CAE Listening Practice Test 2 Printable

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 1
John: So, Diane, have you finally decided to come to Hong Kong with us for a holiday? Your flight’s reserved, we need to confirm by Wednesday.
Diane: Well, John, I’ve given it some thought and it’s pretty tempting, but it’s not that long since I last had a break. I don’t know – I still haven’t come to any definite decision.
John: Oh, come on, what’s the problem? I know it may seem extravagant, but you told me you’d just been given promotion and a rise, so that can’t be an issue, surely [1].
Diane: Well, it’s not so much that as my work situation. Taking another break so soon after my promotion might send out the wrong message to my team, although I think my line manager would understand.
John: Of course – she knows you’re a good worker.
Diane: Hmm. Well, I guess I could empty my in-tray in time – my workload’s not too heavy just now. It’s just that I haven’t had much time to get the office organised, and to be honest, one of my colleagues would probably be only too glad to use my absence to further his own position [2].
John: Hmm, sounds pretty nasty to me. Are you sure you want to carry on working there?
Extract 2
Man: I hear Joe Schultz’s new film The System isn’t going to be given the ‘12’ certificate he wanted.
Woman: So youngsters can’t see it? I’m not surprised. The reviewers say that watching the first few minutes is pretty unpleasant – there’s a lot of aggression.
Man: That didn’t seem to worry the authorities. Nor did the strong language, although there’s quite a bit of that, but they couldn’t take the little bursts of rather tense music – makes your hair stand on end, apparently [3]!
Woman: Interesting. Anyway, I don’t think the storyline’s really suitable for young
children – too much delving into people’s thoughts and motives.
Man: True. You’ve read the book?
Woman: Oh yeah. A great page-turner. I had no idea what the final outcome would be.
Man: Oh, I guessed. I loved the way the author uses dialect all the way through – a bit out of the ordinary [4].
Woman: Takes some getting used to, but it’s decidedly different. You can’t really believe the Prince is based on a real person from the past, though, can you?
Man: I thought he did come over well, considering how little we know about people from that era.
Woman: We’ll go and see the film, won’t we?
Man: Definitely.
Extract 3
Interviewer: Ingrid Chapman, tell us about this new office block.
Ingrid: It has enormous glass walls, because transparency was paramount in the brief I received from my clients – that gives it an airy, spacious feel inside. The three floors all open onto a cavernous central hall, and this is what’s crucial for me – there are so many reasons for people to meet there [5]: have a coffee, gossip, discuss formal matters in an informal setting. I force them to do these things by locating most of the services they need in this area – toilets,
photocopying, cafe, etc.
Interviewer: Forgive me, but there’ll be company executives listening who are saying,
‘That’s all very well if you’re able to design a brand new building from scratch.’ What would you say to them?
Ingrid: Commission me to come up with a scheme for a replacement, for example? No, seriously, it doesn’t require much, a little creativity, that’s all [6]. Under-used areas can be refurbished, art hung on the walls, that sort of thing. And a questionnaire can be sent to all personnel to get their reactions to any changes you’ve made. Good morale facilitates productivity.

Part 2

Museum guide: Welcome to the City Museum and Art Gallery. Before we start our tour, I’d like
to give you a bit of background information about the place itself. The museum was founded in 1849 as a home for the collections built up over the years by the local Cultural Society [7], and is one of seven museums owned by the city council. Its collections of dinosaurs and mummies are well known, and it also has one of Britain’s top five exhibitions of natural science [8]. Unfortunately, not all areas are open to the public at the moment. In the cellar
storerooms, for example, there are, amongst other things, display cases full of butterflies, and many others full of birds [9].

Upstairs, there’s a section designed especially for children, for those of you who are interested, where young people can dress up, draw pictures, and find out about the museum at their own pace. It’s called ‘Let’s Interact’ and there’s more noise there than silence [10], as you might imagine. But we find this to be a successful way of attracting children to museums. Let’s face it, museums in the past have been boring, rather stuffy places for children, and indeed adults,
to visit.

The picture galleries, which we’ll be visiting later, boast a fine collection of drawings, prints and woodcuts by German artists [11], and the art collection is arranged thematically, rather than chronologically. The themes we shall see are: colour, light, movement, signs, and symbols.

It’s a bit cold here, I’m afraid. I do apologise for this but, I’m sorry to say, the central heating needs a million-pound refit [12], which the city can’t afford to undertake at the moment. So, if any of you are millionaires, and feeling generous today, please see me after the tour!

Now, if you will just follow me to the end of the Grand Colonnade, we’ll turn right into the first exhibit room on the ground floor. [pause] Now, this room houses the Rutland Dinosaur. As you can see, it’s three and a half metres high and fourteen metres long, quite an intimidating sight [13]! This Cetiosaurus, as it’s called, was found in England’s smallest county in 1968. The creature loped across the countryside 175 million years ago, and is the most complete example of the breed discovered to date. Most of the neck, some of the spine and a bit of the tail were found in Rutland; the rest of the tail is polystyrene [14]. For those of you who prefer your dinosaurs on a much more human scale, there is a much smaller 200-million-year-old Pilosaur over there.
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