Tapescript
The part of the text containing the answer is underlined with the question number given in square brackets []. Points that are crucial to understand are written in italics. If you still struggle with CAE Listening, please refer to Listening tips.
Part 1
Extract 1
Woman: So is John Elliott a player you like to watch? I’m guessing he is.
Man: Yes, he’s excellent, very technical, clever with the ball; he’s good at passing the ball to the team’s top goal scorers and setting them up to shoot. When he sees that final pass coming as he approaches the goal area, you get a lot of players who get there but then freeze and get erratic, but he’s not one of them [1]. So if you can get him backing up the strikers, he can be the key player.
Woman: And what about their new man, Danny Martinez? Seven million they paid for him, they’ve probably overpaid. Not very cautious given that they’ve paid out this kind of cash before and it all went wrong, didn’t it? They’ll want to hang on to him come what may, at that price [2]…
Man: Yes, well, it hasn’t broken the bank, but they were overcharged for him. They probably thought he was a good investment – he’s young, they can sell him on if things go wrong, for more money [2]. They got their fingers burnt once over a similar deal, and they won’t want it to happen again.
Extract 2
Interviewer: Congratulations, Deanna!
Deanna: Thanks very much.
Interviewer: Were you surprised to win?
Deanna: Completely!
Interviewer: Now you’re trying to save a wildlife habitat that stretches 3,000 kilometres along the coast of South America. Aren’t you daunted by that?
Deanna: It’s a huge task but we’re basically getting the message out: the local fish population – mainly anchovies – are being forced into colder water because the sea’s warming up [3]. Of those left, 85 per cent are being scooped up by industrial fishing trawlers so predators like seals, penguins and dolphins – and local fishermen – are left with very little. Now this is the richest ecosystem in the world. If it’s starting to be affected, you know there must be a tremendous impact on other less robust systems.
Interviewer: So what’s your relationship like with local fishermen?
Deanna: They used to regard me as an enemy because I used to work for seals, and as you know, fishermen and seals compete for the same fish – but now they see me as an ally trying to control industrial fishing.
Interviewer: What – stopping them scooping up anchovies?
Deanna: Not stopping them, but getting them to catch less; which means the local fishermen can catch more of the large fish that feed on the anchovies [4].
Extract 3
Neil: Today we’re talking about books that have inspired us, books that have made a difference to our lives. Each of my studio guests has chosen what for them was an important book and first off we’re going to hear about Monica Naim’s choice. Monica.
Monica: Thanks, Neil. Well the thing about this book is that when I first discovered it in my late teens – it was a birthday present, if I remember correctly – I’d never really read anything like it before. I’d heard about it from a friend, and I’d got the idea it was something special and so I asked for it specifically [5]. I think I was about 17, so I was a fairly late developer as a reader. I hadn’t been particularly interested up till then, but it suddenly sort of took a grip. I think it was the strangeness of that book; I mean it’s the one I’d take with me to a desert island because it’s just got everything in it and it just opened me up to what pleasures there are in description, in narrative, you know, in ideas [6].
Neil: Well, we’ll discover exactly which book my next guest has chosen…
Part 2
Narrator: When I visited a number of fruit farms in central England, I found broad agreement among most of the growers that these days it makes sense to move away from their traditional crops such as apples and into cherries instead [7]. Now, in summertime, they have orchard after orchard of beautiful trees, heavily laden with bright red fruit.
UK cherry growers tend to choose the varieties which ripen slowly. This fruit may command a higher price because the harvest is not so early, and there are always reliable buyers for it. Research is currently being carried out into ways of improving yield. A major obstacle to efficient production is the fact that growth may not be consistent from season to season. Sometimes the fruit only grows as big as a pea, and then drops to the ground.
Quite a few of the smaller trees are covered up against the rain and wind, in a plastic tunnel [8]. Older, larger trees have to take their chance out in the open, but cherries are a delicate fruit, and optimum weather conditions are needed to achieve the potential yield of five tonnes per hectare. The surface of the fruit has very little wax on it, so cherries need to be kept out of the rain as much as possible, because the skin is liable to crack when water gets into it [9]. If this occurs, the crop may be lost, because the fruit bursts with a pop, rather like a balloon [10].
When you’re selecting the best cherries to buy, don’t get them if they look at all tired or wrinkled, and buy the ones with a green stem [11]. You’ll find they taste much better than ones without.
People often ask, ‘How long does it take to get a decent crop from a cherry tree?’ Well, there are new varieties, laden with fruit, that are only four years old, but if you go back and read the old fruit-growing textbooks from the 1960s, they tell you cherries don’t give a worthwhile crop till they’re 12 years old [12]. Some varieties go on cropping till they’re 90!
There are three new varieties which have recently been introduced by growers. ‘Symphony’ and ‘Staccato’ are both highly successful so far, but ‘Sweetheart’ is being planted in larger numbers [13] than either of them and looks to be a real winner.
Just one problem if you go cherry picking this summer – how do you stop yourself eating them all? One expert who’s been picking all her life told me, ‘Eat a cherry, suck the stone and keep it on your tongue – it stops you putting any more in [14]!’ That way you end up with at least a handful of this delicious fruit in your basket!
Click to download this CAE Listening Test in PDF