IELTS Listening full test 4

Receptionist: Good afternoon, Riverbend Community Centre, Priya speaking.

Caller: Hi, I'm calling about the evening classes. I'd like to enrol in a course, please.

Receptionist: Of course. Which course are you interested in?

Caller: The beginners' pottery class.

Receptionist: Lovely. Can I take your name?

Caller: Yes, it's Daniel Westbrook. That's W-E-S-T-B-R-O-O-K.

Receptionist: Thanks, Daniel. And a phone number?

Caller: It's oh-four-one-nine, three-five-two, seven-eight-six.

Receptionist: Lovely. The pottery class runs on Wednesday evenings, starting at seven o'clock, for eight weeks.

Caller: Oh, I thought it was on Thursdays.

Receptionist: It used to be, but it moved to Wednesdays this term.

Caller: That's fine. How much does it cost?

Receptionist: The course fee is two hundred and forty dollars. That includes all your clay and the firing of your pieces in the kiln.

Caller: Great. Is there anything I need to bring?

Receptionist: Just an apron, or some old clothes you don't mind getting dirty. We provide the tools.

Caller: And where is the class held?

Receptionist: In the Art Room, on the ground floor, next to the café.

Caller: Perfect. Is there parking?

Receptionist: Yes, there's free parking behind the building after six pm. The street parking out the front has a two-hour limit, so the back car park is better.

Caller: Good to know. How do I pay?

Receptionist: You can pay online, or in person at reception. We don't take payment over the phone, I'm afraid.

Caller: I'll pay online tonight, then.

Receptionist: Lovely. And if you miss a class, you can come to the Saturday morning session that week instead, as long as you let us know by Friday.

Caller: That's really helpful. Thanks very much.

Receptionist: You're welcome, Daniel. See you on Wednesday.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Seaview Wildlife Rescue. My name's Helen, and I coordinate our volunteers. Thank you all for joining us. I'll start with a quick overview of how the centre works, and then we'll go on a short walk around the site.

We're a non-profit organisation, and we care for injured and orphaned native animals, mostly birds, possums and turtles, until they're well enough to be released. We have four paid staff, including our vet, and about eighty volunteers, so you'll quickly see how much we depend on people like you.

Most new volunteers start in the food preparation room. It sounds simple, but it's one of the most important jobs here. Every animal has its own diet sheet, and those sheets are updated by the vet every morning, so please check them each time, even if you prepared the same food yesterday.

Now, a few rules. For safety reasons, volunteers don't handle the animals in their first month. After that, you can do a handling course, which runs on the first Saturday of every month. Please wear closed shoes at all times, and tie back long hair.

Shifts are four hours long, and we ask for a minimum of one shift a fortnight. You'll book your shifts through our online calendar. If you can't make a shift, please cancel at least forty-eight hours beforehand so we can find someone else. You're welcome to take photos of the grounds, but please don't photograph the animals in the treatment rooms, because flashes and noise can stress them.

Right, let's head outside. On your left is the aviary, where birds rebuild their strength before they're released. Straight ahead is the turtle pool, which was paid for entirely by donations from a local school. And just past the pool is the quiet zone, where we keep animals that are about to go back into the wild. Please keep your voices low there.

Tutor: Come in, Mei and Tom. You wanted to talk about your project on museum visitors?

Mei: Yes, thanks. We've finished collecting our data at the maritime museum, and we wanted to check a few things before we start writing.

Tutor: Good. Remind me what your research question is.

Tom: We're looking at how long visitors spend at each exhibit, and whether the type of display makes a difference. Originally we wanted to compare two places, the maritime museum and the art gallery, but the gallery wouldn't give us permission to observe visitors, so we focused on just one.

Tutor: That's a shame, but one museum is plenty for a project of this size. How did you collect the data?

Mei: We did observations over three weekends. We each stood near an exhibit and timed how long people stopped there. Altogether we observed two hundred and fifteen visitors.

Tutor: And did people know they were being observed?

Tom: The museum asked us to put up a sign at the entrance explaining the project. We didn't speak to anyone unless they asked us a question.

Tutor: Fine. So what did you find?

Mei: The interactive displays held people's attention the longest, especially the one where you steer a ship through a storm on a big screen. People spent nearly four minutes there on average.

Tom: And the old maps were the least popular. Most people walked past them in under thirty seconds.

Tutor: Why do you think that was?

Tom: Well, I thought it was just because maps are less exciting than the other exhibits. But Mei had a different idea.

Mei: I think it's the room they're in. The maps are kept in quite a dark room to protect them from fading, and the labels are really hard to read.

Tutor: That's a good point, and worth including in your discussion. Did you get any feedback from the visitors themselves?

Mei: Yes, we left a short questionnaire at the exit. About sixty people filled it in. The most common complaint was that there weren't enough places to sit down.

Tutor: Interesting. Now, I'd like to raise one concern. You only collected data on weekends. Do you think weekday visitors might behave differently?

Tom: Probably. On weekdays there are lots of school groups, and they move around with a guide.

Tutor: Exactly. You don't have time to collect more data now, so mention it in your report as a limitation of the study.

Mei: OK. And how should we present the results? We were thinking of one big table.

Tutor: A table is fine for the appendix, but in the main report I'd use a bar chart to compare the exhibits. It's much easier to read.

Tom: Right. The museum also said they'd like a copy of the report. Who should we send it to?

Tutor: Send it to the education officer, since she's the one who arranged your access. But wait until it's been marked, in case there are changes.

Mei: Great. So, Tom, you'll do the chart, and I'll start on the discussion section.

Tom: Sounds good. And we'll write the limitations section together.

Tutor: Perfect. Come and see me again next Thursday if you have any questions.

Good afternoon, everyone. For those of you who are new to this course, I'm Grace Holloway, and today's lecture is about coral reefs, how they form, the different types of reef, and the main threats they face.

Coral reefs cover only a tiny fraction of the ocean floor, well under one per cent, and yet scientists estimate that around a quarter of all marine species depend on them at some stage of their lives. That's why they're often described as the rainforests of the sea.

Let's start with a basic question. What exactly is a coral? Many people assume it's a plant, or even a kind of rock, but coral is in fact an animal. A coral is made up of many tiny individuals called polyps, and each polyp is a soft, tube-shaped creature only a few millimetres across. Biologically, polyps are related to jellyfish. Like jellyfish, they have stinging cells, and they use their tentacles to catch tiny drifting animals called plankton, mostly at night.

So where does the hard reef come from? Each polyp takes minerals from the seawater and builds a protective skeleton of calcium carbonate underneath itself. That's the same substance that limestone is made of. When a polyp dies, its skeleton remains, and new polyps grow on top. Over thousands of years, these skeletons build up into the enormous structures we call reefs.

Now, catching plankton provides only part of a coral's food. The key to the success of reef-building corals is a partnership with microscopic algae that live inside the coral's tissues. The algae use sunlight to make sugars through photosynthesis, and they pass most of this food on to the coral. In return, the coral gives the algae shelter and a supply of the substances they need. The algae are also what give corals their colour. Without them, coral tissue is almost transparent.

This partnership explains where reefs are found. Because the algae need sunlight, reef-building corals grow only in clear, shallow water, where enough light can reach them. Most also need warm water, which is why the great majority of reefs are in the tropics. And they grow slowly. Some of the large, rounded corals add only around a centimetre a year, although branching corals can grow considerably faster.

Scientists usually divide reefs into three main types. The simplest is the fringing reef, which grows close to the shore. A barrier reef, by contrast, is separated from the coast by a wide stretch of water called a lagoon. Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the best-known example, and it's the largest reef system in the world. The third type is the atoll, which is a ring of coral surrounding a lagoon, often far out in the open ocean.

Atolls puzzled early scientists, because coral can't grow in deep water. The explanation came from Charles Darwin, who studied reefs during the voyage of the Beagle in the eighteen-thirties. Darwin suggested that atolls begin as fringing reefs around volcanic islands. Over a very long time, the island slowly sinks, while the coral keeps growing upwards towards the light. Eventually the island disappears beneath the water, leaving only a ring of coral. Darwin couldn't prove this, but more than a century later, in the nineteen-fifties, scientists tested his idea by drilling deep into an atoll in the Pacific. Underneath more than a kilometre of coral limestone, they reached volcanic rock, just as Darwin had predicted.

Finally, let's turn to the threats. The most serious is coral bleaching. When the water stays too warm for too long, the partnership I described breaks down, and the coral expels its algae. Because the tissue is transparent, the white skeleton shows through, and the coral looks bleached. A bleached coral isn't dead, and if temperatures fall again quickly, it can take in new algae and recover. But if the heat lasts, the coral may starve. The Great Barrier Reef has experienced several mass bleaching events since the late nineteen-nineties, including events in two years in a row, in twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen.

A second threat is ocean acidification. The oceans absorb a large share of the carbon dioxide we release into the air, and this makes seawater slightly more acidic. More acidic water makes it harder for corals to build their skeletons. Next week we'll look at what's being done to protect reefs, including efforts to breed corals that can cope with higher temperatures.