The community garden ielts listening transcript
The part of the text containing the answer is underlined with the question number given in square brackets []. If you still struggle with IELTS Listening tests, please refer to IELTS Listening tips. IELTS Listening Section 1Recorded message: Thank you for calling Millennium Office Supplies. If you would like to place an order, please press one. Your call has been placed in a queue. A customer service operator will be with you shortly. IELTS Listening Section 2Announcer: And now for some information on local events and activities. A couple of announcements for art-lovers and budding artists alike. First, a new collection of artwork is going on show to the public next month in the form of an artists’ exhibition. The exhibition will include many different types of art, over 100 different pieces, by 58 artists from the local area. It’s being held at the Royal Museum [11] which – for those of you who are unfamiliar with the area – is located opposite the library in West Street, right on the corner. The actual address is number 1, Queen’s Park Road [12] – it isn’t difficult to find. The exhibition will run for 9 weeks and will begin on the 6th of October and continue until the 10th December [13]. So there’s plenty of time for you to go along and have a look and I’m sure that will be worth doing. What will you see there? Well, amongst the items on display will be some exciting pieces of modern jewellery, furniture, ceramics, metal work [14] and sculpture. To give you some examples, local artist Kate Maine will be there to discuss her collection of pots and bowls that she has made to resemble garden vegetables. They’re the sort of thing that would brighten up any dining table, and range from things like yellow cabbage-shaped bowls to round tomato-shaped teapots [15 – note that the word ‘vegetable’ is not mentioned, but cabbage and tomato are both vegetables]. Prize-winner Cynthia Course will also be there to talk about her silver jewellery, all of which she produced using ideas from the rural setting of her country home. Some of her rings are quite extraordinary and have beautiful coloured stones [16] in them. Or if you prefer sculpture, there’s plenty of that too. Take, for example, Susan Cup’s sculpture of 25 pairs of white paper shoes [17]. It sounds easy, but believe me it looks incredible! All of these items along with many others will be on sale-throughout the exhibition period. As part of the exhibition, there will be a series of demonstrations called ‘Face to Face’ [18 — remember to capitalise the answer — it is a name of an exhibition] which will take place every Sunday afternoon during the exhibition and these will provide an opportunity for you to meet the artists. The second set of activities are for those who would prefer to indulge in some artwork themselves, the Artist’s Conservatory are holding a series of courses over the autumn period. The courses cover all media and include subjects such as Chinese brush painting, pencil drawing [19] and silk painting. All the tutors are experienced artists, course sizes are kept to a minimum of 15 and there will be plenty of individual assistance. All the sessions offer excellent value for money and the opportunity to relax in a delightful rural setting. Fees are very reasonable and include the use of an excellent studio and access to the art shop which you will find sells everything from paper to CDs and they also include the provision of all materials [20]. For more information on dates, cost and availability you should get in touch with the programme coordinator on 4592 839584 or go direct to the website… IELTS Listening Section 3Interviewer: Alison Sharp has spent much of her life researching bears and in particular bears in danger of extinction. She is the author of a recent book on bears and we welcome her to the studio today. IELTS Listening Section 4Man: Good evening and welcome to this month’s Observatory Club lecture. I’m Donald Mackie and I’m here to talk to you about the solar eclipse in history. A thousand years ago, a total eclipse of the sun was a terrifying religious experience – but these days an eclipse is more likely to be viewed as a tourist attraction [31] than as a scientific or spiritual event. People will travel literally miles to be in the right place at the right time — to get the best view of their eclipse. Well. What exactly causes a solar eclipse — when the world goes dark for a few minutes in the middle of the day? Scientifically speaking, the dark spot itself is easy to explain [32]: it is the shadow of the moon streaking across the earth. This happens every year or two, each time along a different and, to all intents and purposes, a seemingly random piece of the globe. In the past people often interpreted an eclipse as a danger signal heralding disaster and in fact, the Chinese were so disturbed by these events that they included among their gods one whose job it was to prevent eclipses [33]. But whether or not you are superstitious or take a purely scientific view, our earthly eclipses are special in three ways. Firstly, there can be no doubt that they are very beautiful. It’s as if a deep blue curtain had fallen over the daytime sky as the sun becomes a black void surrounded by the glow of its outer atmosphere. But beyond this, total eclipses possess a second more compelling beauty in the eves of us scientists, for they offer a unique opportunity for research [34]. Only during an eclipse can we study the corona and other dim things that are normally lost in the sun’s glare. And thirdly, they are rare. Even though an eclipse of the sun occurs somewhere on earth every year or two, if you sit in your garden and wait, it will take 375 years on average for one to come to you. If the moon were any larger, eclipses would become a monthly bore [35]: if it were smaller, they simply would not be possible. The ancient Babylonian priests, who spent a fair bit of time staring at the sky, had already noted that there was an 18-year pattern in their recurrence but they didn’t have the mathematics to predict an eclipse accurately [36]. It was Edmund Halley, the English astronomer, who knew his maths well enough to predict the return of the comet which, incidentally bears his name, and in 1715 he became the first person to make an accurate eclipse prediction [37]. This brought eclipses firmly into the scientific domain and they have since allowed a number of important scientific discoveries to be made. For instance, in the eclipse of 1868 two scientists, Janssen and Lockyer, were observing the sun’s atmosphere and it was these observations that ultimately led to the discovery of a new element [38]. They named the element helium after the Greek god of the sun. This was a major find, because helium turned out to be the most common element in the universe after hydrogen. Another great triumph involved Mercury. I’ll just put that up on the board for you now. See — there’s Mercury — the planet closest to the Sun – then Venus, Earth, etc. For centuries, scientists had been unable to understand why Mercury appeared to rotate faster than it should. Some astronomers suggested that there might be an undiscovered planet causing this unusual orbit and even gave it the name ‘Vulcan’. During the eclipse of 1878, an American astronomer, James Watson, thought he had spotted this so-called ‘lost’ planet [39]. But, alas for him, he was later obliged to admit that he had been wrong about Vulcan and withdrew his claim. Then Albert Einstein came on the scene. Einstein suggested that rather than being wrong about the number of planets, astronomers were actually wrong about gravity [40]. Einstein’s theory of relativity – for which he is so famous – disagreed with Newton’s law of gravity in just the right way to explain Mercury’s odd orbit. He also realised that a definitive test would be possible during the total eclipse of 1919 and this is indeed when his theory was finally proved correct. |