IELTS Listening Hand Knitting

answer questions on what you hear there will be time for you to read the instructions and questions and you will have a chance to check your work all the recordings will be played once only the

test

is in four parts at the end of the

test

you will be given 10 minutes to transfer your

answers

to the answer sheet now turn to part one part one you will hear a woman phoning to ask about a summer cycling camp for her young son who is called charlie first you have some time to look at questions one to

five now listen carefully and answer questions one to five hello junior cycle camp jake speaking hi i'm calling for some information about the cycle camp i'm thinking of sending my son great well it's held every weekday morning over the summer vacation and we focus on basic cycling skills and safety we have eight levels for children from three years upwards how old's your son charlie he's seven he can ride a bike but he needs a little more training before he's safe to go

on the road he'd probably be best in level five they start off practicing on the site here and we aim to get them riding on the road but first they're taken to ride in the park away from the traffic right and can you tell me a bit about the instructors well all our staff wear different colored shirts so we have three supervisors and they have red shirts they support the instructors and they also stand in for me if i'm not around then the instructors themselves are in blue shirts and

one of these is responsible for each class okay in order to be accepted all our instructors have to submit a reference from someone who's seen them work

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children like if they've worked as a babysitter for example then they have to complete our training course including how to do lesson plans and generally care for the well-being of the kids in their class they do a great job i have to say right and tell me a bit about the classes what size will charlie's class b we have a limit

of eight children in each class so their instructor really gets to know them well they're out writing most of the time but they have quiet times too where their instructor might tell them a story that's got something to do

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cycling or get them to play a game together it's a lot of fun it must be now what happens if there's rain do the classes still run oh yes we don't let that put us off we just put on our waterproofs and keep cycling before you hear the rest of the

conversation you have some time to look at questions six to ten now listen and answer questions six to ten and is there anything special charlie should bring along

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him well maybe some spare clothes especially if the weather's not so good and a snack for break time how about a drink no we'll provide that and make sure he has shoes not sandals sure and just at present charlie has to take medication every few hours so i'll make sure he has that absolutely just give us details of

when he has to take it and we'll make sure he does thanks now there are a few things you should know about day one of the camp the classes normally start at 9 30 every morning but on day one you should aim to get charlie here by 9 20. the finishing time will be 12 30 as usual we need the additional time because there are a few extra things to do the most important is that we have a very careful check to make sure that every child's helmet fits properly if it doesn't fit we'll try

to adjust it or we'll find him another one but he must wear it all the time he's on the bike of course then after that all the instructors will be waiting to meet their classes and they'll meet up in the tent you can't miss it and each instructor will take their class away and get started okay well that all sounds good now can you tell me how much the camp costs a week 199 we've managed to keep the price more or less the same as last year it was 190 then but the places are

filling up quite quickly right okay well i'd like to book for the that is the end of part one you now have half a minute to check your

answers

to part one part two you will hear a recruitment officer called megan baker giving a talk at a jobs fair about opportunities for those interested in the food and agriculture sectors first you have some time to look at questions 11 to 14. now listen carefully and answer questions 11 to 14. hello everyone my name's megan baker and i'm a

recruitment consultant at avt recruitment specialists now our company specializes in positions that involve working in the agriculture and horticulture sectors so that's fresh food production garden and park maintenance and so on and these sectors do provide some very special career opportunities for a start they often offer opportunities for those who don't want to be stuck

with

a 40-hour week but need to juggle work

with

other responsibilities such as child care and this is very

important for many of our recruits some people like working in a rural setting surrounded by plants and trees instead of buildings although we can't guarantee that but there are certainly health benefits especially in jobs where you're not sitting all day looking at a screen a big plus for many people salaries can sometimes be good too although there's a lot of variety here and you may have the opportunity in some types of jobs for travel overseas although that obviously depends on

the job and not everyone is keen to do it of course working outdoors does have its challenges it's fine in summer but can be extremely unpleasant when it's cold and windy you may need to be pretty fit for some jobs though

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modern technology that's not as important as it once was and standards of health and safety are much higher now than they used to be so there are fewer work-related accidents but if you like a lively city environment surrounded by lots of people these jobs are

probably not for you they're often in pretty remote areas and some people worry about finding a suitable place to live but in our experience this usually turns out fine before you hear the rest of the talk you have some time to look at questions 15 to 20. now listen and answer questions 15 to 20. now let me tell you about some of the exciting jobs that we have on our books right now one is for a fresh food commercial manager our client here is a very large fresh food producer supplying a

range of top supermarkets they operate in a very fast-paced environment

with

low profit margins the staff there work hard but they play hard as well so if you've a sociable personality this may be for you we have an exciting post as an agronomist advising farmers on issues such as crop nutrition protection against pests and the la

test

legislation on farming and agricultural practices there are good opportunities for the right person to quickly make their way up the career ladder but a deep

knowledge of the agricultural sector is expected of applicants a leading supermarket is looking for a fresh produce buyer who is available for a 12-month maternity cover contract you need to have experience in administration planning and buying in the fresh produce industry and in return will receive a very competitive salary we have also received a request for a sales manager for a chain of garden centres you will be visiting centres in the region to ensure their high levels of customer service

are maintained this post is only suitable for someone who is prepared to live in the region there is also a vacancy for a tree technician to carry out tree cutting forestry and conservation work candidates must have a clean driving licence and have training in safety procedures a year's experience would be preferred but the company might be prepared to consider someone who has just completed an appropriate training course finally we have a position for a farm worker this will involve a wide

range of farm duties including crop sowing and harvesting machine maintenance and animal care perks of the job include the possibility of renting a small cottage on the estate and the chance to earn a competitive salary a driving licence and tractor driving experience are essential that is the end of part two you now have half a minute to check your

answers

to part two part three you will hear two food science students called adam and rosie starting to plan their presentation on diet and obesity

first you have some time to look at questions 21 to 24 now listen carefully and answer questions 21 to 24. okay rosie shall we try to get some ideas together for our presentation on diet and obesity sure i can talk about the experiment i did to see if people can tell the difference between real sugar and artificial sweeteners where you gave people drinks

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either sugar or artificial sweeteners and they had to say which they thought it was yeah it took me ages to decide exactly how i'd

organize it especially how i could make sure that people didn't know which drink i was giving them it was hard to keep track of it all especially as i had so many people doing it i had to make sure i kept a proper record of what each person had had so could most people tell the difference yeah i hadn't thought that they would be able to but most people could then there's that experiment i did measuring the fat content of nuts to see if the nutritional information given on the packet

was accurate the one where you ground up the nuts and mixed them

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a chemical to absorb the fat yes my results were a bit problematic the fat content for that type of knot seemed much lower than it said on the package but i reckon the package information was right i think i should probably have ground up the nuts more than i did it's possible that the scales for weighing the fat weren't accurate enough too i'd really like to try the experiment again sometime before you hear the

rest of the discussion you have some time to look at questions 25 to 30. now listen and answer questions 25 to 30. so what can we say about helping people to lose weight there's a lot we could say about what restaurants could do to reduce obesity i read that the items at the start of a menu and the items at the end of a menu are much more likely to be chosen than the items in the middle so if you put the low calorie items at the beginning and end of the menu people will probably go for the

food

with

fewer calories

with

out even realizing what they're doing i think food manufacturers could do more to encourage healthy eating how well when manufacturers put calorie counts of a food on the label they're sometimes really confusing and i suspect they do it on purpose because food that's high in calories tastes better and so they'll sell more yeah so if you look at the amount of calories in a pizza they'll give you the calories per quarter pizza and you think oh

that's not too bad but who's going to eat a quarter pizza exactly i suppose another approach to this problem is to get people to exercise more right in england the current guidelines offer at least 30 minutes of brisk walking five days a week now when you ask them about 40 of men and 30 of women say they do this but when you objectively measure the amount of walking they do

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motion sensors you find that only 6 of men and four percent of women do the recommended amount of exercise um

so you can see why obesity is growing so how can people be encouraged to take more exercise well for example think of the location of stairs in a train station if people reach the stairs before they reach the escalator when they're leaving the station they're more likely to take the stairs and if you increase the width of the stairs you'll get more people using them at the same time it's an unconscious process and influenced by minor modifications in their environment right and

it might not be a big change but if it happens every day it all adds up yes but actually i'm not sure if we should be talking about exercise in our presentation well we've done quite a bit of reading about it i know but it's going to mean we have a very wide focus and our tutor did say that we need to focus on causes and solutions in terms of nutrition oh i suppose so and we've got plenty of information about that okay well that will be simpler so what shall we do now we've

still got half an hour before our next lecture let's think about what we're going to include and what will go where then we can decide what slides we need okay fine that is the end of part three you now have half a minute to check your

answers

to part three part 4 you will hear a lecturer on a fashion design course introducing the subject of hand knitting which involves making things like woolen jumpers and scarves first you have some time to look at questions 31 to 40. now listen

carefully and answer questions 31 to 40. good morning everyone so today we're going to look at an important creative activity and that's hand knitting ancient knitted garments have been found in many different countries showing that knitting is a global activity

with

a long history when someone says the word knitting we might well picture an elderly person a grandmother perhaps sitting by the fire knitting garments for themselves or other members of the family it's a homely image but

one that may lead you to feel that knitting is an activity of the past and indeed during the previous decade it was one of the skills that was predicted to vanish from everyday life for although humans have sown and knitted their own clothing for a very long time many of these craft-based skills went into decline when industrial machines took over mainly because they were no longer passed down from one generation to another however that's all changing and interest in knitting classes in many

countries is actually rising as more and more people are seeking formal instruction in the skill

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that trend we're also seeing an increase in the sales figures for knitting equipment so why do people want to be taught to knit at a time when a machine can readily do the job for them the answer is that knitting as a handicraft has numerous benefits for those doing it let's consider what some of these might be while many people knitted garments in the past because they couldn't

afford to buy clothes it's still true today that knitting can be helpful if you're experiencing economic hardship if you have several children who all need warm winter clothes knitting may save you a lot of money and the results of knitting your own clothes can be very rewarding even though the skills you need to get going are really quite basic and the financial outlay is minimal but the more significant benefits in today's world are to do

with

well-being in a world where it's

estimated that we spend up to nine hours a day online doing something

with

our hands that is craft based makes us feel good it releases us from the stress of a technological fast-paced life now let's look back a bit to early knitting activities in fact no one really knows when knitting first began but archaeological remains have disclosed plenty of information for us to think about one of the interesting things about knitting is that the earliest pieces of clothing that have been found

suggest that most of the items produced were round rather than flat discoveries from the 3rd and 4th centuries in egypt show that things like socks and gloves that were needed to keep hands and feet warm were knitted in one piece using four or five needles that's very different from most knitting patterns today which only require two what's more the very first needles people used were hand carved out of wood and other natural materials like bone whereas today's needles are largely

made of steel or plastic and make that characteristic clicking sound when someone's using them ancient people knitted using yarns made from linen hemp cotton and wool and these were often very rough on the skin the spinning wheel which allowed people to make finer yarns and produce much greater quantities of them led to the dominance of wool in the knitting industry often favored for its warmth another interesting fact about knitting is that because it was practiced in so many parts of the

world for so many purposes regional differences in style developed this visual identity has allowed researchers to match bits of knitted clothing that have been unearthed over time to the region from which the wearer came or the job that he or she did as i've mentioned knitting offered people from poor communities a way of making extra money while doing other tasks for many centuries it seems men women and children took every opportunity to knit for example while watching over sheep walking

to market or riding in boats so let's move on that is the end of part four you now have one minute to check your

answers

to part four that is the end of the

listening

test

in the

ielts

test

you would now have 10 minutes to transfer your

answers

to the answer sheet you