Tapescript
The part of the text containing the answer is underlined with the question number given in square brackets []. If you still struggle with CAE Listening, please refer to Listening tips.
Part 1
Extract One
Man: You know, I think privacy as we used to understand it is a thing of the past.
Woman: Why do you say that? Not another scare story in the papers? They’re always full of fanciful tales of doom and gloom…
Man: You may laugh, but after what happened yesterday…
Woman: What did happen?
Man: I was discussing the whole issue with an uncle of mine, who’s just turned 85. He proudly informed me there couldn’t be any data relating to him on the internet because he’d never used a computer.
Woman: Well fair enough, surely?
Man: Well, I only spent a couple of minutes searching and was still able to come up with quite a bit of stuff about him [1].
Woman: Really? That’s a bit worrying. I bet he was taken aback, wasn’t he?
Man: He was stunned… speechless – asked me to remove it all from ‘cyberspace’. But it doesn’t work like that, of course. What’s there, is there.
Woman: That does seem an erosion of privacy. Mind you, come to think of it, I suppose there’s also been some information available on us all for a while, way before the days of the internet.
Man: But it wasn’t so easy to get at. And the situation’s not going to improve [2].
Woman: No… I guess not. Quite the opposite [2].
Extract Two
Woman: Did you know that over seven million tonnes of food is thrown away every year in the UK?
Man: Really? That’s one big garbage mountain.
Woman: Yeah – and it costs huge amounts to collect, not to mention clogging landfills and producing vast amounts of C02 emissions.
Man: There’s not much we can do about it though, is there?
Woman: Well actually, restaurants are some of the worst offenders. That’s why we adopted responsible practices in our kitchen a while back. We’ve only got one garbage bin now despite having 100 seats, but two compost machines for food waste.
Man: Oh come on! We’ve got four or five bins and only 60 seats at our place.
Woman: Look, anything is possible. Our place is unrecognisable from what it was like last year, as is my boss – can’t think what’s got into him! Thinking ahead for a change! [3]
Man: Hmmm. OK – maybe I’d better talk to my head chef. Might be fighting an uphill battle though. [4]
Woman: There’re other things you can do too – my chef’s obsessive about portion control, keeping an eye on how much food customers leave, and altering dishes accordingly.
Man: Don’t you get complaints about small servings?
Woman: Granted, we don’t do enormous portions – but if occasionally someone wants a little bit more, we’ll give it to them. It works – honest!
Man: Don’t suppose we’d go far down that road.
Extract Three
Man: Do you know anything about that experiment the lecturer was referring to?
Woman: I’ve looked it up – it involved this Frenchman spending two months in a cave under a glacier – in 1962 I think it was. He was 100m below ground, and because he had nothing to track the time – no clock obviously, no sun either – he got disorientated. When he came back up, he thought he’d been down there for just 34 days. Very revealing for the researchers, who’d anticipated it would go the other way [5]. Various stuntmen and entertainers have done similar things to push themselves to extremes – but then of course they’ve always got an eye on the headlines they’ll create.
Man: That’s fascinating.
Woman: Yes, it’s all about temporal landmarks – they’re really important. If you build more of them into your life, you’ll experience time differently. Days and years won’t be one undifferentiated mush. Temporal landmarks help stop the feeling that time’s whizzing by. I bet, for example, you retain memories of events that happen near the beginning or end of term – they’re kind of landmarks – better than those that happened somewhere in between.
Man: So?
Woman: So establish a few landmarks – remember to mark special events like birthdays properly with some sort of celebration [6].
Man: That advice I’m happy to follow.
Part 2
Sarah: Welcome to my talk about my work to protect the oceans from the growing problem of pollution. I think many people are unaware of just how serious this is and the consequences it has for marine life. My interest started when I was working as a volunteer on a beach clean-up project called ‘Cleaner coasts’ and was introduced to my current boss. He persuaded me to come and work full-time for the environmental group he’d just established under the name ‘Water Response’, and I’ve never regretted my decision [7].
I soon found myself face-to-face with the direct consequences of ocean pollution, as my job involves helping to save seabirds who’ve swallowed the litter found floating on ocean surfaces, mistaking it for food. There is such a wide range of garbage entering the oceans now, and we rescue birds that’ve consumed everything from plastic bags to balloons, and even light bulbs
on occasion, would you believe [8]. Things like plastic bottle tops are common finds, unfortunately, too.
Another aspect of my work is removing as much of this debris from the coast as possible. Plastics are particularly dangerous for marine creatures as they contain what are known as organic pollutants. This is because plastics draw in a high concentration of damaging poisons, acting like a sort of chemical sponge [9].
This is really bad news you see. These chemicals affect not only a seabird’s digestive system, which is to be expected, but, what was news to me was that they also damage its reproductive system [10]. I was well aware that toxins are also notoriously harmful to the immune system, making it harder for many marine species to fight disease.
Another problem with plastic is its durability – it doesn’t go away like natural materials do, but just goes from being, say, a floating bottle to tiny plastic particles, attractive to marine creatures. This results from the action of sunlight, but wave action also plays a part in the fragmentation process [11].
Unfortunately, ocean pollution is increasing, despite various international conventions set up to control it. Around 100 million tonnes of plastic are produced annually, of which a shocking ten million tonnes end up in the sea. The majority of this gets there from land sources [12], although marine sources are actually responsible for dumping as much as 3.5 million tonnes of plastic each year.
As well as removing debris and caring for marine animals, I’m also involved in raising public awareness of the problem. I help run educational projects teaching people how to make small changes in their daily lives, like avoiding chemical-based detergents which can get into waterways and eventually find their way into the sea. I encourage others to try simple ingredients such as lemon juice for various household chores instead of their regular cleaning product [13]. This can be remarkably effective. Even things like keeping cars well-maintained is essential for ocean protection because oil leaks get washed down drains and end up causing more pollution [14] than the car tyres you see abandoned on beaches. Irresponsible though tyre dumping is, we’ve at least got a chance of stopping the tyres from getting into the sea.
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