IELTS Listening Practice Test with Answers

Practice Transcript — read this after attempting the questions

Receptionist: Good morning, Riverside Fitness Centre. How can I help you?

Caller: Hello, I saw your advertisement online and I'm interested in joining as a member. Could you give me some more information?

Receptionist: Of course! I'll just take a few details from you first. Could I start with your full name?

Caller: Yes — it's Sarah Peterson.

Receptionist: Could you spell your surname for me?

Caller: P-E-T-E-R-S-O-N.

Receptionist: Perfect. And your date of birth?

Caller: 14th of March, 1989.

Receptionist: Lovely. And are you currently in employment?

Caller: Yes, I work as a teacher — secondary school.

Receptionist: Wonderful. We have a discount available for teachers and NHS staff. Which membership tier were you considering? We have Gold at forty-five pounds a month, Silver at thirty-five, or Bronze at twenty-five.

Caller: I think Silver would suit me best.

Receptionist: And which branch would you prefer? We have our main branch in Clifton, the East branch in Redland, and our newest branch in Cotham.

Caller: The Redland one — it's closest to my school.

Receptionist: Great choice. We'll need a photo ID and one proof of address when you come in. Can I take your email address for the confirmation?

Caller: Yes, it's sarah.peterson@webmail.co.uk.

Receptionist: And a phone number?

Caller: 07834 629 145.

Receptionist: Brilliant. And finally — how did you hear about us?

Caller: I spotted a poster at my local library.

Receptionist: Lovely. We'll send your welcome pack to that email within 24 hours.

Practice Transcript — read this after attempting the questions

Welcome to the Ironbridge Heritage Museum audio guide. The museum is arranged across four main zones which I'll walk you through now.

As you pass through the main entrance gate, the Gift Shop is immediately on your left. Straight ahead from the gate is the Main Hall, which holds our permanent exhibition on the history of the iron industry in this region. If you continue through the Main Hall and then turn right, you'll reach the Restoration Workshop, where you can watch our craftspeople demonstrate traditional metalworking techniques. Please be aware that photography is not permitted in the Workshop — the flash from cameras can damage certain historical artefacts on display.

For refreshments, the Café is situated to the north of the Restoration Workshop, right beside the river. It's the only food and drink facility on site — outside food is welcome in the picnic area near the car park, but not inside the Café itself.

Our temporary exhibitions change three times a year and are housed in the East Wing. You'll find it by turning left after the Main Hall and walking through the archway.

A few practical details: the museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon. We close on Mondays for deep cleaning and maintenance. Last admission is at four thirty. On summer weekends — that's June, July, and August — we extend our evening opening to six pm. Guide dogs are welcome throughout the entire site.

Practice Transcript — read this after attempting the questions

Mia: Right, we should use this tutorial time to sort out the project structure. So — our assignment is a 3,600-word report on urban food systems, due in three weeks. Who's taking what?

Tom: I was hoping to cover urban food deserts — the socioeconomic dimension. There's been some really compelling work out of Chicago and Detroit that I want to build on.

James: That suits me. I'll take the policy angle — local government intervention, planning law, things like that.

Mia: Which leaves vertical farming for me — which is actually what I wanted anyway, so perfect.

James: Mia, are you focusing on a specific city?

Mia: I'm doing a comparative piece, actually — Singapore, Rotterdam, and Tokyo. They're the three most advanced cases.

Tom: Good. For references — are we using mainly journal articles or are we including textbooks?

Mia: I'm relying on journals and FAO reports. Textbooks are often too out of date for this topic.

James: Same. Though I'll probably use some government white papers for the policy section — they're more specific to legislation.

Tom: Makes sense. Where are we all up to with writing?

Mia: I've finished my literature review and I'm halfway through the analysis section — about 1,800 words drafted.

Tom: I've been doing a lot of data gathering this week. Haven't started writing yet, to be honest.

James: I've drafted the introduction and the methodology. The main body is still to come.

Mia: OK — the submission instructions say we produce one combined PDF. Each section to be clearly labelled with the author's name.

Tom: And there's a joint bibliography at the end.

Mia: Right. I can coordinate the final collation — I'm usually the one who finishes first. I'll send everyone a combined draft by the Thursday before the deadline so we can proofread.

James: Perfect. Tom — do you want to use the university's shared drive for version control?

Tom: Yes, I'll set that up this afternoon.

Practice Transcript — read this after attempting the questions

Good afternoon, everyone. Today I want to introduce you to a topic that sits at the intersection of urban ecology and conservation policy — the rapid growth of beekeeping in cities, and what it reveals about our relationship with pollinator populations.

Let me begin with some context. Global honeybee populations have been under serious pressure since the mid-2000s, primarily due to a syndrome known as Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD. CCD is defined by the abrupt disappearance of worker bees from a colony. The queen remains. The honey and food stores remain. But the adult worker bees vanish almost entirely. The causes are still contested, but the strongest evidence points to a combination of three factors: exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides, infestation by parasitic mites — specifically Varroa destructor — and the loss of diverse habitat.

Here is what makes this interesting from an urban ecology perspective: cities may actually offer bees a better habitat than much of the surrounding countryside. Large-scale monoculture agriculture leaves vast tracts of land with a single crop flowering for a few weeks and then nothing. Urban environments, by contrast, contain an extraordinarily diverse mosaic of flowering species — garden plants, park plantings, green rooftops, roadside trees — distributed across the whole year. Studies from both Paris and London have demonstrated that urban honey contains a higher diversity of micronutrients than honey from rural apiaries. City bees, in short, forage across a richer botanical landscape.

The numbers reflect this shift. The count of registered beehives in London grew from roughly three thousand in 2009 to more than sixteen thousand by 2023 — an increase of over four hundred percent. Paris and Berlin have seen similar trajectories.

However, the trend is not without complications. A study published in 2022 suggested that when managed honeybee colonies become too dense in an urban area, they create competition pressure on wild pollinators — bumblebees, solitary bees, hoverflies — by depleting the shared pool of nectar and pollen. In response, Amsterdam introduced a regulatory cap in 2021: no more than one hive per five hundred square metres of available foraging area.

The regulatory picture more broadly is still fragmented. Urban beekeeping sits uneasily across public health law, planning regulations, and agricultural policy, and most municipalities lack a coherent framework. The core lesson I want you to take away is this: well-intentioned conservation practice, if poorly managed, can inadvertently damage the ecosystem it is designed to protect. Urban beekeeping is a case study in the complexity of urban conservation at scale.