CAE LISTENING TEST

Listening Part 1

You will hear three different extracts. For questions 1-6, choose the answer (A, B or C) which fits best
according to what you hear. There are two questions for each extract.
00:00
Extract One
You hear two neighbours, Adam and Juliet, talking about living in Montreal, Canada.

1 What attracted Adam to living in Montreal?

A the change in weather from winter to summer
B the feeling of close community evident there
C the value inhabitants place on tradition

2 What do they both say about accommodation in Montreal?

A The frequency with which people move house is above average.
B Central apartments are rarely available for purchase.
C Renting is a comparatively inexpensive option.

Extract Two
You hear two students, a girl called Soraya and a boy called Halim, talking about an essay they have to
write on the topic of plastic.

3 What is Soraya doing?

A acknowledging the benefits of plastic as a material
B assessing the accuracy of information written about plastic
C clarifying reasons for a change in people’s attitudes to plastic

4 What does Halim say about the documentary he saw?

A It failed to offer a balanced argument.
B It exaggerated the conclusions it drew.
C It omitted some significant points.

Extract Three
You hear a psychologist, Dr Jane Blake, and a journalist, Ed Regas, discussing the teenage years.

5 According to Dr Blake, what mistake do some parents make?

A They misinterpret their teenagers’ behaviour.
B They want to project their children for too long.
C They fail to recognise that their children’s needs have changed.

6 Which aspect of adolescence particularly interests Ed Regas?

A the role played by gaming in teenagers’ lives
B teenagers’ abnormal sleep patterns
C the influence of peers on teenagers

Listening Part 2

You will hear a citrus fruit grower, called Ben Tyrell, giving a presentation to students. For questions 7-14,
complete the sentences with a word or short phrase.
 CITRUS FRUIT FARMER
Ben has an organic farm, so he relies primarily on (7) …………………………… to assess the health of his
trees.
If the (8) …………………………… of a tree are the wrong colour, the tree usually requires fertiliser.
When to give trees fertiliser is determined principally by the (9) …………………………… .
To control fungi on the fruit, Ben uses (10) …………………………… as an organic fungicide.
Ben only worries about weeds if they are growing near his (11) …………………………… system.
The (12) …………………………… of the fruit is the last criterion to check before picking begins.
The only tool fruit pickers use is (13) ……………………………, otherwise fruit may be damaged.
Ben uses the phrase ‘(14) ……………………………’ to describe what he aims to teach school children.

Listening Part 3

You will hear an interview with two trainee teachers, called Amy and John, about students using
smartphones in school. For questions 15-20, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which fits best according to
what you hear.

15 Amy would like schools to teach students

A to be aware of advertising on smartphones.
B about the effects of overuse of smartphones.
C how to avoid being distracted by smartphones.
D to decide for themselves when to use smartphones.

16 Amy and John both say that some parents

A aren’t consistent in applying rules about using smartphones.
B buy smartphones for quite young children.
C fail to set a good example of smartphone use.
D don’t know which sites their children use on their smartphones.

17 John approves of students using smartphones in class in order to

A take photos of their work.
B look up information.
C record a conversation.
D use the calculator.

18 What happened when smartphones were banned in one school?

A The police spent less time on smartphone thefts.
B Teachers spent more time on the content of lessons.
C Students soon accepted the situation.
D Most parents welcomed the decision.

19 John mentions workplaces to point out that company rules regarding smartphone use
A vary according to the type of work done.
B should be reviewed regularly.
C are difficult to enforce.
D acknowledge that phones are valuable tools.

20 What does Amy conclude about the debate on the topic of using smart-phones in school?
A It shows parents and teachers hold very different views from each other.
B It is being used to hide more serious matters.
C It reflects significant changes in society.
D It will soon seem outdated.

Listening Part 4

You will hear five short extracts in which young writers are talking about one of their books winning a
competition.
TASK ONE
For questions 21-25, choose from the list (A-H) how each person left when they entered the competition.

TASK TWO
For questions 26-30, choose from the list (A-H) the main consequence for each person of winning the
competition.
While you listen you must complete both tasks.

A hopeful of winning the cash prize

B terrified at making a speech 21 Speaker 1
C convinced they would not win 22 Speaker 2
D amused by the reactions of friends 23 Speaker 3
E unhappy with the competition rules 24 Speaker 4
F worried about coping with failure 25 Speaker 5
G impressed by the other books
H determined to learn from the experience

A offers from overseas publishers

B a change in writing style 26 Speaker 1
C opportunities to travel 27 Speaker 2
D contact with readers 28 Speaker 3
E difficulties finding inspiration 29 Speaker 4
F media intrusión 30 Speaker 5
G increased sales of previous work

H a boost to confidenc

LISTENING 1

Extract One
Juliet: Hi, Adam. How are you finding living in Montreal?
Adam: Hi, Juliet. It’s a great city and I’ve got some good buddies now, guys who live on our street and
work colleagues. Are you going to the street party to celebrate Canada Day?
Juliet: You bet. It’s a real important thing for me and my family; celebrating it is an annual ritual for us.
Adam: I’ll see you there then; it’s going to be a beautiful day. That sudden shift from biting cold gales to
beautifully balmy evenings when you can sit outside in a T-shirt until midnight is what drew me to Montreal.
It’s awesome!
Juliet: I know what you mean. So are you staying on in your apartment? I think you said you only leased it
for a year?
Adam: Yeah. It makes sense to rent in Montreal – you don’t have to fork out a fortune for a place
downtown.
Juliet: You can get a deal because there’s so much on the market.
Adam: And getting a place of my own is, well, financially out of the question. But quite a few people on our
street are moving out, right?
Juliet: Yeah, like my sister’s moving again. She wants to be more in the centre.
Adam: Oh, OK.
Extract Two
Halim: Hi, Soraya, how are you getting on with your essay on plastic?
Soraya: Hi, Halim. Well, the background reading’s fascinating. OK, there’s been a complete U-turn in the
views expressed in journals and even in the popular press in recent years. But actually, when I read about
the 1950s, I get that at that time plastic was seen as revolutionary. You could make anything from it, from
bottles to roofs; it was so strong and durable. What was not to like? Whereas now, it’s seen as a real
threat to the planet.
Halim: Yeah. I’ve read a couple of really thought-provoking articles and I watched the documentary our
tutor recommended, you know the one called Plastic Madness.
Soraya: Oh yeah, any good?
Halim: Wildly over-dramatic at the end, in my view. To be fair, it did go into the pros and cons of the uses
of plastic, and it covered the main ideas we’d discussed in class, but to close with statements like Most
species of fish will be extinct within ten years was way over the top.
Soraya: And did it go into issues like plastic causing air pollution?
Halim: It did, yeah.
Extract Three
Ed: So, Jane, I’m the parent of a sixteen-year-old, Max, and my wife and I are constantly wondering if
we’re doing the right thing.
Jane: The teenage years are critical in human development, Ed. Parents are programmed to care for their
child, but in evolutionary terms, the infant must develop, mature and eventually separate from them. And
although the majority of parents cope admirably with their child becoming a monosyllabic and at times
difficult teenager, few know when to let go. At the same time, parents do generally adapt well to having to
provide more emotional support than physical support.
Ed: With Max, we’re going through things like, he seems reluctant to wake up before ten.
Jane: Some schools have changed their timetable to take into account the fact that teenagers perform
better later in the day.
Ed: Not his, unfortunately. The good thing is Max and I are both seriously into gaming and I’m fascinated
by how so many games promote universal values like hard work pays off, collaboration works better than
confrontation and thinking things through is to be admired. I encourage Max to invite his mates round to
our house because I want him to build up a circle of good friends who share common interests.

LISTENING 2

Audioscript
Ben: Hi, I’d like to tell you a bit about myself and my work as a citrus fruit farmer. My name’s Ben Tyrell
and my family’s been growing oranges, lemons and grapefruit for several generations. As an organic
grower, I don’t use synthetic pesticides on our farm, so to ensure all the trees are healthy, observation
becomes that much more important; even more important than, for example, the protection of young
trees. If a tree needs fertiliser, there’ll be discoloration of the leaves rather than the bark. When a tree’s
off-colour, it might be because it’s running low on potassium or nitrogen. Deciding when to start putting
some organic fertiliser on the trees has to be carefully calculated. It’ll depend partly on the deadlines for
delivering the fruit to the packing house, but mainly on the weather. Do it at the wrong time and its
efficiency is greatly reduced.
In springtime, my day will also include checking the fungus situation on the fruit on the trees. At this time of
year, we’re mainly concerned with the fungi Alternaria and Melanose. While harmless, if the fruit has either
of these fungi, it’ll have blemishes and that’d put our fruit into a lower grade at the packing house. So, if we
find any fungi, I use bacteria to attack and control the fungi as an organic solution to the problem. Some
growers use a type of soap made from organic fats, but not me.
During the summer, weeds start growing up around the trees. We’re completely against using any sort of
chemicals as a weed killer and I guess our neighbours might think our farm looks a bit messy, but I don’t
get hung up about weeds. The only time we do something about them is when they start appearing right
next to the irrigation setup. Then we might use small grass mowers that we keep in a shed to control the
weeds.
In late fall, harvest time, I begin to check if the fruit’s ready to pick. In the US, there are state regulations
for when to pick fruit. We have to check that the fruit contains certain levels of sugar and juice. After
meeting these requirements, finally, we’ll look at size because there are regulations for that as well. So,
when we’re sure the fruit is ready, we call in the pickers. All the fruit’s picked by hand – our workers use
scissors so that we don’t damage the fruit. We don’t use ladders or metal baskets for the same reason.
I love growing organically and knowing that the fruit we produce is as healthy as it can be. We do tours of
the farm for school kids because I’m keen that future generations can ‘touch the earth’, if you know what I
mean. They can make what we call ‘intelligent food choices’, based on the knowledge of how a food was
grown, how it was processed and how it was stored.
Now, any questions …

LISTENING 3

Interviewer: I’d like to hear your views on students using smartphones at school, a topic that’s been in the
press a great deal recently. Amy, what’s your opinion?
Amy: Yes, there’s a really interesting debate going on about it. In one school where I worked as a trainee
teacher, teachers were concerned that students weren’t paying enough attention to the lessons, as they
were thinking about when they could next take a look at their phones. In my view, the role of education
should be to enable students to assess a situation and then decide if using a smartphone is appropriate –
polite – and how long to use it for. In another school, I saw a lesson where students had to actually look for
pop-up messages selling products aimed at young people on their phones and then there was a class
discussion about the ethics of that.
Interviewer: And John, what do you think?
John: But what about the role of parents in this? Don’t you think most parents talk about how, where and
when to use phones a lot with their children before they allow them to have one, especially if the child’s still
young?
Amy: You mean they say, you can only use it to talk to friends for one hour a day and not after 7 pm, that
sort of thing?
John: Exactly, or …
Amy: But how do they monitor that? And anyway, lots of parents say things like ‘Don’t use your phone
during dinner’ and then they actually do that themselves!
John: Or they’re always doing internet shopping. They can’t expect their child not to do what they
themselves are doing, I guess. But in my experience, parents do monitor their kids’ use of smartphones.
Interviewer: Coming back to smartphone use at school, John, do you think students should be able to use
phones in class time?
John: For some things yes, but with limits. I think using the camera should be a no-no, even if students say
they want to show a painting they’ve done or something to their parents. That’d lead to inappropriate use
of phones, I’m sure. Like the record function – as a teacher I wouldn’t like students recording me in
class. But if they wanted to check a spelling or find out what the capital of Norway is, for instance, that’s
fine in my book. Some teachers let students use phones in maths lessons for difficult calculations and
things, but I’d rather students understood how to work it out for themselves.
Interviewer: And Amy, didn’t you work in a school where smartphones were banned?
Amy: Yes, when I was doing teaching practice last term as part of my course to become a teacher, the
school had just introduced the ban. It didn’t go down well with some mums and dads who wanted their
child to have a phone in case there was an emergency. There’d just been a police report in the local
newspaper about crime near the school, and parents felt young people might need to contact them or the
police at any time.
John: I bet the students weren’t very happy about the ban either.
Amy: Strangely enough, after the first week, they seemed almost to forget about it! And some even said
they enjoyed their teachers’ lessons more.
John: Interesting. And actually, in most workplaces you can only use your smartphone during your official
breaks; it’s part of your terms and conditions when you accept the job. So perhaps it’d be a good idea if
more schools looked again at their policy regarding smartphones, so that children get used to the fact that
restriction is the norm and not a rule that they think can be easily broken. Of course, there are offices
where smartphones are totally forbidden, like where they deal with confidential information, or they’re
banned when a worker’s operating machinery because being distracted by their phone might result in an
accident.
Interviewer: So, Amy, any final words on this topic?
Amy: Well, there’ll always be heated discussions about this sort of thing in education. And sometimes the
debate may seem trivial, but schools have to always make sure they’re doing the best for students. With
new gadgets coming out at such a rate, schools are just keeping pace with what’s going on in the wider
community. And, let’s face it, new technology has a huge effect on our lives.
John: And soon, we’ll all have forgotten about smartphones because some other piece of technology will
be all the rage!
Interviewer: Thank you both.