Expert on Cambridge IELTS 09 Academic Listening Test 5 (Online Test)

Male: Hey, did you see that show on TV last night about people downloading music from the Internet?

Female: No, I was busy with my research into students cheating at university.

Male: What do you mean by cheating?

Female: Plagiarism.

Male: What's that?

Female: Basically, it's when you use someone else's ideas or work and pretend it's your own work. There's nothing wrong with using other people's ideas or research, but you have to say where you got the ideas or information.

Male: Uh-huh.

Female: There was a famous case last year of a university Dean who had to resign when it came out that in a few books he'd written over 20 years ago there were some instances of plagiarism.

Male: Oh yeah, I remember hearing about that. I thought they were being a bit tough on him - I mean, it was a long time ago.

Female: Well, it's a pretty serious thing to do in academic circles. It's intellectual theft. It's nothing new, but it seems to have become much more common recently.

Male: How can you tell?

Female: Oh, a few surveys have been done on it. One survey in the US found that back in 1969, 58% of school students let others copy their work, but this had risen to 97% in 1989.

Male: It's that bad, isn't it? Well, anyway, you know what school kids are like.

Female: Well, the trouble is, it doesn't stop there - they take their bad habits with them when they go on to uni. A more recent survey in another country showed that more cheating happens now among undergraduate students than high school students.

Male: That's disappointing.

Female: Yeah. There are even instances of postgraduate students doing it, though it involves a much smaller proportion of them.

Male: So why's more cheating happening now?

Female: Well, the Internet has made it easier. You can use a search engine to find what you need to know, then cut and paste. Before the Internet, you had to go to books and copy the information by hand, so it took a lot longer. Students often used to write their essays by hand, too.

Male: Yeah, I don't do much writing anymore, but I do plenty of typing.

Female: Well, your handwriting is pretty terrible, so that's probably not a bad thing. Anyway, what it really comes down to is that the Internet is so huge, there are just so many more sources than there used to be. In the older days if a teacher thought a student had cheated, they could look up the relevant books to check. The Internet is far too big for that. I know teachers are always complaining about being too busy, but it's beyond the capacity of anyone to have an overview of the Internet.

Male: Yeah, there are billions of pages out there. So does that mean it's impossible to stop it?

Female: Not exactly. There is this new software program being used now to check the work of almost 5 million students in about 60 countries. They find that there's a plagiarism rate of about 30%.

Male: Is it expensive?

Female: No, it only comes to about 50c a student.

Male: So, how does this computer program work?

Female: Well, when a student hands in a paper, they also have to submit it electronically. This is then compared to other essays and to a database of journals and of all the material that's on the Internet.

Male: What about if the student's copied from books?

Female: No, it only covers electronic material. The program then underlines any phrase, paragraph or page that's been copied from an electronic source, and this information is given to the teacher. It analyses around 10,000 term papers a day. It's in operation in all the universities in Britain, but only at some of the big ones in the United States.

Male: And what happens if they find that a student's cheated?

Female: Well, in extreme cases the student can be expelled from the uni. But expulsion can take a long time and give the uni bad publicity, so it doesn't happen much. An alternative is for the student to be failed for the whole course, but usually they just fail that paper.

Male: Yeah, I've never heard of anyone being expelled for cheating.

Female: Oh, it does happen, but you don't always hear about it. You know, the student involved's embarrassed, and the uni wants to protect its reputation.

Male: And what else can be done to reduce the amount of plagiarizing happening?

Female: Well, now some unis are putting less emphasis on papers done during term and going back to written exams where there's much less chance of cheating.

Male: Oh, like those tests we used to do in high school, all that tension and watching the clock?

Female: Yeah. They thought about introducing oral exams, but they'd be too time-consuming and expensive for undergraduate courses. Generally, unis take the attitude that prevention's better than cure, so they explain to students what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. That's the long-term solution. Anyway, it's not always easy to show for sure that someone's committed plagiarism in an essay.

Male: Even with this new software?

Female: That's right.

Good afternoon everyone, we've just called this short meeting to give you some good news. As you know, our company's performed really well over the past 12 months, and that's largely been due to the hard work you've all put in. So, at its last meeting, senior management decided to show its gratitude by giving you all a day off next Friday to go on a day trip paid for by the company.

We want to give you a choice, so what I'd like to do now is to give you a brief overview of three tours, and then you can choose the one that you like best. Right, now first there's what we call the "Adventure Tour", which is sky-diving. Don't worry if you've never been skydiving before, you do it in tandem with experienced trainers, but it's definitely not for you if you're afraid of heights. Just one thing though, you'll need to wear long pants because it's pretty cold when you jump out of the plane. For that trip we leave here at half past ten in the morning to go out to the airfield. Oh, by the way, with all these tours a minibus will pick you up at work in the morning and then bring you back here afterwards. The Adventure Tour gets back at 3:40, that's twenty to four in the afternoon.

Next we have the "Nature Tour", which is for those who like the outdoors, but prefer walking on solid ground rather than falling through the sky a few kilometers up in the air. This is going to be a trip to the mountains and lakes. You all know how lovely the lakes are at this time of year, and because we'll be there on a Friday, there won't be all those crowds of people you get on the weekends. And don't forget to bring along your walking shoes. The bus'll be leaving at half past eight in the morning and you'll be getting back at twenty past six. The third and final choice of tours is the "Historical Tour" which is going to be a trip to Bomberry Castle. You may've been there before, but we've arranged for a very thorough tour of the castle, including some rooms that usually aren't open to the public. One thing though, they've told us that anyone who comes on that tour has to wear shoes with leather soles. Apparently the reason for this is that some of the timber floors in the castle are very old and can be easily damaged by other kinds of shoes. Anyway, the bus'll be leaving at 9:45 that's a quarter to ten in the morning, and will bring you back here at half past four.

Now I'd like to tell you about a few of the things that are included in the tours. Those of you who choose the Historical Tour will enjoy a delicious lunch in the famous castle restaurant. If you opt for the Nature or Adventure Tour, I'm afraid you'll have to take your own lunch because there aren't any outlets in the mountains or at the skydiving section of the airfield. However, we've arranged for afternoon tea to be provided for those on the Adventure Tour. You might need a hot drink to warm up after the jump.

Now, for those of you who've got children that you'd like to bring along for the day, obviously sky-diving is out of the question. They might be thrilled by the idea of jumping out of a plane with you, but you've got to be 18 or older to do that. We checked with the organizer of the Historical Tour, and they said that children usually aren't interested in the historical buildings, but they have no objections provided that any children are accompanied by their parents. When we talked to the person who's in charge of the Nature Tour, she said that their insurance doesn't cover minors, so there's no kids allowed on the trip, unfortunately. However, it's quite all right if you want to bring along your partner to enjoy the fresh air with you.

We thought it'd be nice to arrange for group photos to be taken on this special day out. In fact, if you're going on the Adventure Tour, they can video or photograph individuals while you're skydiving, but that's very costly, so that's one extra expense you'll have to pay for yourself if you want it. For those on the Historical Tour, the staff at the castle inform us that no photography is allowed on the premises. I think that might be because they prefer visitors to buy the post-cards they sell in their souvenir shop. But if you're in the mountains on the Nature Tour, the guide's also a professional photographer and she'll be taking a few pictures of the group, no doubt with breathtaking backgrounds.

Anyway, that's all from me for the moment. I've got some brochures here you might like to have a look at, and now I'd be happy to take any of your questions.

The past 20 years have witnessed a dramatic growth in the number of people in the Western world who are overweight. This by-product of prosperity is so serious that it's become a major health issue. In England, 53% of adult women are overweight, while the figure for men is about 63%. Studies carried out in the 1980s showed much lower levels than this. And the problem gets worse the older people get. Whereas just over a quarter of the young are overweight, it afflicts an alarming 68% of women and three-quarters of men among those aged 55 to 64. The overall increase in the weight of the average person is partially the result of changes in lifestyle, and it has serious consequences for individuals and society.

A person's weight increases when their food intake is greater than their energy output. The body stores the extra energy in the form of fat. Whereas many people today would prefer to be slim than to have a more rounded figure, until fairly recently in human history it was an advantage to have body fat. Before humans started to grow their own crops and domesticate animals, food supplies were far less reliable and famine was an unavoidable part of life. When famine came along, those who had more body fat were more likely to overcome the difficult period than slim people. The thin ones would either die in the famine or their health would be affected and they would have fewer children. The ones who weren't underweight would then, in turn, be more likely to produce children who shared this tendency to gain weight when times were good. This genetic trait has been passed on through evolution, so that today many people have a natural tendency to gain weight.

However, in the absence of recurrent famines, this is no longer such a good thing, particularly when you consider that people today do far less physical work than they used to. The easy availability of food with a high sugar and fat content, coupled with inadequate physical activity, lies at the root of the general increase in weight in the population. Most of those suffering from excess body weight would go a long way toward solving their problem if they regularly did moderately vigorous exercise, for instance, 30 minutes per day of swimming, cycling or brisk walking.

So what exactly is the problem if a person weighs more than they should? Firstly, this can put too much strain on the joints such as knees and ankles. The health consequences of having excess body fat depend on what part of the body the fat is found on. Fat on the abdominal area is often associated with diabetes and heart disease, whereas there's no apparent connection between those conditions and having fat on the thighs and hips.

Being overweight can also give rise to problems apart from those of physical health. In childhood, even more so than later in life, people need to feel that they belong. Children who are rejected and ostracized by their classmates because they're overweight and not fit may develop low self-esteem.

Although scientists are still unsure why some people gain weight more easily than others, it's clear that the right food, together with regular exercise, is the only way to lose weight and not put it back on. To lose weight, a person should avoid certain foods, but also eat more fruit, vegetables and cereal foods such as bread, pasta and rice. Rather than focusing on what people should not eat, the focus should be on the healthy food that people should eat. Losing weight doesn't mean being on a monotonous diet - in fact, it's recommended that everyone eats 30 different foods a day.

A problem with many diets and weight loss programs is that they tend to make extravagant promises of rapid weight loss with very little exercise or no exercise at all. It is in fact not healthy to lose more than a kilo per month, but some losing weight at that rate run the risk of losing muscle, whereas a realistic, healthy weight loss program needs to include regular exercise.

And for those who've repeatedly been unsuccessful in the attempt to reduce their weight, it's better to accept that they have a larger body than a fashion model, as well as to make some changes in their diet and to do regular exercise. They may not live longer, but at least they'll enjoy their time more.