IELTS Practice Test Plus 2 General Training Listening Test 6 (Online Test)

Right, so here we are in Fairhaven, and we have a couple of hours to spend in this historic centre before we carry on to our motel. And as you'll know from the itinerary of our trip, we're visiting Fairhaven because of its historical links with a man called Manjiro Nakahama. So I'll begin by giving you a brief overview of his life, and then you can explore the town at your leisure.

Well, Manjiro Nakahama, as he was then known, was born in 1827 in a village by the sea in what is now Tosashimizu in Japan. And like many people in that town, he became a fisherman when he was just a youngster. One day in 1841, when he was just 14 years old, he and some others were fishing far off the coast of Japan when they were caught in a storm and shipwrecked on a small deserted island. They had to wait for six months before they were rescued by an American whale ship that had stopped at the island by chance. Four of the five Japanese were put ashore in Hawaii, but Manjiro had become friends with the captain, William Whitfield, who came from the town of Fairhaven, where we are now, and he chose to remain aboard, and to return with the boat to the USA. So Manjiro unwittingly became the first Japanese ever to set foot on American soil. He came back right here to Fairhaven with Whitfield, and stayed with the Whitfield family who paid for his education here in the town. He studied Mathematics and Geography as well as shipbuilding and navigation. But he missed his mother, and his own country, and eventually he went back to Japan where he had a responsible position as a university teacher and also served an invaluable role as interpreter during the initiation of relations between Japan and the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century.

But the most interesting thing is that the links between Tosashimizu and Fairhaven have remained and grown stronger over the years, in spite of the distance between them, and in fact the two places now have the official status of sister cities. Both places are ports, so in fact the inhabitants have a lot in common. There have been a number of visits by the inhabitants of Tosashimizu, in particular at the time of the Festival, which is held every two years here in Fairhaven to celebrate the life and achievements of John Manjiro. It takes place in the fall, and there's an ever-growing programme including drumming, singing, martial arts, and stalls selling Japanese and American food. So if you're going to be in the region around then, it's really worth a visit.

Now, many of the buildings that Manjiro Nakahama knew in Fairhaven are still standing today, and so if you'd just like to hand round some copies of this map I'll suggest the best route to follow to see them. OK, so if you look at the bottom of the map you can see the Millicent Library, and that's where we are now. Now to follow the John Manjiro trail, you go out of here along Center Street, and then head up Main Street until you get to Pilgrim Avenue. Go down there and turn right at the end, go straight on and just on the corner with Oxford Street you'll see a two-storey house. This is the Whitfield family house, and this is where Manjiro first stayed when he came to Fairhaven. It's still a private residence, so please respect the owner's privacy. OK. Now, if you carry on along Oxford Street, then turn left at the end, you'll come to North Street, and about half-way down there is what's known as Old Oxford School. This was the very same school that Manjiro attended when he lived here. It was considered to be the best school in town because of the quality of the building – unusually, it was built of stone - and the quality of the teaching. Nowadays it's usually closed, except on special occasions. Go on to the end of North Street and turn the corner onto Adams Street. If you follow the road down, back towards the library, you go round a couple of sharp bends and on the second of these, you can see the School of Navigation which Manjiro also attended. And if you follow the road on, you'll soon find yourself back here at the library, and I'd suggest you spend some time looking round that too, if you have any time left.

Right, now, does anyone have any questions...

Dr Hilsden: Right Julia, so from your CV and portfolio, and what you've already told me, you seem to be very much the sort of person we're looking for on the postgraduate course. So tell me, you finished your Fashion Design course in London four years ago – did you think of carrying straight on and doing a higher degree at the time?

Julia: Yes - but there were financial pressures. So I ended up working in the retail industry, as you can see from my CV. And actually it was a very useful experience.

Dr Hilsden: Mmm. In what way?

Julia: Well, I was lucky to get the job with FashionNow - they're a big store, and, one of my priorities was to get as much experience as possible in different areas, so that was good because I had the chance to work in lots of different departments. And having direct contact with the customers meant I was able to see how they reacted to innovation to new fashion ideas, because with FashionNow, a designer might show something in New York or Milan and there'll be something similar in the shop within weeks. So, that was probably the most useful thing for me.

Dr Hilsden: Right. And so what's made you decide to do a postgraduate course now?

Julia: Erm... Well, while I enjoyed working at FashionNow, and I learned a lot there, I felt ... well, the way forward would have been to develop my managerial skills rather than my skills in fashion design, and I'm not sure that's what I want to do.

Dr Hilsden: Mmm, yes.

Julia: When I was doing my degree in London I'd been interested in women's wear. But I know that there's been a lot of work done in areas like new fabric construction - and, though I'm not intending to go too deeply into the technology – I'd be very interested in looking at how new fabrics could be used in children's wear, so I'd like the chance to pursue that line.

Dr Hilsden: Yes. Good. And are you at all concerned about what it's going to be like coming back into an academic context after being away from it for several years?

Julia: No, I'm looking forward to it. But I'm basically more interested in the application than the theory - or at least that's what I've found so far, and I'm hoping the course will give me the contacts and skills I need eventually to set up my own enterprise. I'm particularly interested by the overseas links that the department has.

Dr Hilsden: Yes, many of our students look overseas or to international companies for sponsorship of their projects.

Julia: And the facilities here look excellent. I just went to look at the library - it's really impressive. There's so much room compared with the one at my old university.

Dr Hilsden: Yes, most students find it's a good place to study. And there are linkups to other universities, of course, and all the usual electronic sources the staff run an Information Skills Programme which we recommend all postgraduates do in the first week or two. Design students find the Special Collections particularly useful.

Julia: Yes.

Dr Hilsden: Then we have a separate Computer Centre, which has its own academic coordinator, Tim Spender - he's got a background in art design, and the ethos of the centre is that it's a studio for innovation and creativity, rather than a computer laboratory.

Julia: Oh, right. I liked the study spaces where students can sit and discuss work together - very useful for joint projects. We always had to do that sort of thing in the cafeteria when I was an undergraduate. And I read in the brochure that there's a separate resource for photography.

Dr Hilsden: Yes, it's called Photomedia. It's not just for photography, but things like digital imaging and new media. It's a resource for all our students, not just fashion design, and we encourage students to work there producing work that crosses disciplinary boundaries. It's well used - in fact, it's doubled in size since it was set up three years ago. And we also have an offshoot from that which is called Time Based Media - this is for students who want to develop their ideas in the area of the moving image or sound. That's in a new building that was specially built for it just last year, but there are plans to expand it as the present facilities are overstretched already.

Julia: Right.

Dr Hilsden: Now, is there anything you'd like to ask about the course itself?

Julia: Erm, ... I know it's a combination of taught modules and a specialist project, but how does assessment fit in?

Dr Hilsden: Well, as you'd expect on a course of this nature, it's an ongoing process. The degree course has four stages, and there are what we call progress reviews at the end of each of the first three. Then the final assessment is based on your project. You have to produce a report which is a critical reflection on your work.

Julia: And is there some sort of fashion show?

Dr Hilsden: There's an exhibition. The projects aren't all focused on clothes as such, some are more experimental, so that seems more appropriate. We ask representatives of fashion companies along, and it's usually well attended.

Julia: Right. And another thing I wanted to ask...

Good afternoon, everybody... and in our second talk on social psychology I want to look at the role of laughter in our lives - something that usually gets everyone smiling from the start.

So, first of all, I'll start by looking at the actual nature of laughter. Well, when someone laughs you've got movement of the muscles of the face and the chest, and you've got sound formed when the air's forced out of the body as part of this process, so we're talking about a physical activity. But obviously other things are involved as well - and this is where it gets more complicated. Laughing isn't something that you normally decide to do, so it's not voluntary behaviour, like ordinary speech. Instead it's regulated by our instincts - rather like the singing of a bird, or the roaring of a lion. And once you start to laugh, it can be quite hard to stop - that's not always under your conscious control either.

But why do we laugh? Because we find something funny, most of us would say. But in fact it appears that laughter has little to do with jokes or funny stories - only about 10 percent of laughter is caused by things like that. One suggestion is that human laughter may have originally started out as a shared response to signal relief at the passing of danger. And it's true that even these days, laughter's rarely an activity carried out by an individual on his or her own. In fact, people are 30 times more likely to laugh when they're with other people than when they're completely alone. Laughter still seems to be a kind of social signal, it occurs when people are in a group and they're comfortable with one another. And it seems likely that laughter can result in the creation of bonds between the people in the group.

And it's precisely because of this social aspect of laughter that people like public speakers and politicians often try to get their audience to laugh - it encourages their listeners to trust them and to connect with them. But this kind of thing - controlling the laughter of a group, that is - indicates that there's a link between laughter and power, and this is supported by several studies that indicate that bosses use humour more than their employees. And research has also shown that female listeners are likely to laugh much more if the speaker is male, so it appears that there are gender issues associated with how much we laugh.

I should also point out that laughter can be used as a negative signal as well as a positive one. I think we've all probably seen evidence of a group using laughter to exclude someone... to emphasise that they are not accepted. So it's not always a positive type of behaviour, either. So what all this goes to show is that laughter is a very, very complex issue.

It does appear however that laughter has definite benefits. If we look first at the psychological aspects, we know that people often tend to store negative emotions, such as anger, sadness and fear, rather than expressing them, and it seems that laughter provides a harmless way for the release of these emotions. But there are also clear physical effects that have been monitored too. For example, laughter is good aerobic exercise – it speeds up heart rate and respiration, and raises blood pressure; one researcher suggests that 100 laughs a day is the equivalent of 10 minutes' jogging.

Laughter also helps prevent the stress that so many people suffer from today, which results from the faster pace of life and all that goes with it. It does this by reducing the levels of hormones in the blood which are caused by stress. And, in addition, it is known to increase the levels of chemicals that protect the body from infection or pain and so it helps to boost the immune system. One interesting study showed that people who had had surgical operations asked for fewer pain killers if they'd been viewing comic films. In fact, research has even shown that the quality of dreams can be positively affected by laughter - a good laugh 10 minutes before going to sleep can prevent you from having bad dreams and give a much more pleasant and restorative night's sleep. So, there's now little argument that finding things funny and enjoying a good laugh is extremely beneficial to us all.

What we need to consider now are the ways in which laughter can be used as a treatment for people who