Expert on Cambridge IELTS 10 Academic Listening Test 3 (Online Test)

And now for the preparation plans for the town's 250th anniversary celebrations. We are going to follow the same system we had last year, but with a few changes to increase the party spirit.

First of all, this time we are going to make the concert on the beach open to everyone without charge. This is because we have been given money by the council for the celebration and also because last year we had so many problems with keeping people out who had not paid. And on top of this, people will not have to pay for refreshments either, as these are being donated.

Right now, mmm... We are going to divide into four teams: the first one, the Beach Team, will be responsible for cleaning up the beach on the Saturday morning, picking up litter, bottles, plastic bags, wood and anything else that's lying around. Everyone is meeting at the Beach Shop at 8am. It's an early start, but we want to give everywhere a good thorough clean. We have had permission from the council to close the beach to get it ready for the anniversary celebration on Sunday.

The second team will be responsible for setting out seating in the square for the speeches and prize giving. Again an early start is preferable, but the vans with the seats can't be there until 9am, so shall we say that everyone should meet at the Village Hall at 9:30? Starting then will allow extra time if the vans are late.

Now the third team will be the judges. For each of the various competitions we will have three judges. On the whole, they will have had experience of judging before. There will be a boat race, a swimming competition and the best fancy dress. A cash prize will be given to the winner in each category and for the two runners-up there will be book-tokens.

There is a sponsored mini-marathon and by the deadline lunch-time today we had 263 applicants with ages ranging from 15-60. That's 80 more than last year. Each entrant has paid a £20 registration fee to enter and all the profits will go to the local Children's Hospital to help fund much needed specialist apparatus.

The fourth team consists of the wardens for the day itself. We are expecting at least 10,000 people if last year is anything to go by. The fields near the entrance to the beach can be used as car parks and we need wardens to help make sure the actual parking is more organized than last year, which was a mess. We also need someone to be in charge of the first-aid, which will be at the entrance to the beach.

Finally, we need some volunteers for the clean-up. Last year we didn't do this very well and so the Council has agreed to provide large bags to collect all the recyclable material like glass and plastic, etc. but we have to deal with the rest like left-over food ourselves. We don't want to leave piles of rotten food around or dangerous bottles.

Tutor: OK, is everyone ready?... Over the past two weeks we've been listening to different students giving a presentation on their research projects. So for this morning's session I'd like to invite Susan to take the floor.

Susan: For my project I looked at different types of study techniques and tried to ascertain what students' opinions of the different methods were. I began with lectures, because of course they're something we're all familiar with. Now the problem with lectures is that you have to sit and listen for quite a long time. Sometimes maybe as much as one hour. Yet people's average concentration span is only about 20 minutes. This means, of course, within the first half an hour most people actually stop listening! Not consciously, of course. But you know what it's like. Your mind tends to, well..., kind of wander-you start thinking about what you're going to have for dinner, or about the party you attended last night. So I wanted to know what the most effective method of taking down all the important points was.

Tutor: Susan, if I may interrupt you, what's your strategy for listening to lectures?

Susan: Personally, I always record the lectures. That way you can listen to the lecture again afterwards and make really good notes. In fact I know a lot of people who use this method. Yet surprisingly, when I talked to students, they felt that it wasn't such a good method because the quality of the recording is often very poor. So quite a few preferred to listen for the main points and take notes. Some even used a form of shorthand. You know, abbreviations and symbols, that sort of thing. Although, everyone agreed that the best way to approach lectures was to do the required reading beforehand. That way it makes the lecture a lot easier to understand because you already know something about the topic.

Tutor: Could you tell us something about how students approach their assignments? You know, essays, reports, that sort of thing.

Susan: Actually, when it came to assignments, people were divided on the issue of essay plans Some thought it was a good method of planning, others, well, didn't think so. Generally, though, most students didn't really express much of an opinion. Brainstorming, however, was different. You know, must sitting down and thinking of as many ideas as you can. Just about everyone said it was a really good method of preparing to write an assignment, especially if they got together in groups. This, they said, was by far the best method because it helped them to really analyze the issues. Discussing ideas was the same. In fact, many respondents claimed they often got together with friends for the purpose of discussing ideas, even if they weren't preparing an assignment. They said it helped them to understand the lectures better, and, surprisingly enough, get better grades in their exams. Now reading, like lectures, is a necessary part of student life. And we all know how much time we spend with our head banned deep in a book? But what exactly is the best way to read? Well, I discovered that hardly anyone tries to read the whole book, or even whole chapters. But skim reading came out a real favorite. The majority of students I spoke to, in fact, found this to be a really effective technique because it saved lots of time, and it meant they could absorb far more knowledge this way.

Tutor: Susan, in your opinion, what do you think is the biggest problem students face at university?

Susan: Time management. What I mean to say is that it's a much underestimated skill. And because it's underestimated it's an area often neglected by students. Especially young students who are used to other people planning their time for them. So I set about asking students exactly how they planned their time. Interestingly, however, nearly everyone said that time management was significant. Yet few people actually used the technique. Most commented that they were too busy with their studies. When it came to studies I found that the vast majority of students worked part-time, generally in the evening, which most respondents claimed was the best time to study because they'd been thinking about the subject all day and many ideas were fresh in their minds. In fact they said having to work was the biggest burden they had, because it meant they couldn't study in an evening and had to study on weekends instead, when they needed to relax and forget about their studies. A few of the respondents even said they got up early in the morning to study. On the whole, I found that time management is most people's biggest problem, and I feel that more should be done by the university to help students to plan their time more effectively.

Tutor: Sony, Susan, but I'm going to have to ask you to start wrapping up now. We're quickly running out of time.

Susan: Ok, well the final component of my research was the dreaded exams. Now I don't know about you but I really hate exams. But when I talked to the students I found that some students actually liked them. They were very much in the minority though, and most students preferred not to have them. I was, of course, interested to learn just how students prepare for their midterm and end-of-term exams. And here people were evenly divided on the issue. I found that most of the younger students preferred to cram. That is to say they'd spend many hours, just before the exam, trying to learn as much as possible. Some even said they stayed up at night, and never went to bed. And this was because they were too interested in their social life to pay much attention to exams during the term. Older students, however, were much more conservative. They tended to read much more widely, and spend time thinking about the topic, making notes and so forth. They did revise, of course, but they rarely spent time cramming. Cramming, they said, is of no use because you only remember the information for the duration of the exam and forget it afterwards.

Student: My group has been doing a project on the importance of architecture in people's lives and whether it has any impact on the lives of people in general. The main part I have played is in the collection of data to find out what effect, if any, various buildings have on people's mood, i.e. whether ugly buildings make people unhappy and whether beautiful buildings do the opposite. We had originally thought of starting measuring people's reactions by using a questionnaire with about 40 questions, which we were going to hand out to people including students at the university. But we were worried that doing the questionnaire would be too time-consuming for people to fill in, so we gave up the idea. I then asked several of the postgraduate students for advice. One of them came up with the simple idea of showing people images of various buildings from different eras and styles, instead of giving out the questionnaire and asking them to indicate how they felt on a scale of 1-5 about the images, where 1 was unhappy and 5 was very happy. People would also be given the option of not saying what they felt. Using the scale meant that it would be much simpler to record people's reactions. I decided to follow this advice and so the first stage was to collect a large number of images. I used Google to print off colour images of views of houses and apartment blocks where people live and different types of buildings where they work. I started with about 30 or 40 and then reduced them to ten images. Media resources in the Amory Building at the Judd Street branch of the university helped me produce the final images. I had them blown up to A4 size and we used colour rather than black and white to make the detail on the images clearer. We made five sets of images and for protection when handling we pasted the images onto hard card. Then using a machine to wrap them with plastic, we laminated the cards.

Five of us targeted different age groups; we went to a local school where we obtained permission to ask a group of teenagers between 11 and 18. We also asked a sample of the general public including tourists from all over the world, as they exited the Tate Modern in London, what they thought. We aimed to ask people from different age groups, namely 20 to 40, and 50 and over. What our group learnt most from the project was first of all the value of teamwork. And secondly we found that we had to appoint a leader to stop us pulling in different directions and falling apart, so this turned out to be an invaluable lesson for all of us.

As to the findings, for us they proved intriguing. In the end the sample consisted of 311 respondents. I thought initially that people wouldn't be interested in taking part in the activity. With the youngest age group, their reaction was very mixed. It was clear that the youngest group had no pattern of preference at all, as they frequently gave no reaction to the pictures. For the 20-40 age-groups, we found that they tended to score more in the middle range around 3.

We found that out of the three groups, the most likely to be favourably affected by the images, that is, they were more likely to score the images as 5, were those aged 50 and above. And nobody in this age group failed to say what their reaction was, which was unique for the three groups. In total, I have to say that about 71 people indicated that they had no reaction at all to an image.

Our general conclusion is that we need to find out more about why people react as they do by perhaps giving them a chance to give reasons for their decisions. I would like to finish there and give my team-mates a chance to add anything I have missed, or take any questions or suggestions.