IELTS Practice Test Plus 3 General Training Listening Test 6

Narrator: Test 6, section 2. You will hear part of a radio program about do-it-yourself house painting. First, you have some time to look at questions 11 to 14. Now listen and answer questions 11 to 14.

Speaker: Good morning everyone, and welcome to our weekly series on home improvements. Today’s program is about do-it-yourself house painting. There’s never been a better time for people who like to do their own interior house painting. Although people still lead very busy lives, thanks to the availability of various new DIY materials, you can now decorate your home in a more efficient and a more environmentally friendly way. In 2009 alone, approximately 53 million liters of the paint that was sold in the UK were left untouched. That’s enough to fill 21 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Speaker: It’s easy to overestimate how much paint you’ll need to decorate your room if you use guesswork. And if you know exactly how much paint is needed, you avoid unnecessary waste. There are automatic paint calculators available now. Most of the major paint manufacturers provide them. Look on their websites or just Google “paint calculator” and see what comes up. Then simply measure the circumference and height of the room in meters, enter this into the calculator along with the type of surface you’re painting, and it will tell you how many liters of paint you’ll need.

Speaker: But if you do end up with leftover paint, you can donate it to an organization like Community RePaint. They will take the paint from you and redistribute it to local charities and voluntary organizations, so it goes to a good home. You can find more information about Community RePaint on communityrepaint.org.uk.

Narrator: Now you have some time to look at questions 15 to 20. Now listen and answer questions 15 to 20.

Speaker: Another way of avoiding paint wastage is to check you’re completely happy with your color choice before starting to paint. For example, you can get a small sample of the color you’re thinking of using, then paint a board and move it around the room, so you can see how it looks against your furnishings and in different lights. Also, it’s always better to buy high-quality paints because you get what you pay for. If you buy cheap paint, you might need to apply two or three coats to achieve the same coverage that you’d get from one coat of a good quality paint. You could also spend a week on a job that could have been done in a day or two.

Speaker: And consider the environment. Most paint manufacturers now sell water-based paints that don’t contain harmful chemicals or give off harmful odors, so get one of these. You can also buy paint that’s packaged in recyclable containers. There’s a lot more choice than there used to be.

Speaker: You can only do a good job which will last if you prepare the surfaces thoroughly before painting. In fact, in many ways if you want to do a professional-looking job, this is more important than the painting itself. If there are any cracks or patches of loose plaster, painting over them won’t solve the problem. Take the plaster out and fill the holes, allowing enough time for the new plaster to dry. And you won’t get a smooth finish if the walls are dusty or greasy, so washing with water isn’t enough. Use a solution of decorator's soap and rinse well with warm water afterwards.

Speaker: When you’re ready to paint, we suggest you use a medium pile roller for walls and ceilings. A lot of people tend to use short pile rollers, but these give a patchy finish and that wastes paint and time. Similarly, long pile rollers can create a thick textured effect which looks messy. The same goes for brushes. The stronger the bristles, the easier they are to wash and reuse. And as you’ve chosen a water-based paint, clean your brushes with cold water, because it’s more energy-efficient that way.

Speaker: As you’re decorating, keep transferring small amounts of paint into a tray and keep topping it up when you need to. This reduces the chance of it being contaminated by dust and pieces of dirt. And finally, water-based paint doesn’t have a lingering smell, so that’s not an issue anymore. But it’s airflow rather than heat that helps the paint dry quicker. So to help finish the job in the quickest time, leave your doors and windows open. The faster the paint is dried and the job finished, the quicker you can start enjoying your room.

Speaker: In tomorrow’s program, I’ll be giving some advice on…

Narrator: That is the end of section 2. You now have half a minute to check your answers.

Narrator: CD 3. Test 6, section 3. You will hear two engineering students, a woman in her sixth year called Linda and a man in his fifth year called Matthew, discussing the benefits of student work placements. Before you listen, you have some time to look at questions 21 to 26. Now listen and answer questions 21 to 26.

Matthew: Hi Linda, can you spare a few minutes?

Linda: Hello Matthew, no problem.

Matthew: I just wanted to talk to you about temporary work placements. I've never really thought there was a good reason for doing one. I've got some savings, so I don't really need the money at the moment. But I've had an email from the university about a vacancy that looks quite interesting. You did a placement last year, didn't you?

Linda: I did, yes. In my case, I wanted to find out if I was making the right career choice before I began applying for permanent jobs. I thought I wanted to work in car manufacturing, but I wasn't sure, so I applied to Toyota.

Matthew: What was the application process like?

Linda: Lengthy. There were a lot of different parts to it. The dullest one was a psychometric test. You know, when you have to answer loads of questions about yourself.

Matthew: And you're trying to guess what's the best thing to say.

Linda: Yes. Then there was an activity that we did in groups, which I found really fascinating. Engineers are renowned for being a bit unsociable, but I thought we made a great team. And we had an individual task too. We had to sort through various business documents and prioritize them. It was just like what you have to do as a student, really, just with different content.

Matthew: What exactly were you doing on the placement?

Linda: I was helping to design some diagnostic software to identify any waste in the car assembly process.

Matthew: Do you mean waste of materials?

Linda: No, time. Anything that can speed the process up helps to cut costs.

Matthew: How did the work placement compare to being a student? Was it hard work?

Linda: Yes, it was. I'd had full-time work before. I've done various unskilled jobs during university holidays, and some of those involved long hours. So I thought I'd find it easy. I was wrong, though. I think when you're on placement, you're always trying to prove yourself.

Matthew: So you push yourself hard to succeed?

Linda: Yes. But I got a lot of support from my employers. They were always helpful. And then, at the end of the placement, I was given formal feedback.

Matthew: Do you mean on your engineering ability?

Linda: Well, no. I didn't really need that because we had team meetings every other day, and so I had the chance to discuss technical issues and ask about anything that wasn't clear. The evaluation was about general workplace things, like organizational ability, initiative, that sort of thing.

Matthew: I get the impression you think you benefited from the placement.

Linda: Well, the best thing is that they've offered me a job for next year, depending on my exam results, of course, but still.

Matthew: A permanent one?

Linda: Yes. But apart from that, I learned so much. The industrial environment was much more demanding than the academic one, so my general skills improved, like time management, meeting deadlines. And on the technical side, I learned new software packages, like MS Project.

Matthew: Well, I think you've convinced me that work placements are worthwhile. But while you're here, can you give me advice on something else?

Narrator: Before you hear the rest of the conversation, you have some time to look at questions 27 to 30. Now listen and answer questions 27 to 30.

Matthew: I'm about to make a start on the Engineering Materials module, and I've got a booklist here. Can you have a quick look and tell me what you would recommend? That's if you can remember.

Linda: Let's see. I do remember some of them. Hmm. Yes, this one, The Science of Materials. I found the subject quite hard generally, but this book is very accessible, so it suited me. It doesn't cover everything, though.

Matthew: What about this one then, Materials Engineering?

Linda: Oh, yes. I do remember that. But it's a bit out of date now, isn't it? Unless it's a new edition.

Matthew: I don't think so.

Linda: But what I liked about it were the pictures. They really helped to understand the descriptions. It's useful just from that point of view. Let's see, hmm, what else? Oh, yes, that one there, Engineering Basics. I think out of all these, that's got the widest coverage.

Matthew: But I've looked at the contents page and it hardly mentions nanotechnology.

Linda: Yes, you're right. The Evolution of Materials does, though. It's a recent publication, so it covers all the latest developments. It's a bit thin on the 1960s, though, and that decade was quite important.

Matthew: Well, it sounds as if they all complement each other in some ways. I don't suppose you can lend me...

Narrator: That is the end of section 3. You now have half a minute to check your answers. Now turn to section 4.

Historian: My presentation today is on how the science of genetics is being used to shed light on the origin of manuscripts, anything written by hand, produced in the medieval period. That is, the period between the 5th and 15th centuries AD. As many of you know, thousands of medieval handwritten books still exist today. Some of them have a clear provenance, that is, we know exactly where and when they were written. But the origin of many manuscripts has been a complete mystery. That is, until 2009, when geneticists started using DNA testing to shed light on their origins.

But before looking at the new research, I need to explain something about the way the manuscripts were produced, particularly what they were written on. Virtually all were written on treated animal skins, and there were essentially two types. The first was parchment, which is made of sheepskin. It has the quality of being very white, but also being thin. It has a naturally greasy surface, which meant it was hard to erase writing from it. This made it much sought after for court documents in medieval times.

The second type is vellum, which is calfskin. This was most often used for any very high-status documents because it provided the best writing surface, so scribes could achieve lettering of high quality.

So, once the animal hides had been chosen, they had to be prepared. Where the right materials were on hand, the skins were put into large barrels or vats of lime, where they were agitated or stirred frequently. But if lime wasn't available, then the hides were buried. Both these techniques were designed to cause the hair to slough off and the skins to become gelatinous and therefore more flexible.

The next stage was to put the hides on stretcher frames and pull them very tight. While on the frame, they were scraped with a moon-shaped knife in order to create a uniform thickness. For parchment, that was the end of the process. But for vellum, there was an additional stage where it was bleached in order to achieve the desired color.

So, what does all this preparation mean for the quest to identify the origins of mystery manuscripts? Well, until recently, the only way historians and other academics were able to guess at origins was either through the analysis of the handwriting style or from the dialect in which the piece was written. But these techniques have proved unreliable for a number of reasons.

It was thus decided to try to look at the problem from a different angle, to start from what is known. That is, the small number of manuscripts whose origins we do already know. Because these parchments and vellum are both made from animal hides, it was possible to subject them to DNA testing and to identify the genetic markers for the date and location of production. From this was created what is known as a baseline.

The next stage was to test the mystery manuscripts, finding their DNA characteristics and then making comparisons between the known and the mystery scripts. Genetic similarities and differences enabled the scientists to gain more information about the origins of the many manuscripts we had known virtually nothing about up to that point.

Now you might ask, what are the potential uses of this new information? Well, obviously, it can shed light on the origin of individual books and manuscripts. But that's not all. It can also shed light on the evolution of the whole of the manuscript production industry in medieval times. And because that was such a thriving business involving very large-scale movements right across the globe, the new data in turn help historians establish which trade routes were in operation during the whole millennium.

Now, if anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer.