Audioscripts IELTS Practice 8 Listening Test 02

Part 1

You will hear a conversation between a representative of a removals company and a customer.

First, you have some time to look at questions 1 to 3.

[Pause]

Now listen carefully and answer questions 1 to 3.

Agent: Good afternoon, Swift Relocations. Sarah speaking. How may I help you?

Customer: Hello there. I recently moved my furniture from London up here to Edinburgh, and I used your premium service. Unfortunately, a few things were broken during the transit, so I need to file a formal complaint. What is the process?

Agent: Oh, I'm very sorry to hear that. Well, first I need to take a few details about your original booking to locate you on the system. Can you give me your name, please?

Customer: Yes, it's David Harrison.

Agent: OK, thank you. And your address, please, Mr. Harrison?

Customer: Do you need the billing address or the delivery one?

Agent: The delivery one, please. That's where the items were unloaded.

Customer: Right. It's 15 Grange Road, Morningside, quite near the university campus.

Agent: Let me just note that down. What was the area, sorry?

Customer: Morningside. That's M-O-R-N-I-N-G-S-I-D-E.

Agent: Perfect. Now, do you recall who the packing supervisor was?

Customer: You mean the guy who managed the team on the actual day?

Agent: Yes, exactly. The person who signed off the master inventory at your old house in London.

Customer: Oh, let me think. It was, um, Peter Jenkins.

Agent: Ok, Peter Jenkins. And where were the items transported from exactly?

Customer: From London, but the van stopped in Leeds overnight and was securely parked there for about twelve hours.

Agent: Don't worry, all of that routing will be logged on the driver's manifest. Now, just to confirm the dates. Do you know exactly when the van arrived?

Customer: Well, they started loading the property on the 4th of May, and finally unloaded everything in Edinburgh on the 6th of May.

Agent: The 6th of May. Excellent. I just need one more detail to open the claim. There should be a consignment number. It's usually located at the bottom left-hand corner of the yellow receipt they handed you.

Customer: Let me find it. I've kept all the paperwork in a folder here. Ah, yes, I see it. It's 892BTR.

Agent: Let me just read that back to make sure. 892 PTR? P for Papa?

Customer: No, B for Bravo. 892 BTR.

Agent: Thanks, got it.

Before you hear the rest of the conversation, you have some time to look at questions 4 to 10.

[Pause]

Now listen and answer questions 4 to 10.

Agent: Now, I need to record a brief description of the specific damage over the phone before you submit a formal written claim. Can you tell me how many pieces were ruined and what the exact issue was with each?

Customer: Yes, well, there are three items in total, actually. I'll start with the heaviest thing. My fridge, first of all. It's an American-style one, quite new.

Agent: Just to advise you, our guarantee doesn't cover internal mechanical faults that happen during transport.

Customer: Oh, it isn't a mechanical fault at all. The door has a rather deep scratch right across the front. It really catches the light and looks awful in the new kitchen.

Agent: I see. Any idea of the cost to fix it?

Customer: Well, I don't think they can just buff it out or paint over it. It will definitely need a replacement panel.

Agent: OK. I'll log that and we'll see what the technicians say. Now, what was the second item?

Customer: A mirror from the hallway was smashed as well. It's an antique mirror. We usually hung it right above the console table.

Agent: And what is the severity of the damage?

Customer: Well, the glass itself is actually perfectly fine, but the wooden frame has a large chunk missing from the corner. It's totally splintered and can't just be glued back together. I'm really quite upset about it, to be honest.

Agent: I understand. And how much do you estimate it will cost to properly restore it?

Customer: Well, when I had it valued last decade, it was around £80, but the specialist I've contacted here in Edinburgh is a bit dearer. He wants £110 for the full restoration work.

Agent: Right, £110. I'll add that to the file. And what was the final item, Mr. Harrison?

Customer: My desk chair. It's a highly specialized ergonomic chair imported from Germany. It must have been crushed under some heavier boxes in the back of the van because one wheel has completely snapped off the base. The seat fabric and the backrest look fine, luckily.

Agent: Any idea of the price to repair it?

Customer: Well, I bought the chair originally for over £300, so I looked up the spare parts online immediately, because I use it every day for work. The manufacturer quoted £45, which is quite steep for a small piece of plastic, so I expect the removals company to reimburse that full amount.

Agent: I'm sure that will be processed quickly once you send in the receipts. Was there anything else damaged, Mr. Harrison?

Customer: No, thankfully that's the lot. So what are the actual next steps?

That is the end of Part 1. You now have half a minute to check your answers.

Part 2

You will hear a welcoming address about a newly opened botanical garden.

First, you have some time to look at questions 11 to 14.

[Pause]

Now listen carefully and answer questions 11 to 14.

Speaker: Welcome, everyone, to the grand opening of the Riverside Botanical Gardens. As you might be aware, we've only been operating for a fortnight, so you're genuinely among our very first guests. We have a multitude of stunning indoor and outdoor displays on our vast estate. Our core mission is not only to provide recreational spaces to the local community, but also to supply protected conservation zones for botanists and other researchers.

Let's begin by finding our way around. As you can observe here on our large display map, we are currently located at the very south of the estate, in the visitor centre here. As you step out of the rear exit into the gardens, there's a main central trail you can take. If you follow this path straight ahead, you'll instantly enter the medicinal plant section, where we cultivate a huge variety of healing herbs.

Directly adjacent to this, heading north, is the extensive meadow area reserved for the wildflowers. Then further north from there, occupying the most expansive part of our gardens right at the top of the map, is the arboretum.

Now, if you look to the west of the meadow area, situated actually right beside where we are standing in the visitor centre, is our spectacular tropical greenhouse.

In the exact centre of the estate, you’ll notice this large oval shape; that is our ornamental pond. Just below that, these two narrow rectangular outlines here are the lily pools, where we cultivate delicate aquatic plants for display. To the north of those pools is the rockery area, which features a great many alpine species. And finally, tucked away in the extreme north-western sector, just past the rockery, is our dedicated sensory garden area, featuring highly scented shrubs and uniquely textured leaves designed to be touched.

Before you hear the rest of the talk, you have some time to look at questions 15 to 20.

[Pause]

Now listen and answer questions 15 to 20.

Speaker: All these zones can be accessed by the visiting public for nearly all the seasons. However, please keep an eye out for any red notices posted at the gateways. These indicate when specific beds are being treated with organic pesticides and are therefore temporarily off-limits to the public for safety reasons.

You can judge for yourself what a massive site the gardens occupy, and a frequent query from our guests is always: how can we get around? Well, you have a selection of options, all emission-free, as private vehicles are strictly prohibited in the gardens. For those who require physical assistance, we do maintain a fleet of electric scooters, which you can reserve just outside the visitor centre. Obviously, the energetic ones among you can explore entirely on foot. And lastly, there's our battery-powered buggy, charged purely from our own wind turbines.

An excellent spot to commence your visit today is the medicinal plant section. We grow lavender, mint, sage, and other types of traditional healing herbs. The herbs are harvested in public once a week, and a brief demonstration is offered on their traditional drying processes. These demonstrations are highly engaging, but naturally, you shouldn't forget the primary reason for establishing this section. It’s not simply to display fragrant plants, but to ensure the survival of heritage seeds in order to provide resources for future medical research.

Riverside evolves dramatically with the climate, with various blooms occurring at different phases of the calendar. While August is wonderful for the roses, October will potentially be our most visually stunning month, specifically because that is when the leaves of the Japanese maples change colour. But there are fascinating features visible all year round. For instance, Sarah Jenkins, our brilliant resident sculptor, is presently exhibiting a series of stone carvings right beside the central ornamental pond.

And the concluding stop, as we loop back to the visitor centre, is the fernery. Do allow time to look around our gift shop before you leave. There's a fantastic range of horticulture guides, and books on alternative landscaping techniques. This includes a highly sustainable method of farming known as permaculture, which the gardens will be expanding into over the upcoming year.

That is the end of Part 2. You now have half a minute to check your answers.

Part 3

You will hear part of a seminar in which an ecologist called Alice Carter discusses her work on invasive aquatic plants with a student called Jack.

First, you have some time to look at questions 21 to 24.

[Pause]

Now listen carefully and answer questions 21 to 24.

Tutor: Good afternoon, everyone. In today's seminar, Alice Carter, an ecologist who works for the Environmental Protection Agency, has come to talk to us about her current field work. Right, well, over to you, Alice.

Alice: Good afternoon. I'm sure you know that the Protection Agency monitors all waterways in the region. Another department deals with preventing chemical pollution from farms. But my team specifically focuses on stopping non-native plants from taking over the canals and lakes.

Jack: Right. I understand your recent project involves locating a specific type of weed called the floating pennywort. What's the actual problem with it? Is it so different from native water plants?

Alice: Well, initially, it looks quite similar to native water lilies. People often assume it releases toxins that directly poison the fish, but that's not the case. The real issue is that it grows at an astonishing rate. It forms dense mats which float on the surface, and these completely block sunlight from reaching our own native plants below.

Jack: What would happen if the native aquatic plants died out?

Alice: Well, indigenous plants provide essential breeding grounds for birds and fish. Take the American water weed, for example, which we found down in the southern lake. That didn't cause severe skin irritation like the pennywort can, but it significantly reduced the oxygen levels in the water, which was disastrous for the ecosystem. Luckily we removed it before it destroyed the bird flocks.

Jack: And what about the economic impact? Could a pennywort infestation be expensive?

Alice: Absolutely. It wouldn't really affect the local agricultural industry, but we could face huge bills in other areas. You might not realise it, but keeping the waterways clear for leisure boating brings in £5 million a year. If the canals are choked with weed, we lose all that income. It's the tourism sector's nightmare.

Before you hear the rest of the seminar, you have some time to look at questions 25 to 30.

[Pause]

Now listen and answer questions 25 to 30.

Jack: So how will you detect if floating pennywort has spread further into the wetlands? It must be a huge area to search.

Alice: It is. So instead of surveying every mile of water, we're monitoring the nests of a small mammal called the water vole. The vole isn't fussy about what it uses to build its nest, as long as it's soft vegetation. And that's incredibly handy if we're searching for new invasive plants.

Jack: Why is that?

Alice: Because voles weave their nests tightly above the water line, drying out the plant stems. They eventually leave behind a small mound of uneaten plant parts and leaves in a bundle, which they just abandon.

Jack: That sounds like tedious work. So how do you approach it?

Alice: On site, we locate the wetland habitats of the voles, and then pinpoint their preferred burrowing banks, you know, the muddy areas where the animals normally breed. It's there that we can locate the bundles. We bag them up and transport them back to the lab.

Jack: How do you sort the vegetation once you have it?

Alice: The bundles are completely interwoven, especially if they've been baked in the sun for a few weeks. So, firstly, we process them by soaking them in a mild solvent. This helps to loosen them and make them soft again. Then we carefully separate the plant parts using tweezers.

Jack: You must have to be very gentle.

Alice: Yes. Everything's tangled together, but we're hunting for specific leaf shapes. So we just extract the leaves and press them flat. Then we catalogue them in our database to check if we can spot any invasive pennywort species.

Jack: And how many have you confirmed?

Alice: To date, our analysis indicates that floating pennywort has not established itself in the wetlands yet, which is a great result.

Tutor: Well, that's really intriguing. Thank you, Alice...

That is the end of Part 3. You now have half a minute to check your answers.

Part 4

You will hear a student called Rachel giving a presentation on her research report about public libraries.

First, you have some time to look at questions 31 to 40.

[Pause]

Now listen carefully and answer questions 31 to 40.

Rachel: I've been doing some research into what people in Australia think of public libraries—the traditional ones run by local councils that serve as the primary access point for community reading—and comparing this with the situation in a couple of other nations. I want to talk about the rationale behind the methodology I chose to use.

Now, I had to set up my program of research in three different countries, so I approached academics in my field in overseas universities, contacting them through professional networks to organize the distribution of my surveys at their end. I thought I would have a hard time finding volunteers, but in fact almost everyone was incredibly helpful, and sometimes their department heads got involved too.

I had to give my contacts strict guidelines about what kind of sample population I wanted them to target. I decided that people over the age of 65 should be excluded because the vast majority of them are already traditional, frequent library users. And also I decided at this initial stage just to focus on women who were studying, and set up a separate investigation for men and for women in full-time employment at a later date.

I specifically wanted to conduct an online survey and follow-up phone interviews. With the online survey, rather than restricting it to one narrow topic, I wanted to capture as broad a range of opinions as possible. I know online surveys are a very rigid way to gather data, but I felt I could use the phone interviews later on to balance out the limitations of this. And I also created an online forum which may prove useful in the future by targeting a specific demographic I can easily reach out to again, as the participants there tend to be highly engaged.

So I am currently in the process of collating the data. At the present time, it looks as if in Australia, despite the fact that news outlets continually report that people are dissatisfied with the physical book collections, in reality it is mainly the digital resources provided by the libraries that they are frustrated with. Council budget cuts have been proposed across the board, and although the outcome is uncertain, a lack of printed material is actually probably less of an issue than the press would have us believe.

However, I still have a massive amount of data to process. Certainly I will need to conduct more extensive analysis than I had originally planned in order to determine if the public wants extra funding poured into mobile libraries, or if they prefer services to be consolidated into fewer but larger centralized facilities. The ultimate answer might be something that can be easily adopted by local planners, assuming they get regional funding, of course.

This initial phase has proved extremely insightful, though. I was amazed by how enthusiastic most of the participants were to contribute to the study. I had anticipated some reluctance to share reading habits openly. But I was genuinely shocked and quite disappointed that something I thought I had designed so carefully was heavily criticized by my own tutors.

I thought you might also find it useful to hear about some of the complications I faced in gathering my data. There were a few strange situations that really threw me off balance.

One of the participants, who I had approached while she was eating lunch in a park, decided to withdraw completely when it came to the interview stage. It was a real pity, as her initial survey answers were exactly what I wanted to explore further. And one of the postgraduate students I interviewed demanded an absolute guarantee of anonymity before she would answer a single question. I found this highly ironic, because these same students think nothing of posting every detail of their private lives on social media platforms.

Then one of the researchers that I collaborated with started acting very strangely. The scheduling was quite demanding. And one minute he said he was fully committed, then the very next day he threatened to quit. In the end, he did complete the work. It is very difficult not to lose your temper in that scenario, but I tried to remember the ultimate goal of the project in order to remain objective.

The most unusual case was a video call I conducted with a head librarian at a university in Canada. He responded to all my questions about foot traffic in exceptional detail. But then when I asked about their cybersecurity protocols, he completely refused to tell me what software his institution was using. It was a real eye-opener into how sensitive data protection has become.

That is the end of Part 4. You now have half a minute to check your answers.