Modelo examen 10 – Listening

LanguageCert C1 Listening Model 10 audioscript

Part 1: 

Number one:

• What’s your book about, Matt? it looks unusual 

• Oh, it’s something the teacher suggested that we read it’s a graphic novel of Frankenstein. 

• Is it like a comic?

Number two:

• What are you doing this weekend? 

• I’m going to the dance Festival in the Park, it’s on all weekend.

• I’d really like to go but my brother’s moving house and I have to help him.  

Number three:

• So, how are you getting on with the report, Amy? 

• I’ve done most of it. 

• Remember to keep it brief, don’t write loads of detail. 

Number four: 

• Emma, what are you doing outside by yourself? aren’t you enjoying the party? 

• Not really, parties aren’t my thing.

• I know what you mean, but it’s nice to meet new people.

Number five: 

• Hi, Hannah speaking.

• Hey, Hannah, it’s Nasomi. Is Alex there with you? he’s not picking up and I need to talk to him.

• Hey, Nasomi. No, Alex’s just popped out.

Number six: 

• You know that book you borrowed? The one by Carlos Casada, it was a novel.

• Oh with red letters on the cover?

• That’s the one, could I have it back at some point soon? 

Part 2

Conversation one: 

A: Thanks Beatrice so, in short, you think that hiring a hotel for the party is going to be too expensive.

B: Yeah, I think so the prices can be quite high particularly in the center of town. 

A: Yeah, that’s a good point… hmm Casper what are your thoughts?

C: Well I did have one idea… 

B: But of course, there are hotels on the outskirts of town which are more reasonably priced… 

A: Let me interrupt you there, Beatrice. I want to give everyone a chance to speak and we haven’t heard from Casper yet. 

B: Sorry. 

C: Yeah, I was just saying that I have one idea which is to hold the party on a riverboat.

A/B/C: That’s an interesting idea.

C: There are a few to choose from and they hold about 50 people, which is enough for the party and the good thing is they aren’t too expensive. 

A: Nice idea. Casper, do you think you could research some prices for us and email that information to everyone? 

C: Sure.

A: And Beatrice, maybe you could see if there are any hotels that are within our budget?

B: Do you mean on the outskirts of town?

A: Preferably not, the town center would be better. 

B: Well as I said I don’t think there are any in the center of town that are within our budget. You see, the rent that hotels have to pay is really high and they’ve got the cost of all their staff too, my aunt and uncle used to run a hotel and…

A: I think we’re getting off topic, Beatrice. It’s interesting stuff but we’ve only got 15 minutes left and there are still a couple of items on the agenda. 

B: Sorry. 

A: No problem. 

Conversation two:

A: What does your mum do? 

B: She’s a physicist. 

A: Really? Wow! That’s impressive! 

B: Yeah. I guess. Although as far as I can tell, she spends most of her time in a lab doing the same thing over and over. 

A: What field of physics does she work in? 

B: It’s something to do with electricity. She has tried to explain it to me, but to be honest, it usually goes over my head. 

A: It’s not something you’ve ever been interested in doing? 

B: Yeah … no … oh, it’s tricky. I was kind of into science at school initially. I guess because of mum, but there came a point when my grades started falling. 

A: Despite having your mum there to help you? 

B: Yeah, well, that’s the thing. She did try! I just found her no good at explaining things. To be fair, I’m not exactly patient myself either and, you know, I’d get frustrated and it’d often end up in an argument so it became something we just avoided and I guess that’s why I went down a different track. 

A: Shame. 

B: Plus, there were other subjects I was just better at. 

A: Was that a bit of a disappointment to her then? 

B: Ach! I guess there is a small part of her that’s a bit sad. She used to make the odd comment, but you know, it wasn’t something she went on about. In the end, she’s more concerned that I find something I’m happy with. She is my mum after all! 

A: And have you? 

B: Let’s just say it’s a work in progress.

Conversation three:

A: So, I guess I obviously all my parents a real debt of gratitude as they’ve influenced me in all sorts of different ways, but probably the thing that’s impacted me the most is music. Actually, my mum plays a violin in the piano so I guess that may account for my lifelong obsession with music. 

B: So, it doesn’t that make your parents the biggest influence? 

A: I suppose but she was really into classical music and at 13 or 14 all I was listening to and playing was Thrash and Metal. 

B: Right, so you were rebelling against your mum. 

A: Maybe, a bit. I think it was more away for me to stand out in the crowd because they weren’t that many kids at my age into that stuff the people were just a bit older than me 14 15, you know. 

B: Your mum didn’t worry about that? 

A: No, she was happy if I was happy, she was only bothered if things got out of control in the concert I went to.

B: Did they?

A: There were a couple of incidents that were a bit scary, but I think that also helped me stand on my own two feet a bit more, becomen a bit more independent.

B: So, do you think music has been more influential than your education?

A: Yeah, because I went to University later than most. Music basically was my education, lots of lyrics feel more relevant to me than half of what I learned at school and that’s what led me into involvement in politics, which I’d say is the next biggest influence. 

B: What about fashion? I have to say I wouldn’t have guessed that you into Thrash Metal.

A: No, that was never a big thing for me I mean, back in the day I did dress a bit that way but it wasn’t at all important, it was always first the music, the politics and then all the friendships that I made as a result of liking those things.

B: Right, but you put your friends after the music.

A: Yeah, because they became my friends as a result of the music.

Part 3:

What we found is that the problem is not our restaurants. The problem, to be completely honest, is our customers! Let me explain why. Firstly, let’s look at that fall in customer satisfaction. As you can see from my first slide, it’s been a slow but steady fall. 

Customers nowadays are more likely to complain, more likely to post a negative review and more likely to give a restaurant a lower satisfaction rating. Now, you could argue that this is because customers expect more, however our research showed that something else was going on. 

Our first discovery was that diners are taking longer to eat their meal. As this visual shows, in 2004 a typical meal took one hour and five minutes, while today it takes almost two hours. That’s a rise of 75 percent. Why is this, do you think? Well, the first reason is that it takes a lot longer for customers to order their food. As you can see, back in 2004 customers took on average eight minutes to order their meal while now customers take on average 21 minutes. That’s two and half times as long. The reason for this is that the first thing customers do when they sit down is look at their mobile phones. Then they ask for the wifi code or sometimes, as more than half of our diners did, they ask the waiter or waitress to take a group photo of them. All of this takes a long time and as a result, when the waiter comes to take their order, they often haven’t even looked at the menu yet. 

It’s also interesting to note that the number of people who ask for a different table has risen slightly. This visual illustrates that point. Back in 2004 it was around six percent of diners, whereas now it’s closer to nine percent. The reason seems to be that people nowadays are less likely to accept second best. If they see a better table with a better view, they want it! We’ve also seen a sharp rise in the number of people who send their food back. As this chart illustrates, in the past only around one in twenty-five diners sent their food back, while now that figure is closer to one in five. That’s a huge increase and it’s expensive for restaurants and again, the reason for the increase is the mobile phone. Diners now tend to either continue looking at their phones when their food arrives or they spend up to three minutes taking pictures of their food to post on social media. As a result, the food goes cold and the customer sends it back. 

Now, take a look at this next slide. It shows that the time between finishing the meal and leaving the restaurant has risen dramatically. Customers now take three times as long as they did in 2004. Again, this seems to be because they are busy with their mobile phones. Obviously, it’s extremely difficult to say to a customer, ‘Can you stop looking at your phone’, but at the same time our research points to one conclusion. 

Customer satisfaction is falling because customers are making themselves unhappy, and it’s highly likely that they’re making themselves unhappy because they’re spending time on their mobile phone rather than enjoying the experience of being in a restaurant. In fact, a few restaurants have even started asking customers to hand in their phones when they enter the restaurant. 

So, let me tell you about how we have tried to tackle this problem and improve customer satisfaction…

Part 4:

T: Dr. Morris, thanks for lending me that book on eccentricity, I really enjoyed it, especially that bit about Oscar Wilde taking a lobster on a lead for walks and that American Indian guy who spends his life walking backwards. Oh! and of course, we all know nowadays from new research that this sort of behavior has nothing in common with what used to be called “lunacy” but it was a bit of an eye-opener that eccentrics are renowned for their longevity. The book reckons that eccentrics don’t repress their inner nature and therefore suffer less stress.

M: That’s right, Terry. They are happier as a result, and their immune systems work more efficiently. Anyway, what I’ve always believed is that human behavior ranges from absolute conformity, at the normal end of the spectrum, to utterly bizarre non-conformity at the opposite end. Though exactly how much deviation from the norm it takes to qualify as a true eccentric is a bit of a vexed point.

T: So, actually we are all eccentrics to a greater or lesser extent?

M: That seems to be right. The question of what is normality is pretty personal we have all had the experience of talking with a friend who tells us that he is just met someone with the most bizarre or risqué habit only to hear him describe something with which ourselves routinely do or might wish to do. 

T: I enjoyed the chapter on innovation in the book, eccentrics seem to be able to see problems from new and unexpected angles and they can then make imaginative leaps. So, does the man in the street always react negatively to eccentricity?

M: Well, we all love eccentrics and yet we are profoundly ambivalent about them. Our collective imagination is peaked by the bizarre behavior of someone, like, for example, Howard Hughes once the richest man in the world who lived the last days of his life like a mystical hermit. Eccentrics have thrown off the constraints of normal life to let themselves do exactly as they please and anyone who doesn’t like it can get on with it.

T: The book said only about one person in every 5 to 10 thousand is a classic “Full-time Eccentric” and most exhibit traits from an early age. They seem to share five traits: being non-conforming, creative, strongly motivated by curiosity, idealistic, and obsessed by one or more hobbyhorses. Non-conformity seems to be the principal characteristic 

M: True, though hobbyhorses also feature highly. There was an 18th-century Aristocrat with the love of animals called Jack Myers one time havoc broke loose at one of his dinner parties when he appeared in full hunting costume mounted on his bear and the ensuing panic while his friends jumped out of windows or clambered behind chairs Myers called out “Tally Ho!” and spurred his mouth which turned impatient and ate part of his leg.

T: Amazing! I think I’ll have to go into this in more detail now.

M: You should, I came across some new findings recently that participants in a study of eccentrics were more likely to endorse what, for a better expression, we call “Magical thinking”  dreams that pretend the future, Deja Vu… Things like that, they tend to focus their attention on their inner universe at the expense of social or even self-care needs.

T: Could you lend me that research, do you think…