Shadowing Practice: Cambridge 20 Listening Test 2 with Answers | IELTS Practice Test 2026 - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Test 2.
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This is the IELTS Listening Test.
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You will hear a number of different recordings and you will have to answer questions on what you hear.
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There will be time for you to read the instructions and questions and you will have a chance to check your work.
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All the recordings will be played once only.
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The test is in four parts.
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At the end of the test, you will be given 10 minutes to transfer your answers to an answer sheet.
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Now turn to part one.
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Part one.
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You will hear a woman who is caring for her elderly mother talking to a friend.
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First, you have some time to look at questions 1 to 4.
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Now listen carefully and answer questions 1 to 4.
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It's really good to see you, Tom.
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Since I had to give up work, I feel I'm losing touch with my friends and colleagues.
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We really miss you in the office.
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We were all so sorry you had to leave.
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But you must be relieved to have more time to look after your mother.
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How is she?
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Well, she's very cheerful, but she needs a lot of help.
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Have you tried to get any support from the local council?
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No, I didn't know I could.
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Yes.
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They offer different kinds of practical support.
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They realise that carers sometimes need time for all the other responsibilities they have, apart from the person they're caring for, and also that they sometimes need a break.
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Absolutely.
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Okay, so tell me more.
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How do I go about getting this support?
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Well, you'd have to have an assessment of your mother's needs.
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That means someone would come round and talk to you about the situation and what you need.
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So, for a start, they'd want to know the amount of time you spend looking after your mother every day.
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OK.
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Then they'll probably ask you what sorts of tasks you do for your mother during the day.
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Things like if she needs help with getting dressed, for example.
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Right.
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I help her with that.
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And also I help her get into the shower in the morning.
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Yes, that sort of thing.
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They'll probably ask you if you do the shopping for her and help her at mealtimes, and whether she can cope using money.
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Yes, that's becoming a bit of a problem.
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She used to be very good at it, but not anymore.
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Before you hear the rest of the conversation, you have some time to look at questions 5 to 10.
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Thank you.
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And be ready to tell them about anything you find particularly difficult about caring for your mother.
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So recently I've noticed she's started to have quite bad problems with her memory.
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If I wasn't there, I think she'd forget to eat, for example.
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And often she doesn't seem quite sure what day it is.
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Yes, tell them about that.
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And are there any physical difficulties you have caring for her?
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Lifting her, for example.
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Yes.
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She's quite heavy, and I'm afraid of hurting my back.
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I'd be in real trouble if that happened.
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They can give you advice about that, and also about how to avoid the possibility of your mum having a fall.
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Great.
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So, once they've done this assessment, if I'm eligible, what happens next?
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Well, they might support you financially.
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So they might help you with transport costs, like if you have to get a taxi to take your mother for an appointment, for example.
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I usually drive her myself, actually.
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So could I claim for the petrol?
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You could.
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And you can claim for the insurance too.
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Oh, right.
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And if you need help with the housework, they can arrange for someone to come along once or twice a week.
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And one other thing.
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I hope you don't mind me saying this, but it's important you look after yourself.
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And it seems to me you're under quite a bit of stress.
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I am, yes.
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Well, tell the council, because they may be able to give you some advice on how to minimise it.
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Really?
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Though, actually, I feel so much better having talked to you.
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I'll get in touch with the council straight away.
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Now, shall we go for coffee or something?
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That is the end of part one.
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You now have one minute to check your answers to part one.
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Thank you.
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Part 2
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You will hear a man who works for Elmley Town Council
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talking to some people who want to join the Small Towns Volunteer Scheme.
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First, you have some time to look at questions 11 to 16.
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Thank you.
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and answer questions 11 to 16.
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Good morning, everyone.
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I'm Steve Wainwright from Elmley Town Council and I organise the Town's Volunteer Scheme.
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I'm delighted you're all interested in joining the scheme.
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Our volunteers help to create a sense of community among the many people who live in our historic town of Elmley
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and make residents and visitors feel welcome at local events.
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First, I'll mention just a few of the activities that volunteers carry out.
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One is to walk around the town centre streets wearing our volunteer t-shirt.
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Tourists often ask how to get to a particular shop and they might also be grateful for recommendations about what to visit.
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The town holds a large number of concerts each year
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and part of the volunteers' role is to get everyone in the audience to the right place as smoothly as possible.
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You'd be surprised how many people buy tickets, then don't check them, and head for the wrong section of the hall.
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Volunteers may get involved with community groups, such as sports clubs or gardeners' associations.
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Here, the volunteers talk about how groups can help each other.
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For instance, a writing group might want to travel to another town to hear a talk by a well-known author,
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but may not know that another club has a coach they could travel in.
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The town produces a monthly magazine, and anyone who lives in the town can send in articles.
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It's free to residence and is paid for by local businesses.
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That's the responsibility of the council's advertising department.
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We depend on volunteers, though, to find out what people think of events they've attended, and any suggestions they have for the future.
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The volunteers then send a summary to the editors.
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There are a number of clubs for retired people, and every year the council arranges lunch for all the members.
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The volunteers welcome the guests and when everyone's sitting down and relaxing after the meal, some volunteers put on a show.
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Usually around half an hour of songs and short plays.
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The club members really welcome the chance to chat to the volunteers at these events.
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The Town Council has a website, of course, and volunteers are asked to help by making sure residents know about it.
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It's updated every day with information about future activities and we want as many people as possible to use it.
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Before you hear the rest of the talk, you have some time to look at questions 17 to 20.
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Now listen and answer questions 17 to 20.
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Okay, now you know some of the things our volunteers do, I'll go on to some practical matters.
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As you probably know, the town arranges three major festivals every year, and they all depend on a large number of volunteers.
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The book festival lasts three days and uses several venues which all need volunteers.
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More are needed for the Music Festival because that lasts a whole week, and even more help is required for the Science Festival, even though it's only two days long.
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It involves quite a lot of venues though.
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It's a good idea to help at the festival you're most interested in, because you can attend most of the events for free.
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We try to use volunteers who are flexible though
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because some festival events are held outdoors
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and the weather may affect the size the audience and even whether the event can take place, so there can be changes at short notice.
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What's essential though is being able to get on well with other people and also to deal with someone who's behaving badly,
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as occasionally happens.
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Our plan is to get you all working in September, after a week's training starting on the 2nd,
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so we'll be timetabling you for duties the following week from the 9th onward.
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Later in the week beginning September 23rd, we have a chat with each of you to find out how you feel about being a volunteer
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and what extra support you need.
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As a thank you to the volunteers, we arrange an annual event.
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In recent years we've had a party in the Town Hall and last year a barbecue in Chamber Park.
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Our forthcoming event is a trip trip along the canal from here to Dewhurst and back.
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It's on Saturday, September the 28th, and if you'd like to attend, you can sign up once you start work.
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Now, this is the Volunteers' T-shirt.
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That is the end of Part 2.
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You now have 30 seconds to check your answers to Part 2.
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Part 3 You will hear two students, called Rosie and Colin, discussing their Human Geography assignment.
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First, you have some time to look at questions 21 to 25.
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Thank you.
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Now listen carefully and answer questions 21 to 25.
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Colin, I'm really struggling to think of a topic for our human geography assignment.
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Me too, Rosie.
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I'll tell you what, let's think about the different aspects of human geography
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and see if we can narrow the topic down a bit to help us decide.
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OK, so one aspect is population.
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That would be all about population density and migration and so on.
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Lots of facts and statistics.
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Maybe a bit boring?
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Yeah, but quite straightforward to find on the internet.
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I suppose so.
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How about health?
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I'd never thought about the links between that and geography until Professor Lee gave us that lecture on cholera.
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How in the 19th century, a physician used street plans and plans of water supplies to find the source of a cholera epidemic.
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Yes, fascinating, wasn't it?
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Or we could do something more general, like economies.
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So how financial and commercial factors are linked to the physical environment?
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Yeah.
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I thought that had been taken off the syllabus for this year. Has it?
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I'm not sure.
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But it might be best to avoid it.
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OK.
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Maybe we could do something on culture.
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We had that lecture about culture and geography last week.
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I didn't get much out of that.
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It was also general, and the lecturer didn't give any useful examples.
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Yeah, I hardly took any notes.
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It didn't seem worth it.
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Me neither.
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We could focus on poverty.
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That's something that's a global problem.
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The trouble is, Dr Lee was saying, that you have to be careful with some of the figures relating to poverty.
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They're sometimes deliberately manipulated.
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You mean the information gets changed for political reasons?
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That sort of thing, yes.
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Before you hear the rest of the discussion, you have some time to look at questions 26 to 30.
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Thank you.
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Questions 26 to 30.
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So what are we going to do our assignment on?
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I'll tell you what.
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One of the possibilities we haven't discussed is urbanisation.
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And now over half the world's population lives in cities.
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That's really important.
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OK, good idea, Rosie.
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Let's do that.
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I love living in a big city, but of course there are problems.
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Things like theft and robbery?
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Yes, but where I come from, that's linked to another more serious issue, which is that a lot of people don't have jobs.
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That's getting worse and worse.
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And we also still have quite a lot of people who are homeless, though that's not quite so bad as it was.
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It'd be nice to talk about some positive developments, like some of the new developments on the outskirts of cities.
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Yeah, they've opened some massive new shopping centres outside my city.
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Yeah, the same with mine, but it's meant a lot of the shops in the city centre are closing down.
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But the outskirts are ideal for buildings that need a lot of space, like for conferences.
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They've opened a couple of big ones.
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Yes, we've got some too.
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It'd be nicer to have more facilities for things like football too, but that's not happening where I live.
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Same in my area.
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We could include something about developing disused industrial sites.
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It seems like a good idea because you're not doing any harm to the natural environment.
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Yeah, but aren't the buildings architecturally significant?
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Not really.
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And what people forget is that they often used quite dangerous materials, chemicals and things, which haven't been properly cleared away, so the whole site has to be made safe.
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That can't be cheap, and I bet it's often not budgeted for.
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You're right.
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Have you read about Mazdar City?
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In Abu Dhabi?
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Yes.
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It was designed to be a green city, wasn't it?
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That might be a good example of a city which set out to depend entirely on renewable energy.
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Yes, we should say something about that.
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It was designed to be totally pedestrianised too, wasn't it?
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With the transport underground.
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Yes, and they had big plans for recycling to reduce waste to the lowest possible level.
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But let's stick to talking about power sources.
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Then there's that eco-town in England, Greenhill Abbotts.
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It's set out to conform to the usual principles – sustainability and so on.
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A lot of people were against it at first.
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They said the plans were unrealistic.
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I'm not sure how far they've got with it.
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I'll check.
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Right.
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So it looks as if we have a sort of plan and we can work on it.
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That is the end of part three.
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You now have 30 seconds to check your answers to part three.
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Thank you.
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Part 4 You will hear part of a food science lecture on fashions in food.
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First, you have some time to look at questions 31 to 40.
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Thank you.
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Now listen carefully and answer questions 31 to 40.
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There are trends in food much as there are trends in clothing.
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Interest in food fashions has risen rapidly since the birth of the smartphone
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when people first began taking photos of their food and instantly sharing them with their friends.
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The food industry in the UK in particular is obsessed with finding and exploiting the next big food trend.
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Marketeers aim to create a huge demand for a food item which was previously unknown or not needed.
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One of the most effective ways of promoting a new food product is by using social media influencers as brand ambassadors.
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In return for free samples, many influencers will post content about a product,
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although there are influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers who can command large fees for their services.
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Companies which sell vegan produce were pioneers in being able to increase sales really quickly in this way.
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For a food item to become really popular, it has to be readily available.
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So supermarkets have a role to play in creating a new food trend.
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They have dedicated teams closely following which new products
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or ingredients are trending on social media and are particularly interested in what well-known chefs are putting on their menus.
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I'd like to look at a few examples of marketing campaigns which were really successful in launching a new fashion trend.
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Starting in the 1990s with the avocado.
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A British PR company was hired to raise its profile and stimulate demand.
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They paid for a group of journalists to travel out to South Africa to meet avocado farmers.
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Articles written following this visit helped to educate the British public about the avocado,
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which at this time was certainly not the daily staple it's since become.
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Advertisements were designed to promote the avocado as a superfood, rich in nutrients and therefore beneficial for health.
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Avocados became hugely fashionable,
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and within a few years UK avocado sales had grown from 13 million pounds annually to around 150 million,
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making it one of the most successful fresh produce campaigns in UK history.
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Oatmilk is a recent example of a new product which became fashionable very quickly.
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Now there are many brands available, but one company which had early success was the Swedish brand Oatly.
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They attracted a lot of attention with the media campaign which used provocation as a way of getting their message across effectively.
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The fact that this campaign aggravated competitors producing milk from dairy cows was seen as a plus,
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as it helped to make oat milk seem cool.
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In the USA, the brand decided against a big retail launch in favour of getting the product into coffee chains,
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which removed the need for a big advertising budget.
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This proved far more effective than offering samples in supermarkets.
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Oat milk had an advantage over other alternative milk products, such as almond milk.
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Many consumers prefer it because it has less of an impact on the environment.
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It requires significantly less water to produce than other alternative milk products and it also has a relatively low carbon footprint.
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Norwegian scray, a rarely available seasonal fish delicacy, otherwise known as Arctic cod,
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is now found on the menus of Michelin-starred restaurants throughout Europe.
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The demand for Scrae has been used by a food marketing agency to build the reputation of Norway's fisheries in general.
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Marketing surveys have shown that a significant number of shoppers now associate Norway with excellent seafood.
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Food trends can be considered a good thing in some ways, as they can benefit farmers and food producers enormously.
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The public can also be encouraged to buy things which are more sustainably produced.
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But ethical concerns have been raised about the effects a surge in demand can cause.
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Quinoa is a classic example.
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This plant is native to Peru and when demand peaked some years ago,
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the price soared, making it unaffordable for local people.
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While the popularity of quinoa has benefited farmers financially, there have been other negative consequences.
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As demand grew, farmers began working the land all year round in order to produce more quinoa.
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One issue has been that the fertility of the soil decreased dramatically,
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which could potentially lead to desertification in some areas.
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Another example would be the case of...
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That is the end of part four.
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You now have one minute to check your answers to part four.
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Thank you.
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What You'll Learn from This IELTS Listening Practice Video
This video is a goldmine for learning practical English skills, especially for those preparing for the IELTS or looking to learn English with videos. First, you’ll master how to follow conversational flow in real-life contexts—like discussing caregiving, a common topic in daily interactions. Second, you’ll practice identifying key details (e.g., types of support, challenges in care) that are critical for both listening tests and everyday communication. Finally, you’ll pick up natural phrasing for asking for help, such as “How do I go about getting this support?”—a useful structure for formal and informal settings.
Listen For These Sounds: Connected Speech and Reductions
The dialogue is rich with connected speech patterns that native speakers use. Notice how “I didn’t know I could” becomes “I din’t know I could” (reduction of “didn’t” to “din’t”) and “she needs a lot of help” flows as “she needs a lotta help” (linking “of” to “a” as “lotta”). These reductions and links are common in fast speech, so training your ear to recognize them will make real conversations easier to follow. Pay attention to how “have to” is shortened to “hafta” in “you’d have to have an assessment”—this is a key reduction to master for better listening comprehension.
Say It Like a Native: Rhythm and Stress
To mirror the speaker’s natural rhythm, focus on stressing content words. In “she’s very cheerful, but she needs a lot of help,” stress “cheerful” and “needs” to emphasize the main ideas. For questions like “How is she?”, rise slightly in tone at the end to sound conversational, not robotic. Practicing this with a shadowing app or shadowing site can help you match the pace and intonation. Try “shadow speak” by repeating phrases immediately after the speaker—this technique improves pronunciation and fluency. For example, repeat “That means someone would come round and talk to you about the situation” to mimic the smooth, connected delivery. Over time, this will make your English sound more natural and confident.
By focusing on these skills, you’ll not only boost your IELTS listening score but also improve English pronunciation and conversational ability—key goals for any learner.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | Have you tried · I've noticed · they've done |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | will be played · will be given · must be relieved |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | woman who is · man who works · people who want |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.