The whole Listening paper, in the shape and the order of the real one. In the exam you hear every recording twice — do the same here. Try a part, check it, and if it did not go well open the support: the transcript opens with it, so you can see the exact line you missed and then do the part again. Clear it afterwards and do it once more with the transcript shut.
For each question, choose the correct answer. You hear each recording twice. In the real exam the three options are pictures; here they are in words, which changes nothing — all three things are mentioned, and only one of them answers the question.
Part 1. There are seven questions in this part. For each question there are three answers. You will hear each recording twice.
Question 1. You will hear a weather forecast.
Forecaster: …and now to the weekend. Saturday starts brightly across most of England — you might even want sunglasses first thing. Don't be fooled, though. By three o'clock the rain will be moving in from the west, and it stays with us right through the evening. Sunday is the drier day of the two, cold but bright, so if you are planning to be outside, plan for Sunday.
[pause 5s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 5s]
Question 2. You will hear Tom and Nila talking on their way home.
Nila: You've gone very quiet. What's wrong?
Tom: I can't find my phone. I definitely had it in the café, because I paid with it.
Nila: Did you have it on the bus? You were on it before me.
Tom: That's the thing — I texted Mum from the library after we got off the bus, so it can't be the bus. It must still be on that table. They shut at eight, don't they?
Nila: Seven on a Friday. Run.
[pause 5s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 5s]
Question 3. You will hear a recorded message at a cathedral.
Recorded voice: Thank you for calling Ely Cathedral. Guided tours normally begin at a quarter past ten. Please note that from October to March the tour starts half an hour later, at a quarter to eleven. The tower climb runs at eleven o'clock every day of the year and must be booked in person. To speak to the office, please hold.
[pause 5s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 5s]
Question 4. You will hear two people in a shop.
Man: What about this jumper? It's the right colour, at least.
Woman: He's got three already. I was going to get gloves, but he lost the last pair in a week and I'm not doing that again.
Man: The scarf, then.
Woman: The scarf. Wrap it well, it's for Thursday.
[pause 5s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 5s]
Question 5. You will hear a man leaving a message at a restaurant.
Man: Hello, it's Daniel Okoye. I've got a table booked for four people on Friday the ninth. I'm not cancelling, don't worry. It's just that two of us can't do Friday now, so could we move the whole thing to Saturday? Same time, same number of people. Give me a ring if that's a problem. Thanks very much.
[pause 5s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 5s]
Question 6. You will hear two people planning a journey.
Woman: Shall I book a taxi for five in the morning?
Man: It's forty pounds at that hour. And the first train isn't until six, which gets us there far too late.
Woman: So we drive ourselves and leave the car at the airport?
Man: Parking's cheaper than the taxi for four days. Let's do that.
[pause 5s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 5s]
Question 7. You will hear a man talking about a museum he visited.
Man: I'll be honest, I went for the Egyptian rooms and they were… fine. Crowded. What I wasn't expecting was the roof — that enormous glass ceiling over the courtyard, all those triangles. I stood underneath it for twenty minutes and forgot what I'd come for. The woman who showed us round knew everything, but it's the ceiling I've been telling people about.
[pause 5s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 5s]
That is the end of Part 1.
How to read this part. Part 1 never asks you to catch a word; it asks you to follow a decision. All three options are said out loud, usually in the first half, and two of them are then knocked down. So the job is not to listen for something — it is to listen to the whole thing and notice what is left standing at the end.
Do it in this order.
Two traps live here. The first is the right fact under the wrong label — a real time or place from the recording, attached to the wrong day or person. The second is the spoken-then-denied option: “I'm not cancelling”. Catching the word cancel and missing the word not is the single commonest way to lose a mark in this part.
On each question. The help for the ones you missed is now attached to the question itself — the options that cannot be right are crossed out, and the place to look is marked.
You will hear six different recordings. For each question, choose the correct answer. These are longer than Part 1 and they are not about facts: they ask what somebody feels, means or wants. You hear each one twice.
Part 2. Now listen to six different recordings. For each question, choose the correct answer. You will hear each recording twice.
Question 8. You will hear a woman talking about her first week in a new job.
Woman: Everyone warned me about the first week, and honestly, the people have been lovely — somebody different has taken me to lunch every single day, which I wasn't expecting at all. And the job is what they said it was, which is more than you can say for my last one. What's keeping me awake is the systems. There are four of them and they all do nearly the same thing, and nobody in that building can tell me why. I've got a month to learn them before I'm on my own with a customer.
[pause 5s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 5s]
Question 9. You will hear two friends talking about a football match they went to.
Man: Well. That's ninety pounds I'm never seeing again.
Woman: It wasn't the money for me. It was standing in the rain for two hours to watch nil–nil.
Man: The crowd were brilliant, though. That singing in the second half — I've never heard anything like it.
Woman: That's the only part I'd pay for again, honestly. The football was terrible and the noise was worth the ticket.
[pause 5s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 5s]
Question 10. You will hear a man talking about learning to cook.
Man: I did a course — six Thursdays — and I came out of it able to make six things. That was exactly the problem. Six things, and no idea what to do on the evening the shop had no leeks. So I stopped following recipes altogether. Now I learn one technique a month; this month it's making a sauce that doesn't split. It's much slower, and I burn a lot more, but I can actually cook a dinner out of whatever happens to be in the fridge.
[pause 5s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 5s]
Question 11. You will hear a woman leaving a voicemail for her neighbour.
Woman: Hi, it's Ellen from downstairs. Your parcel's come here again — the driver keeps leaving them with me. The thing is, I'm away from Wednesday for a fortnight, so I can't keep taking them in. There's no need to ring anyone, they're not doing anything wrong. It's just that Thursday's one is quite big and I won't be here to sign for it. Could you just be in? Sorry. See you before I go, I hope.
[pause 5s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 5s]
Question 12. You will hear a teacher talking to her class about a trip.
Teacher: Right — Friday. Lunch is included, that's paid for, so don't bring sandwiches, they'll only go to waste. Entrance is free for schools, so nobody needs money except for the shop, and the shop is your business, not mine. The one thing I will not accept excuses about is coats. It is a working farm, it will be muddy, and if it rains you are outside in it. Waterproof, with a hood. A hoodie is not a coat.
[pause 5s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 5s]
Question 13. You will hear a young man talking about moving to a new city.
Man: I speak to my parents more now than I did when I lived twenty minutes from them, so that's not it. And I thought it would be the hills — I really did, I used to walk every Sunday — but there's a park here and, honestly, it does the job. It's stupid, but it's the shopkeeper. At home, four people said my name between my flat and the bus stop. Here I've been six months and nobody knows me.
[pause 5s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 5s]
That is the end of Part 2.
How to read this part. Part 2 is about people, not information. The question always asks for a feeling, an opinion, a purpose or a point of agreement — and the speaker almost never says it in the words of the option. So matching words to words will fail here: you have to decide what the person means and then find the option that says the same thing differently.
Do it in this order.
Listen for the four signposts that carry the answer in this part: but, though, so, and what's really…. Everything before them is set-up. And treat I thought it would be… as a warning label: whatever follows it is a wrong option.
On each question. The help for the ones you missed is now attached to the question itself — the options that cannot be right are crossed out, and the place to look is marked.
You will hear a woman called Ruth briefing new tour guides in Oxford. For each question, write the correct answer in the gap: one or two words, or a number. Write the word you actually hear — this part does not want your paraphrase, it wants her word. You hear the recording twice.
Meeting point: outside the 14 ______ on Broad Street.
Maximum group size: 15 ______ people.
Length of every tour: 16 ______ minutes.
Guides must wear a 17 ______ so the group can find them again.
In July and August, college visits must be booked 18 ______ days in advance.
New guides are paid £19 ______ an hour.
Part 3. You will hear a woman called Ruth talking to a group of new guides about the walking tours she runs in Oxford. For each question, write the correct answer in the gap. Write one or two words, or a number. You now have twenty seconds to look at the notes.
[pause 20s]
Ruth: Right — welcome, and thank you all for coming in on a Sunday. A few practical things, and then I'll take questions.
Ruth: Where we meet. People expect the station or the covered market, but we don't use either. Every tour begins outside the bookshop on Broad Street — the big one, everybody knows it — and you stand by the window, not on the edge of the pavement, or you will lose somebody to a bus before you have started.
Ruth: Numbers. I know other companies take thirty. We don't. The group is never more than eighteen, because after that the people at the back stop hearing you, and once they stop hearing you they start talking, and then nobody hears you.
Ruth: Timing. Tell people ninety minutes and mean it. Not two hours — ninety minutes. If you are still walking at ninety-five, somebody's train is leaving without them, and that is what they will remember about Oxford, not the colleges.
Ruth: What to wear. Not a uniform, thank goodness, but you must wear a yellow hat. It sounds ridiculous. It works. In a street with four other tour groups in it, that hat is how your eighteen people find you again after they have wandered off to take photographs.
Ruth: Colleges. This is the one that catches new guides out every year. In July and August you cannot just walk into a college — you book, and you book five days in advance. Not the day before. Five days. In February you can turn up at the gate and they will wave you through, but that is February.
Ruth: And money. You start on fourteen pounds an hour, which goes up after your first season. Tips are yours to keep. Don't ask for them — you'll get them.
Ruth: Right. Questions.
[pause 10s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 10s]
That is the end of Part 3.
How to read this part. This part is not a memory test, it is a form. The notes on the page are in the exact order Ruth speaks, and every gap has its answer said once, in her words. Your job is to keep your place in the notes while she talks, so that you are already looking at gap 16 when she reaches it.
Do it in this order.
The trap in Part 3 is the near-miss number. Thirty, two hours, the day before, February — every one of them is in the recording, said clearly, and every one of them belongs to somebody else or some other month. Ruth's own habit is to say the wrong figure first in order to knock it down, so if a number arrives before she has finished the sentence, wait.
On each question. The help for the ones you missed is now attached to the question itself — the options that cannot be right are crossed out, and the place to look is marked.
You will hear an interview with a young man called Jack Whitfield, who works as a punt guide on the River Cam in Cambridge. For each question, choose the correct answer. The six questions follow the order of the interview, so if you are lost, the next question will find you. You hear it twice.
Part 4. You will hear an interview with a young man called Jack Whitfield, who works as a punt guide on the River Cam in Cambridge. For each question, choose the correct answer. You now have twenty seconds to look at the questions.
[pause 20s]
Interviewer: Jack, most of us take a punt trip once, on holiday. How did you end up steering one for a living?
Jack: Badly, is the honest answer. I came to Cambridge to study engineering, ran out of money in my second term, and the job on the noticeboard said “no experience necessary”. I thought it would be four weeks. That was three years ago.
Interviewer: And is it as hard as it looks?
Jack: The steering? No. You learn that in a fortnight, and honestly the pole does most of the thinking. What nobody warns you about is the talking. You have to be interesting for forty-five minutes while not hitting anything, with fourteen strangers sitting behind you facing the wrong way. The first month I lost my voice twice.
Interviewer: You must have learned an enormous amount of history.
Jack: I've learned a lot of stories. That isn't the same thing, and I'd rather be honest about it. Half of what tourists are told on that river isn't true — the bridge that was supposedly built without a single nail, the famous mathematician who supposedly designed it. I looked it up. It wasn't, and he didn't. So now I tell people the story, and then I tell them it isn't true, and they like that more than the story.
Interviewer: Who is the hardest audience?
Jack: Not children — children are easy. They want to steer, so you let them hold the pole for ten seconds and they're yours for the rest of the hour. And it's not tourists either; they're just pleased to be there. It's the people who studied here forty years ago and have brought their grandchildren to see it. They know it better than I do, and they are checking. I've learned to ask them a question in the first two minutes and let them tell the boat.
Interviewer: What about the weather? It does rain in Cambridge.
Jack: Rain is fine. People have coats, and they've paid, so they go anyway — and the river is prettier when it's empty. The day I don't work is a windy one. A punt has no keel and a flat bottom; it's a tray. In a strong wind you can push as hard as you like and go sideways into a wall of stone that's been there since sixteen forty. So we cancel.
Interviewer: And after three years — did you finish the engineering degree?
Jack: I finished it in June. Everyone assumes the next sentence is “and now I'm leaving”, and I'm not, not this summer. But I'm not going to be forty on that river either. I'd like to build boats, actually. Properly, in a workshop. The punt is where I found that out, so I'm not sorry about the three years at all.
Interviewer: Jack Whitfield, thank you very much.
[pause 10s] Now listen again. [repeat] [pause 10s]
That is the end of Part 4. That is the end of the test.
How to read this part. Part 4 is one long interview and the six questions run in the same order as the answers. That is the most useful fact in this part: you are never searching the whole recording, you are only ever listening for the next one. If you miss question 22, let it go and be ready for 23 — hunting backwards costs you two more.
Do it in this order.
The options in this part are paraphrases, never quotations — “people who studied at the university long ago” for “the people who studied here forty years ago”. So a student waiting to hear the words of an option will hear none of them and panic. Listen for the idea, and expect the answer to arrive just after Jack has knocked down one or two of the other options himself: that knocking-down is the shape of almost every item here.
On each question. The help for the ones you missed is now attached to the question itself — the options that cannot be right are crossed out, and the place to look is marked.
The marks below are your best unaided attempt on each part — the one you did after the support, with the transcript closed again.
If a part only worked with the transcript open, that part is not a listening problem yet; it is a reading problem you can still fix. Come back to it on Sunday with the audio and the transcript covered.