IELTS Listening Practice Test

Part 1 · Questions 1–10

Part 2 · Questions 11–20

Part 3 · Questions 21–30

Part 4 · Questions 31–40

Part 1

Greenhill Riding School — phone conversation

MAN: Good morning, Greenhill Riding School. How can I help you?

WOMAN: Oh, hello. I'd like some information about riding courses for complete beginners, please.

MAN: Of course. Is the course for yourself?

WOMAN: Yes, it is. I've looked at your website, but I couldn't decide which course would suit me best.

MAN: No problem. Well, the simplest way to start is with one of our Taster Mornings.

WOMAN: Right.

MAN: Those are for people who've never ridden before. It's a gentle introduction, really, so you can find out whether riding is something you'd like to continue with.

WOMAN: And what does that cost?

MAN: It's ninety-five pounds for the morning, though if two of you book together it comes down to eighty-five pounds each.

WOMAN: It would just be me, I'm afraid.

MAN: That's absolutely fine. You'd be in a small group. There are usually about six people, but never more than eight, so everyone gets plenty of attention.

WOMAN: That sounds nice. And is there anything more substantial than a taster?

MAN: Yes, the next step is our Level One course. That runs over two weekends, and we offer it right through the year.

WOMAN: And what would I actually learn on that?

MAN: It's a combination of theory and practice. On the theory side, you learn how to look after a horse. So, understanding the diet, what horses should eat and how often, and also their behaviour. Then, for the riding itself, you start with the basic skills, and that includes balance training, which we do before you ever go faster than a walk.

WOMAN: Goodness, there's more to it than I thought!

MAN: There is, but it's great fun as well.

WOMAN: And how much is the Level One course?

MAN: That one is two hundred and fifty pounds. Oh, and if you decide to join our riding club, you get a free helmet. Non-members can simply hire one for each lesson instead.

WOMAN: I see. I'll think about the club, then.

MAN: There's no rush at all.

WOMAN: Does the price cover everything else?

MAN: It does, everything's included. And every Level One student also receives a really useful handbook. It explains all the riding terms with lots of pictures. People find the vocabulary confusing at first, so it's a great help.

WOMAN: That does sound useful.

MAN: And when you finish the course, there's a badge for all participants. Then, if you want to carry on, you'd be ready for Level Two.

WOMAN: Lovely.

MAN: Now, just a few general points. For any course, you must wear long trousers. Jeans are fine.

WOMAN: That's easy enough. What about other equipment?

MAN: We provide the riding boots, but you should bring gloves, and a waterproof jacket in case the weather turns.

WOMAN: Gloves. Okay, I'll make a note. And is there anywhere to buy food and drinks, or should I bring my own?

MAN: There's a shop at the school. It sells sandwiches, drinks, snacks, that kind of thing. We're hoping to open a proper café next year, but that's still being built.

WOMAN: Fine, the shop will do nicely. Now, I know absolutely nothing about horses. Is there anything I could do to prepare before I come?

MAN: Good question. We used to recommend some training videos, but they're being updated at the moment. So instead, I'd suggest our podcasts. There's a series of them online, made by our own instructors, and they'll give you a really good idea of what to expect.

WOMAN: Podcasts. Perfect, I can listen on the train. Oh, one last thing. I'd probably drive over. Is it easy to leave the car?

MAN: Yes, parking is available for everyone on a course. It's just behind the stables, and it's free.

WOMAN: Wonderful. In that case, could you book me onto the next…

Part 2

Talk by Emma — working as a junior keeper at Riverside Wildlife Park

Hello everyone. My name's Emma, and for the past three years I've been a junior keeper at Riverside Wildlife Park. I've been asked to tell you what the job is really like, and how you might get into it yourselves.

Before I started, people kept warning me about two things: how early the day begins, and how enormous the park is. And both of those are true, but honestly, you adjust to them within a couple of weeks. What genuinely amazed me, and what nobody had mentioned, was the sheer amount of cleaning. I'd say more than half of every single day is spent scrubbing, sweeping and hosing down enclosures. Nobody becomes a keeper for the glamour!

The work does vary, though. Normally, school groups are shown around by the education team. But on busy days, junior keepers are sometimes asked to step in and guide the children around the park ourselves, which I love doing. Don't imagine you'll be feeding the lions, though. Nobody junior is ever allowed near the big cats, and all the animals' meals are prepared by qualified senior staff.

What's the biggest difficulty? Well, it isn't the visitors. They're nearly always friendly and curious. And as I said, you soon get used to the early mornings. For me, it's the weather. You're outside for most of the day, whatever the sky decides to do, and believe me, standing in freezing rain for eight hours tests your enthusiasm.

People often ask about my first big moment, which was feeding the giraffes. Everyone assumes it must have been thrilling, and looking back, I suppose it was. But at the time my hands were shaking, and I was so worried about doing something wrong that I could barely hold the branch. It was only afterwards that I felt any pride at all.

A quick word about clothing. The park provides the uniform, so don't spend money on that. What I always tell new starters is this: invest in one really good pair of boots. Cheap ones fall apart within a month, and wet feet will ruin your day faster than anything else I can think of.

And if you're hoping to make this a permanent career, here's my honest advice. Volunteering at weekends is pleasant, and it shows enthusiasm, but these days every park expects a proper qualification. So sign up for a college course in animal management. That's what gets you the interview.

So, what does a junior keeper actually do all day? Let me go through the main duties, and the quality you need most for each one.

First, cleaning the enclosures. As I said, this takes up most of your time, and it is genuinely hard physical work. You're shifting barrows, lifting bales, and walking many kilometres a day, so you really do need to be fit and strong.

Then there are the daily health checks. Here, strength is irrelevant. What matters is noticing things: a slightly swollen eye, food left uneaten, a change in the way an animal moves. You're recording tiny changes, and nothing must escape your attention.

Next, the public talks. You give the same short presentation several times a day, visitors ask the same questions again and again, and small children will interrupt you constantly. You simply have to stay calm and take it all with a smile, however many times you've heard it before.

And finally, helping with training the animals. Animals learn at their own speed, not yours. You might repeat one simple exercise every day for a month before you see any progress, and getting frustrated only sets you back. So once again, being able to wait calmly is everything.

Right, now let me tell you about pay and conditions…

Part 3

Dan and Maya — lecture on sustainable food production and seminar resources

DAN: That lecture on sustainable food production yesterday was excellent, wasn't it, Maya?

MAYA: It really was. I've read quite a lot on the subject already, but she still managed to surprise me.

DAN: Me too. You know what I appreciated most? She didn't just talk about enormous projects on the other side of the world. Those examples from farms only a few kilometres from this campus really brought the whole subject home to me.

MAYA: I completely agree. It's so much more powerful when you can actually go and see the places she was describing. Although, to be fair, the overall range of her examples was quite narrow. It was mostly vegetables, wasn't it?

DAN: True. And I thought the solutions she offered were a bit thin as well. Lots of description of what's going wrong, not so much about how to fix it.

MAYA: Mm. But the part that's stayed with me is her forecast. The problems she says we'll be facing thirty years from now, with water and with soil. Almost nobody is discussing those yet, and she set them out so clearly. I found that genuinely impressive.

DAN: So did I, actually. It was quite sobering. She touched on government policy too, but only for a minute or two at the end.

MAYA: Yes, that part felt rushed.

DAN: What did you make of the research project she described? The international farm study?

MAYA: Now that did impress me. Mainly because of how long it's been going. It started back in two thousand and nine, so that's more than fifteen years of continuous data. You hardly ever get that in agricultural research.

DAN: Fifteen years, yes. I hadn't realised that. The thing that struck me was the scale. Farms in more than forty countries are sending in their results. Forty! That's an extraordinary network to coordinate.

MAYA: It is. Though the equipment they use is surprisingly ordinary. Nothing you couldn't buy in a garden centre, she said.

DAN: And apparently the budget is tiny. They run the whole thing on a fraction of what similar projects cost.

MAYA: Mm, and the team is mostly agricultural scientists, so not a huge mix of specialists. But still, the length of the study and all those countries. That's what makes it special, I think.

DAN: Agreed on both counts.

DAN: While we're here, shall we go through the resources we have to review for tomorrow's seminar? I've got the list.

MAYA: Good idea. What about that article on vertical farms? The one about growing salad crops in tower blocks.

DAN: I thought it was excellent. I honestly hadn't realised how far that technology had come. The writer described this completely new development so vividly that I could really picture it.

MAYA: Same here. It made something brand new feel very real.

DAN: Then there was the documentary on food waste. Did you finish it?

MAYA: I did, but I kept checking when it was made. Twelve years ago! All the figures they quote have changed completely since then. It's really showing its age now.

DAN: That's exactly what I felt. A pity, because it was well filmed. What about the podcast on soil health?

MAYA: Honestly? It was way over my head. Every second sentence had some technical term I had to look up. It's clearly made for professional scientists, not for students like us.

DAN: I gave up halfway through for the same reason. The book on urban gardens, though, I thought that was the best of the lot.

MAYA: Oh, so did I. It goes into a lot of detail, but by the end I genuinely understood what the difficulties are, and why they're so hard to solve. The diagrams helped enormously.

DAN: Yes, everything was explained step by step. Right, the article on insect protein?

MAYA: Hmm. It kept making these very big claims, insects will feed the world, that sort of thing, but it never gave any proper evidence to back them up. Not a single study was quoted.

DAN: I noticed that too. Big statements, nothing underneath them. And finally, the podcast about floating farms. Farms built on the sea.

MAYA: Interesting idea, but the presentation was so one-sided. It was all benefits, benefits, benefits. They never mentioned a single drawback, like the cost, or what happens in a storm.

DAN: Completely one-sided, yes. Anyway, shall we decide who presents which one…

Part 4

Lecture — cork, a valuable natural material

Good afternoon. Today I want to talk about one of the most remarkable natural materials we use, and one that most of us barely think about: cork.

Ask anyone what cork is for, and they'll say wine bottles, and of course stoppers are still the industry's best-known product. Cork is also widely used for flooring, because it's warm and quiet to walk on. But because cork traps millions of tiny pockets of air, its most important industrial use is actually insulation. It keeps heat in buildings, it lines refrigerated ships, and it protects sensitive equipment from extremes of temperature.

Now, where does it come from? Nearly all of the world's natural cork is produced by a single species of tree, the cork oak, which grows around the western Mediterranean, above all in Portugal and Spain. And here's what makes this tree so unusual. The cork is not the wood of the tree. It's stripped from the bark, the thick outer layer, and the tree goes on living and slowly grows a new layer to replace it.

But this is a slow business, and it places real limits on supply. A tree must be roughly twenty-five years old before its first harvest, and after that, the bark can only be removed about once every nine years. Think about what that means for growers. If demand suddenly increases, they cannot simply plant more trees and harvest them next season. So production cannot easily be adjusted in response to rising or falling prices. Growers are always planning decades ahead.

There's a geographical limit too. The cork oak needs long, dry summers and mild, wet winters, and it cannot survive severe frost. So it will only flourish where the climate is gentle, which is why the industry has never spread far beyond the Mediterranean region.

And the harvest itself has hardly changed in five hundred years. Skilled workers cut and peel away the bark using a small axe, entirely by hand. No one has yet built a machine that can strip a cork oak without wounding the living tree beneath, and a wounded tree may never produce good cork again.

In recent years, new threats have appeared. The most serious is a tiny insect, which tunnels into the trunk of the tree and has already damaged large areas of forest in Portugal. At the same time, some farmers are giving up on cork altogether and turning their land over to faster crops. And as Mediterranean summers become hotter and drier, the forests are suffering an increasing number of fires, which can destroy in an afternoon what took half a century to grow.

Of course, industry has an alternative: synthetic cork, made from plastic. It's considerably cheaper, and it now seals a large share of the world's inexpensive wine. But synthetic cork has a weakness. It's far less flexible than the natural material. Real cork can be squeezed and released millions of times and always springs back to its original shape. That's why, for the most demanding uses, and here I include protecting parts of spacecraft from heat and vibration during launch, only natural cork will do.

So researchers have been searching for new sources of similar material, and one recent development is particularly promising. A team of scientists has produced a cork-like board using the husks of rice, that's the hard outer coating which is normally thrown away when rice is milled. Husks are available in enormous quantities all over Asia, at almost no cost. And the manufacturing process is attractive for another reason: it requires very little energy, far less than making plastic. Several factories are already testing it, and…