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Practice dictation & shadowing on the Cambridge IELTS 15 Academic Listening Part 3 Test 1.
Cambridge IELTS 15 Academic Listening Test 1 Part 3
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Speaker 1 (1)
Ed, how are you getting on with the reading for our presentation next week?
Speaker 2 (2)
Well, okay, Ruth, but there's so much of it.
Speaker 1 (3)
I know. I hadn't realized birth order was such a popular area of research.
Speaker 2 (4)
But the stuff on birth order and personality is mostly unreliable.
Speaker 2 (5)
From what I've been reading, a lot of the claims about how your position in the family determines certain personality traits are just stereotypes with no robust evidence to support them.
Speaker 1 (6)
Okay. But that's an interesting point. We could start by outlining what previous research has shown.
Speaker 1 (7)
There are studies going back over 100 years.
Speaker 2 (8)
Yeah. So we could just run through some of the typical traits.
Speaker 2 (9)
Like, the consensus seems to be that oldest children are generally less well-adjusted because they never get over the arrival of a younger sibling.
Speaker 1 (10)
Right. But on a positive note, some studies claim that they were thought to be good at nurturing.
Speaker 1 (11)
Certainly in the past when people had large families, they would have been expected to look after the younger ones.
Speaker 2 (12)
There isn't such a clear picture for middle children.
Speaker 2 (13)
But one trait that a lot of the studies mention is that they are easier to get on with than older or younger siblings.
Speaker 1 (14)
Generally eager to please and helpful, although that's certainly not accurate as far as my family goes.
Speaker 1 (15)
My middle brother was a nightmare, always causing fights and envious of whatever I had.
Speaker 2 (16)
As I said, none of this seems to relate to my own experience.
Speaker 2 (17)
I'm the youngest in my family, and I don't recognize myself in any of the studies I've read about.
Speaker 2 (18)
I'm supposed to have been a sociable and confident child who made friends easily, but I was actually terribly shy.
Speaker 1 (19)
Really? That's funny. There have been hundreds of studies on twins, but mostly about nurture versus nature.
Speaker 2 (20)
There was one on personality which said that a twin is likely to be quite shy in social situations because they always have their twin around to depend on for support.
Speaker 1 (21)
My cousins were like that when they were small.
Speaker 1 (22)
They were only interested in each other and found it hard to engage with other kids. They're fine now, though.
Speaker 2 (23)
Only children have had a really bad press.
Speaker 2 (24)
A lot of studies have branded them as loners who think the world revolves around them because they've never had to fight for their parents' attention.
Speaker 1 (25)
That does seem a bit harsh.
Speaker 1 (26)
One category I hadn't considered before was children with much older siblings.
Speaker 1 (27)
A couple of studies mentioned that these children grow up more quickly and are expected to do basic things for themselves, like getting dressed.
Speaker 2 (28)
I can see how that might be true. Although, I expect they're sometimes the exact opposite, playing the baby role and clamouring for special treatment.
Speaker 1 (29)
What was the problem with most of these studies, do you think?
Speaker 2 (30)
I think it was because in a lot of cases, data was collected from only one sibling per family who rated him or herself and his or her siblings at the same time.
Speaker 1 (31)
Some of the old research into the relationship between birth order and academic achievement has been proved to be accurate, though.
Speaker 1 (32)
Performances in intelligence tests declined slightly from the eldest child to his or her younger siblings.
Speaker 1 (33)
This has been proved in lots of recent studies.
Speaker 2 (34)
Yes. Although what many of them didn't take into consideration was family size.
Speaker 2 (35)
The more siblings there are, the likelier the family is to have a low socioeconomic status, which can also account for differences between siblings in academic performance.
Speaker 1 (36)
The oldest boy might be given more opportunities than his younger sisters, for example.
Speaker 2 (37)
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (38)
But the main reason for the marginally higher academic performance of oldest children is quite surprising, I think.
Speaker 1 (39)
It's not only that they benefit intellectually from extra attention at a young age, which is what I would have expected.
Speaker 1 (40)
It's that they benefit from being teachers for their younger siblings by verbalizing processes.
Speaker 2 (41)
Right. And this gives them status and confidence, which again contributes in a small way to better performance.
Speaker 2 (42)
So would you say sibling rivalry has been a useful thing for you?
Speaker 1 (43)
I think so. My younger brother was incredibly annoying, and we fought a lot.
Speaker 1 (44)
But I think this has made me a stronger person.
Speaker 1 (45)
I know how to defend myself.
Speaker 1 (46)
We had some terrible arguments, and I would have died rather than apologize to him.
Speaker 1 (47)
But we had to put up with each other, and most of the time we coexisted amicably enough.
Speaker 2 (48)
Yes. My situation was pretty similar, but I don't think having 2 older brothers made me any less selfish.
Speaker 2 (49)
I was never prepared to let my brothers use any of my stuff.
Speaker 1 (50)
That's perfectly...