Modelo examen 2 – Listening

LanguageCert C1 Listening Model 2 audioscript

Part 1: 

Number one: 

– Excuse me, I was just wondering where you bought that. 

– This sandwich? just down the road at the cafe.

Number two: 

– why did you buy that? 

– This hat? I thought it looked good. 

Number three: 

– …Things alright? 

– Yeah, not bad. You know, I’m snowed under as always. 

Number four: 

– How was your weekend? 

– Well… nothing special really. I went to see a film on Saturday but I could barely concentrate on it. 

Number five: 

– I could really do with something to eat. 

– Hey, do you remember that time you were starving in Texas and you ordered the chef special? 

Number six: 

– Have you seen what he’s got on today? 

– Who? 

– My boss 

– What’s he wearing? 

– Skinny jeans and trainers! 

Part 2

Conversation 1: 

– So what do you do when you’re not working 

– Not that much to be honest. The usual, TV, films, I read a bit, but not as much as I should I guess. Oh! And I recently started going to a karate class A couple of times a week. 

– Really?

– Is that just to keep fit or so you can defend yourself or what? 

– Oh, it’s definitely more to keep fit than for self-defense but what’s good about it is it’s more than just keep fit, you know. 

– Sure. 

– And I have to say I really really love the shouting! 

– Yeah? You don’t seem a very shouty kind of person. 

– I’m not, but what I found is it’s just a great way to get rid of all those frustrations from work. 

– Yeah, I can see how that would work. 

– You’ve never fancied doing something like that yourself? 

– I did actually go to a judo class for a bit when I was at Uni but I didn’t take to it. – No? 

– No, I think what put me off was the pain every time I went I seem to hurt myself. 

Conversation 2: 

– What are you doing at the weekend? 

– We’re going camping! 

– Okay. Do you do that a lot? 

– Yeah! whenever I can. 

– Really? 

– Yeah. Why, are you not a fan? 

– No! I like hiking but what I don’t understand is how anyone gets enjoyment from sleeping uncomfortably in a field. 

– It’s just being close to Nature that I love. Honestly, nothing beats waking up and stepping out of your tent into that fresh morning air with the mountains right there.

– Can’t you get that from a hotel balcony? 

– No, it’s not the same you don’t have that smell of the damped grass. 

– Exactly! Damp, cold, miserable! 

– No, it’s nice and the other thing I love is how friendly people, are campers are just very nice people. 

– If you say so… but I’m not convinced. 

Conversation 3: 

– Host: Ladies and gentlemen welcome to karaoke nights I’m looking for brave volunteers to get the ball rolling anybody come on you know you want to! 

– Jessica: What do you think, Ricky should we go for it? 

– Ricky: You must be joking! I can never sing in front of a crowd of strangers. I’ll be a bag of nerves. 

– Jessica: Well it’s not exactly a crowd there were only a handful of people and they’ll probably all be having the same conversation as us right now, over whether to sing or not. Are you worried about singing out of tune? 

– Ricky: No, I’m actually quite a good singer when I’m alone in the car I’ll happily sing along to the radio but the thought of performing in public makes me go hot and cold.

– Jessica: Well, there’s a trick you can use I use it all the time. Whenever I’m feeling anxious I’ll say to myself so is there nothing you’re afraid of I’ll say to myself again and again: “I’m excited!”. 

– Ricky: And that works? I’ll have to try that. So, is there nothing you’re afraid of? – Jessica: Well… there is one thing… 

Part 3: 

Hello. I’m Alaistair Vesten and welcome to my podcast, Vesten Investigates. This week’s episode is all about students who sue their university. Don’t forget to subscribe, like and share. 

You’ve probably read in the paper recently that the number of students in the UK has doubled over the last 20 years. That’s all good news but with so many more students in education, the chances of things going wrong in a small number of cases has also increased. Take the case of the student who sued his university when he failed an assignment. The student in question got just seventeen marks out of a possible one hundred for the project. Not satisfied with this, he asked for it to be re-marked. It was and his grade was revised upwards to… eighteen out of one hundred. The student, however, was nothing if not persistent and so he took the university to court, claiming that the university broke their own guidelines by having the same examiner re-mark the assignment. The student asked the judge to declare the project a pass. 

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the judge ruled in favour of the university and advised the student to accept the situation and move on with his life. We can only hope that the student in question takes this advice and doesn’t appeal against the verdict! But while this story may be amusing, it does point to the fact that studying at university is expensive and only getting more so. In the US the cost of a university education has increased eight times faster than wages over the last 30 years and of course student expectations have risen accordingly. Students increasingly see university as a service and themselves as customers. 

This has led to some students taking their university to court when they felt that the university has, as the legal term goes, broken the terms of the agreement. Take the graduate who, eleven years after taking his finals, sued his university because he didn’t get a first. In case you don’t know the British degree classification system, a first is short for a ‘first-class honours’ and is the highest class of degree that you can get. The student claimed that failing to get a first had cost him a career as a high-flying lawyer and for this reason he wanted one million pounds compensation. The reason for not getting a first, according to the student, was that the university had failed to teach him adequately. The university denied all charges and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the judge ruled against the student. However, when you consider that the number of students getting a first class degree has tripled over the last thirty years, it’s possible to argue that for ambitious students, failure to get a first can change their lives. So when this particular student claimed that failure to get a first had ruined his life, he may not have been joking. What he failed to show was that it was the university’s fault rather than his own.

New data underlines the importance of a good degree in career terms. The average salary for UK graduates is one and a half times higher than for non-graduates. What, though, if you graduate and find that you still can’t get the job and the salary that you wanted? One student sued her university for fifty thousand pounds because she claimed that, having graduated, the degree had not helped her career as much as she had been led to believe, and this was despite the fact that she got a first. She claimed that she chose the course on the basis of the claims in the university’s brochure but that the university misrepresented the value of the degree to her career and that in fact it was worth much less than she had paid for it. Once again, the student lost her case but she did highlight the importance for all students of doing research before making a final decision on a course. Let’s not forget, studying is expensive and time consuming. 

The average UK student leaves university with debts of over fifty thousand pounds – most students will still be repaying those debts in their 50s. Three quarters of graduates will never pay off their debts. It’s only natural then that students demand the highest standards and value for money from their university. 

Perhaps it’s also natural that when things don’t go to plan, we all look for someone else to blame. The story of these students is a warning to all that it may be harder to prove than you think. 

That’s all for now. Join me next week as I investigate another topic and don’t forget to subscribe, like, share and leave a comment. Ta-ta! 

Part 4: 

B: Welcome to The Culture Show. With me today is Davion Morrow, who’s here to talk about his new book Silver Screen Dystopias. Welcome to the show, Davion. 

D: Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here. 

B: So, why dystopias, Davion? 

D: As you well know, Bryony, there’s a strong dystopian tradition in both literature and movies, so it’s an interesting theme to explore. 

B: Why do you think dystopias are so popular? 

D: I think there are two main reasons for their popularity. The first of these is the way that they often predict the future in stunningly accurate ways. 

B: For example? 

D: Well, an early dystopian novel was The Machine Stops by E.M Forster, which was first published in 1909. It describes a future where humanity has lost the ability to live outside and so the population lives in isolation from each other underground. Communication with each other is carried out by a kind of instant messaging system and video conferencing. These messages are sent to people via ‘The Machine’, which monitors all communication. 

B: Wow, and this was back in 1909? 

D: Exactly. People have often been shocked by the remarkable accuracy of this prediction. A more recent example is the TV show: Black Mirror, which includes an episode called ‘Nosedive’ where people live within a kind of social credit system, where people earn points for good social behaviour. So for example, if you need to get anything done at work or at home, you need to have enough points. We’re already seeing this type of system in use in some parts of the world. In fact this brings me on to the second reason why I think dramas set in dystopias are so popular and that’s the fact that they usually tap into current social concerns. 

D: Concerns about technology, for example? 

B: Yes, but not just that. While a lot has been written about technology, totalitarian governments and impenetrable bureaucracy such as in Orwell’s 1984 or Franz Kafka’s The Trial, are also popular themes. This is often combined with the idea of constant surveillance and lack of privacy, a theme in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1921 novel «We», where people live in a world where all buildings are made of glass. These themes in turn are often combined with the idea of class inequality, as illustrated in the 2013 movie Elysium, where the rich live in luxury in space and the poor are forced to remain on the polluted Earth. In fact, this movie ties into many contemporary social issues such as immigration, overpopulation, health care, and so on. 

D: Interesting. Are there any other social issues that are commonly mirrored in dystopias? 

B: Well, yes. Two common issues are that of the environment, such as in Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? which takes place against the backdrop of an Earth ravaged by nuclear war. This was later loosely adapted into the hugely successful film Blade Runner, of course. 

D: And the other issue? 

B: That of robots and automation. An early example of this was Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel published in 1952, which describes a society which is completely mechanised, again creating class conflicts between the upper class and engineers, and the lower class, who have had their jobs taken from them by the machines. Again, this echoes many concerns of the day then and today. 

D: Fascinating, thank you Davion. Talking of films, we’ll finally see the release of your first feature film next year, after only ten years in the making – what’s taken you so long? 

B: It just couldn’t have been made any quicker, and I’ll tell you why…