K-I-N?

Customer:No, with an A — D-E-A-K-I-N. Everyone wants to spell it with a double E.

Agent:D-E-A-K-I-N, thank you. And a contact number?

Customer:My mobile. It's oh-seven-nine-four, double eight, three, then six-four-one... hang on, that's not right. It ends six-two-one, not six-four-one. So oh-seven-nine-four, eight-eight-three, six-two-one.

Agent:Zero seven nine four, eight eight three, six two one. Got it. Now, what sort of car were you after? We have three classes: a compact from thirty-eight pounds a day, a saloon at forty-four, and an estate at forty-eight.

Customer:We'll have camping gear and two big dogs, so the compact's out. I did wonder about the saloon... no, let's be sensible — the estate, please. The boot space will make all the difference.

Agent:An estate at forty-eight pounds a day. And for how many days?

Customer:Five days, collecting on Saturday the twenty-sixth.

Agent:Fine. And where would you like to collect it? Most customers use our airport branch.

Customer:The airport, ideally — it's nearest to me.

Agent:Ah — I'm afraid the airport office is closed for refurbishment until July. The nearest alternative is our City Road branch. It's about ten minutes further for you, but there's free customer parking while you do the paperwork.

Customer:City Road it is, then. Can I pick the car up at eight? We want an early start.

Agent:On Saturdays City Road doesn't open until half past eight, I'm afraid, so the earliest collection would be eight thirty.

Customer:Eight thirty, fine. We'll live with that.

Agent:Now, extras. Would you like satellite navigation with the car? That's six pounds a day.

Customer:No, thanks — I'll just use my phone for that. But my wife will share the driving, so we'll need her on the insurance.

Agent:An additional driver is also six pounds a day. So that's the estate at forty-eight, plus six for the extra driver — fifty-four a day, which comes to two hundred and seventy pounds for the five days.

Customer:Two hundred and seventy. OK. And what do we need to bring when we collect it?

Agent:Both of you must bring your driving licence — the photocard — and whoever paid should bring the card used for the booking. Without both licences we can't put your wife on the policy.

Customer:Understood. And if we get back late on the Thursday, after you've closed?

Agent:That's no problem at all. Park in the marked bay at the side of the building and drop the keys into the key safe beside the office door. We check the car over first thing the next morning.

Customer:The key safe by the door — right.

Agent:One last thing: the car goes out with a full tank, and you must return it with a full tank as well, otherwise we charge to refill it — and our fuel rates are steep, I'm afraid.

Customer:We'll fill up on the way back, then. Thanks very much for your help.

Agent:Thank you, Mr Deakin. We'll see you at City Road on the twenty-sixth.

Section 2 — An education officer welcomes visitors to an evening at an astronomical observatory

Guide:Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Harlow Hill Observatory. I'm Dana, one of the education officers here, and I'll be looking after you tonight.

Guide:A little history first. Visitors often assume the observatory was built as a public attraction, but that's not quite right. It was set up in 1926 as a research station for the university, and for nearly eighty years the only people allowed up here were the astronomers themselves. It wasn't until 2005 that we opened the doors to the public — and these evening sessions now pay for much of the research that still goes on.

Guide:Now, tonight's viewing. I know most of you are here for the main telescope, so what will you actually see? People always ask about the Moon — I'm sorry to say it doesn't rise until well after we close tonight. But Saturn is perfectly placed at the moment, high and steady, and through our telescope the rings alone are worth the trip. There's been talk of a comet online this week, but it has faded far below what even our instrument can show you, so Saturn is very much the star of the show.

Guide:While we're waiting for full darkness, let me point out where everything is. You're standing in the entrance courtyard, on the west side of the site, and the main path runs east from here up the slope.

Guide:The shop is the easiest to find — it's directly behind the ticket office where you came in, so you'll pass it again on your way out.

Guide:On the north side of the courtyard, that low round building is the planetarium. Shows start on the hour, they last twenty-five minutes, and a tip from me: the seats at the back recline the furthest.

Guide:If you take the main path east, just past the old sundial, the long single-storey building on your left is the exhibition hall. That's where the meteorite collection lives — and yes, you're allowed to touch the big one.

Guide:And right at the far end of the main path, at the top of the slope, you reach the main dome, which houses the telescope itself. It's a steady climb of about five minutes, so allow time.

Guide:A word about photography. It's fine everywhere on the site, including the exhibition hall — but not during the telescope session itself, because a phone screen is simply too bright inside the dome and it ruins everyone's night vision.

Guide:Now, some housekeeping — and one apology. There's a band of cloud sitting over the hill at the moment. The forecast says it will clear, but because of it we've had to push the telescope session back: it was due to start at a quarter to nine, and it will now begin at half past nine. Believe me, Saturn is worth the wait.

Guide:To make up for that, the shop is staying open later than usual tonight — until nine o'clock instead of eight — so you can browse while you wait.

Guide:And finally, please don't use white torches on the paths after dark. If you need a light, you can borrow a red torch from the desk, free of charge — just leave your name with whoever's on duty.

Guide:Right — planetarium on the hour, dome at nine thirty. Enjoy your evening, everyone.

Section 3 — Two students discuss their satellite remote-sensing presentation with their tutor

Dr Osei:Right, you two — your presentation on satellite remote sensing is in three weeks. Where have you got to?

Mia:Getting there. We've settled the focus: using satellite imagery to track deforestation, with the Amazon as the running example.

Tom:The big decision was the dataset. We looked hard at the commercial providers — the images are stunning, you can pick out individual trees — but the licences cost more than our whole project budget.

Mia:So we've gone with the Landsat archive instead. The resolution's coarser, but it's free, and the archive goes back to the seventies — which means we can actually show change across fifty years. For deforestation, the time span matters more than the detail.

Dr Osei:That's the right call, and say exactly that in the talk — examiners like to hear a trade-off justified. Now, you emailed me a draft map. Can I be blunt? You can't use that projection.

Tom:The Mercator? I picked it because everyone recognises it.

Dr Osei:That's exactly the problem — familiarity isn't accuracy. Mercator inflates areas away from the equator, making the tropics look relatively smaller than they really are. In a talk about tropical forest loss, it would visually understate the very thing you're measuring. Use an equal-area projection instead.

Tom:Fair enough. I hadn't thought of the projection distorting the message itself.

Mia:I'll redo the maps tonight. Now — the part we still disagree about. Tom wants to run the analysis live on screen: load a scene, run the classification, watch the forest loss appear.

Tom:Because it's far more engaging than slides. People remember it.

Mia:And if the wifi drops, or the processing server queues, we stand there for four minutes watching a spinning wheel. In a fifteen-minute slot.

Dr Osei:You've both got a point. Tom, keep the live demonstration — done well, it's memorable. But record a screencast of the entire sequence beforehand, so that if anything hangs, you switch straight to the recording and keep talking.

Tom:A safety net. Hmm... yes, all right, I can't argue with that.

Mia:Agreed, then. That was easier than I expected.

Dr Osei:One factual check while I remember it. Your draft says each Landsat pixel covers fifteen metres on the ground —

Mia:Fifteen — no, sorry, that's wrong, it's thirty. Thirty metres a side. Fifteen is only the sharpened panchromatic band. I'll fix the slide tonight as well.

Dr Osei:Good — an examiner will know the difference. What's still worrying you?

Tom:The opening. At the moment we start with a title slide and the dataset details, and it feels flat.

Dr Osei:Then don't start there. Open with your strongest image — the same valley photographed in 1985 and today, side by side — and hold the title back until after it. You have thirty seconds to make the room care; spend them on the picture.

Mia:I like that. We'll need to rehearse the timing properly, though.

Dr Osei:Book the seminar room for the run-through — the projector in there is the same model as in the presentation hall, so your colours won't surprise you. Oh, and one more thing — the Friday slot you were given. The joint-degree students have an exam that morning, so the office has swapped you with another group. You're now presenting on the Tuesday.

Tom:Tuesday? That's three days earlier!

Dr Osei:Which is why the rehearsal happens this week, not next. Same room as usual, nine o'clock sharp.

Section 4 — A lecture on salt marshes as natural coastal defences

Lecturer:Today we turn to coastal defence — and to the idea that the best sea wall we have may not be a wall at all, but a salt marsh.

Lecturer:A salt marsh is the strip of low, plant-covered land lying between dry land and open water, flooded and drained twice a day by the tides. Walk across one and it looks unremarkable — mud, grasses, winding creeks. To a coastal engineer, though, it is a machine for destroying wave energy.

Lecturer:The process has a name: wave attenuation — the progressive weakening of a wave as it travels across the marsh surface. The dense stems and leaves of marsh plants create friction, dragging energy out of the moving water with every metre the wave crosses. Field measurements on the Essex coast show waves losing much of their height across even a narrow fringe of marsh, so the water reaching any embankment behind is dramatically calmer.

Lecturer:Marshes have a second trick: they build themselves. Each flooding tide carries in a load of mud, and the plants slow the water just enough for it to settle. So as sea level climbs, a healthy marsh raises its own surface to keep pace. One qualification: it holds only where the rise is gradual and the supply keeps coming. A marsh can drown if the sea rises faster than it can build.

Lecturer:Now to the popular assumption I want to correct. Most people take it for granted that concrete is the stronger option — that a hard wall must always beat a soft marsh. In reality the two behave in opposite ways. A marsh absorbs wave energy; a vertical wall reflects it straight back into the sea, and that reflected turbulence scours the seabed at the foot of the structure, causing erosion precisely where the wall can least afford it. Over decades, hard defences quietly undermine themselves. And they need constant, expensive repair — whereas a marsh, after storm damage, is self-repairing: the plants regrow, the mud resettles, and no invoice ever arrives.

Lecturer:This is why several countries now practise what is known as managed realignment: engineers deliberately breach an old sea wall and move the line of defence inland, letting the tide flood low-value farmland and create new marsh in front of a new, much shorter wall. Whether that new marsh establishes quickly depends chiefly on one factor — an adequate supply of sediment in the local water. Where the water carries plenty, a functioning marsh can appear within a decade.

Lecturer:And there is a bonus quite apart from waves. Marsh soils are waterlogged and starved of oxygen, so dead plant material rots extremely slowly — the carbon it contains stays locked in the ground for centuries. Carbon captured by coastal ecosystems in this way is known as blue carbon, and hectare for hectare, salt marshes bury it faster than tropical rainforest does.

Lecturer:Let me be careful not to oversell this. A marsh needs space, and in front of a city there is none; nobody seriously proposes defending a container port with grass. Where land is short, the realistic option is what engineers call hybrid schemes: a marsh doing the daily work of calming the sea, with a modest wall behind it as the final line. The marsh takes the energy; the wall takes the exceptions.

Lecturer:Next week we look at mangroves — which do all of this, but with trees.