Modelo 5 – Listening

LanguageCert C1 Listening Model 5 audioscript

Part 1: 

Number one:

• Hi,  Max any plans for this summer yet?

• Yes, I’m going to help out on a farm, actually, my dad had the idea. A friend of his owns one and he’s struggling to get everything done.

Number two:

• I’ll be back by 11:00 p.m. I promise.

• No, that’s too late you’ll have to come back earlier. It’s a school night.

• But you know there aren’t any other buses!

Number three:

• I thought you said your aunt was coming to live near you.

• Well, she’s looking at a flat in an apartment complex near us but she’ll only move on condition that she sells her house in the country first.

Number four: 

• Do you want to go to the gym again this evening? 

• But we’ve already been twice this week I know we want to get fit but we don’t have to go every day.

• It’s just that I like seeing other friends from school in the gym is the perfect place for that.

Number five: 

• So, what was the party like? 

• Oh I wish you’d been there Jess we all dressed up as zombies.

• If I’d had a life there, I would have come.

Number six: 

• Look at these photos from Sunday, we look really funny.

• Well if it hadn’t been freezing cold, our noses wouldn’t have turned bright red.

Part 2

Conversation one: 

A: Okay, Shall We Begin?

B: Yes, we could start with childhood what’s really important to young kids is their friends don’t you think?

A: I suppose so, although maybe not so much if they have brothers and siblings to play with.

B: That’s true and they are still quite close to their parents at this age maybe friends are more important when you’re teenagers then.

A: Definitely, especially if you’re quite shy, that’s why they message each other a lot and go on Snapchat and so on. But what you need to have at that age as well, is friends to go out with.

B: Yes, and as well as that to give you confidence because at that age it can be difficult when you’re older between 19 and 20, maybe, they’re not so…

A: Actually… Oh, sorry.

B: No, that’s ok, go on.

A: I was just going to say that at college friends are very important too, otherwise you’d be very lonely.

B: It must also be lonely for adults if they are living on their own so it’s really important to have friends at work if you don’t have a family, don’t you think? 

A: Yes, like you said it must be lonely when you leave college and get a job in a new city or maybe in another country.

Conversation two:

B: So, Sofia, now you’ve finished the course, where do you see yourself headed? 

S: Well, I’ve learned a lot of useful techniques for giving presentations. So ideally, I’d like to put this to good use by giving a presentation in English. I was actually hoping to be able to present our annual report to shareholders in the spring. I mean, with what I’ve learned, I think this goal should be easily attainable. 

B: It’s funny you should say that. We were actually hoping you’d be willing to do so. 

S: Really? Oh, that’s great. 

B: So, what else would you like to achieve? 

S: In the short term, I’d obviously like to keep up my English studies, but I’d also like to seek ways to put into practice what I learn. 

B: Like how? 

S: Well, it would be great if I could make some trips abroad to meet clients and promote our products, for example. 

B: OK, well we’ll have to have a think about that. 

S: And in the longer term, with this experience under my belt, I guess my ultimate goal is to get a promotion. 

B: Whoa … 

S: I’m not thinking anywhere in the near future, of course. B: OK, well let’s see how you go in the meantime.

Conversation three:

A: Did you see that thing in the paper about the couple who took their local cricket club to court? 

B: No. What was that? 

A: Oh, there was this couple who lived next door to a cricket pitch and every now and then a ball from a game would end up in their garden or hit their roof or whatever. . . 

B: That must get quite annoying. 

A: Yeah, but it was only a few times a year, and the club offered to pay for any damage, so … 

B: It could still be dangerous, though, like if it hit you on the head … 

A: I guess, but that never happened. Anyway, they wanted to try and force the club to stop playing cricket there, even though that had been going on for years and years before they even moved in. 

B: That’s a pretty extreme demand. So what happened in the end? 

A: Oh, it sounds like the judge just threw it out of court, which makes perfect sense. I mean, they must’ve known they’d be living near a cricket pitch when they moved there, you know. 

B: Yeah. Fair enough. Does that mean that residents shouldn’t be able to complain about the noise from bars or clubs if they move into a lively area? 

A: I guess so. Do you think that’s a good thing? 

B: Absolutely. If you want to live close to where the action is, you have to expect some noise. 

Part 3:

I know you’d like me to talk about success, but I decided it might be more useful for you if I talked about some of the biggest failures of my life, and what I learned from them. And, believe me, I’ve experienced many failures over the years. 

For a start, I once got fired from my job for being incompetent and disorganised, which was pretty devastating, as you can imagine. In fact, it had such a huge and lasting impact on me that I can honestly say, if I hadn’t lost the job all those years ago, I don’t think I’d be where I am now. 

Let me explain. It was a weekend job in a really fashionable clothes shop, back when I was still a student. Now I was really excited about landing that job – in those days, if you had a job in a clothes shop, you were the coolest of the cool, so all my friends were really jealous. On my first day, I was told to look after the menswear section – which basically meant folding up the clothes, hanging things up after customers had tried them on and replacing any stock that was getting low. And, well, I got into the folding side of things and spent the whole morning folding a huge display of jumpers. Unfortunately, customers kept coming along and rummaging through them, making them messy again, so it was a neverending battle to keep the display looking perfect. I remember thinking that shop work would be so much easier if it weren’t for all the customers! You see, I’ve always been a bit of a perfectionist, which is usually a good thing. After all, if I weren’t such a perfectionist, I wouldn’t have done so well in my career over the years. 

But what I learned from that experience is the importance of keeping the big picture in mind. Doing the task you’ve been set, but not at the expense of everything else. Anyway, after about three hours, my manager called me over for a ‘quiet chat’. Apparently, I’d been focusing so much on the jumper display that I’d neglected the rest of my department, which was in a terrible state, with empty shelves and boxes everywhere. In fact, I think I would have been fired on the spot if my colleagues hadn’t pleaded with the manager to give me another chance. As it was, I managed to hang on for a month, but things didn’t get any better. 

Finally, my manager called me into his office to tell me that I’d reached the end of my fourweek trial period, and that they’d decided not to offer me a permanent position. I hadn’t even known it was a trial period! I’d just kind of assumed I’d have the job for as long as I wanted it. I was absolutely devastated at the time to be told I wasn’t good enough! But, from that point on, I’ve never taken anything for granted. I started believing that I’d be fired again from every other job, and that motivated me to work my socks off to avoid a repeat of that first experience. I mean, if I were to lose another job, I’d be absolutely mortified. 

So looking back, it was actually the most important experience of my life. It taught me the importance of keeping my eye on the bigger picture. And now, as I say, I’ve had a fair amount of success in business. But it’s all thanks to being the world’s worst shop assistant all those years ago. Who knows: if I hadn’t been so terrible, I wouldn’t have been sacked and I might still be working there today! 

Part 4:

T: Oh, hi, Chloe. How was your weekend? 

C: Great, thanks, Trevor. We went to Greymarsh. It’s a small village about forty kilometres from here, as the crow flies. 

T: Greymarsh? Why did you go there? 

C: Because we’d never been there before. We often do that – we spread a big map on the floor and drop a coin on it. Wherever the coin lands, that’s where we have to go – although we steer clear of anywhere we’ve been before. We call it the coin-drop challenge. 

T: That’s crazy! Don’t you end up in some weird places? 

C: Yeah, of course. But it’s a great way of getting away from it all and exploring the local area. And it beats following the herd to overcrowded tourist attractions. 

T: Right. So what can you do in Greymarsh? 

C: Well, it’s on the edge of a huge marsh, as the name suggests, so it’s a haven for wildlife. We did some bird watching and later we climbed to the top of a big hill to admire the views. The trick is to go with your gut and do whatever feels right, rather than planning everything in advance. 

T: Hmmm. I love the great outdoors too, but it seems like a long way to go just to look at some birds and climb a hill. 

C: Ah, but that’s the whole point. It’s all about the journey, not the destination. We always take the scenic route, even if it’s twice as far as the direct route. You should give it a go.

T: I’m not sure. For one thing, I don’t have a car. 

C: That’s OK. We often do it by bike. Or there’s a similar technique you can use on public transport, actually. We call it the bus-stop randomiser. You take the first bus out of town, no matter where it’s going. Then you get off in the first town or village, and have a wander round. When you’re ready to move on, you go back to the bus stop and take the next bus that comes along. And you keep doing that three or four times, until you end up in the middle of nowhere. It’s brilliant! 

T: It sounds terrifying to me. I mean, how can you be sure you’ll get home before dark? What if you miss the last bus? 

C: Well, that’s certainly a risk, but we treat it as part of the adventure, like a race against time. But I admit it can be quite a stressful experience at times. We once got stuck in the back of beyond with no food, no money and no phone signal, which wasn’t much fun. We ended up flagging down a passing motorist who gave us a lift back to town. So it definitely pays to be prepared for the unexpected. You could always take a tent with you so you can camp out in a nearby forest if necessary. 

T: Yeah, I suppose so… But I guess it’s less stressful when you’ve got a car. Maybe I’ll try your coin-drop challenge, if I can find somebody to ferry me around in their car! 

C: Hey, why don’t you come with us this weekend? 

T: OK. That’d be awesome. What’s the plan? 

C: We’re going to play our ‘coin-flip’ game. Basically, you head out of town and flip a coin every time you need to decide whether to turn left or right. You end up in some pretty out-of-the-way places but it’s a great way of exploring. We sometimes play a version where we spend the morning getting completely lost, and then the afternoon trying to retrace our steps and find our way back home again – without GPS, of course – unless we totally lose our bearings, in which case we’re allowed to use our phones to get home. 

T: You’re crazy! 

C: It’s fine, as long as you’re prepared for any situation. For example, making sure you’ve got some cash or a bit of chocolate to keep your energy up… 

T: OK, so let’s make a list of all the things that could possibly go wrong.