Practice English Listening B2 Exercises – Can You Understand These People?

1 c   2 c   3 b   4 b   5 a

1

A   Excuse me, are you one of the conference organizers?

B   Yes, I am. Is there anything you need?

A   Yes, I’m giving a presentation here in half an hour and I’m just trying out the equipment. There seems to be something wrong with the projector. Do you see? The image is very dark. I’ve been trying to increase the contrast but it’s not really any better. I’m not sure what the problem is. Is there anyone here who could have a look at it, a technician or someone?

B   Well, there is a technician, but actually he already had a look at it for the previous speaker and there wasn’t anything he could do. He suggested drawing all the curtains so that less light comes into the room. Would you like us to do that for you?

A   Well, if nothing else can be done, yes.

2

A   So what made you move here?

B   I love my country and my city, but it’s not an easy place to live. We have a lot of problems there.

A   What kind of problems?

B   For a start it’s very overcrowded and there’s a real housing shortage. As a result, there are a lot of homeless people, a lot of beggars on the streets and, unfortunately, a lot of muggings. There are many car accidents too – nobody ever stops at traffic lights and people drive much too fast.

3

Right, now remember the bus will be leaving to go back to the hotel in two hours. Now first I’d like to give you a bit of advice. Three hours isn’t enough to see everything – you’d need at least two days for that or more. Some of you have told me that you want to see the Roman room – that’s room 49 but there’s so much to see that I don’t really want to confuse you by recommending anything specific. What I suggest is that you get an information leaflet from the ticket office and have a look at what there is in each room and decide what you’re most interested in seeing, and leave the rest for another time. You’re sure to come here again. But do leave yourselves time to have a look at the shop, which is on the right of the entrance, as there are lots of really interesting and imaginative gifts, apart from the usual postcards.

4

Now science is all about testing – and about looking closely at things. Some scientists use microscopes to take a close look. Do you know what a microscope is? Well, we’re just going to use a simple piece of paper. Like this. We’re going to cut out a square in the middle to make a window, which we’ll do like this by folding the piece of paper in half, and then we’re going to look at a leaf through the window we’ve made. Then later we’re going to go outside and have a look at a tree trunk. So have you all got your piece of paper? Right, now fold it in half…

5

This next painting is of Sir Isaac Newton, the famous physicist and mathematician. Newton was born in 1643 at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a small village in the country of Lincolnshire. He was born to a family of farmers who owned animals and land, thus making them fairly wealthy. According to his own later accounts, Newton was born prematurely and no one expected him to live. His father, also named Isaac Newton, had been a yeoman farmer and had died three months before Newton’s birth, at the time of the English Civil War. When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough.

1 F   2 T   3 T   4 F   5 F

P = presenter, L = Lucy

P   According to a recent survey, we are a nation on the move. 115,000 people a year are leaving the city and heading to the country in search of a better life. It seems like a logical thing to do, less crime, better health, less stress, and lower house prices. Six years ago Lucy Beck, a 41-year-old IT consultant made a life-changing decision and moved from a flat on a busy road in town, to a house with four acres of land in the middle of the country. Hello Lucy.

L   Hi.

P   So, what did your friends think when you told them you were moving?

L   They all thought I was mad. They thought I’d have a nightmare journey getting to work, for example, and that I’d be lonely, miss my friends, things like that.

P   And has any of that happened?

L   Not at all, I made an arrangement with my company to work from home more, so I only have to go into the office once a week. And my friends come and stay with me at weekends, so in many ways I see them more often. Besides, I’ve made friends with the locals in the village here and it’s great. I mean it’s one of the benefits I hadn’t expected. I’d always thought about the obvious things, such as beautiful countryside and a better standard of living, but one of the things I value most is the fact that the village seems to keep hold of the traditional values in life. We all try to help each other as much as we can. For example if I do something for someone in the village, when they’ll probably give me eggs or potatoes as a thank you. I certainly never had that when I lived in town.

P   There must be some disadvantages though, a downside?

L   Well, in the early days I had a few problems. I wasn’t on mains electricity and there were a lot of power cuts. Also at that time the local shop didn’t open on Sunday – and the pub doesn’t serve food. So, I had to learn to be much more organized that before. When I lived in town if I hadn’t had time to go shopping, I just used to order a takeaway or go out to eat. But that’s not an option these days.

P   Anything else?

L   Yes, I do think that if you move to live in the country, you need your own car. Public transport isn’t that good in my village. The bus comes through here only two or three times a day depending if it’s a weekday or weekend, so you really do need to have your own transport.

P   But otherwise it’s all positive?

L   Absolutely. It was the best decision I’ve ever made.