Road to IELTS 1 Listening Test 6

Part 1 — Cell phone packages

WOMAN: Good morning. What can I help you with today? MAN: Well, I’ve just moved here, and I need to get a new cell phone number. WOMAN: OK, we’ve got both pre-paid plans and 24-month contract plans … MAN: I’ll only be here for a year, so I think a pre-paid plan is better. Can you tell me something about those? WOMAN: Of course. We’ve got a number of different plans, but first of all I should just mention that none of them come with handsets. You’ll just be buying a SIM card, and you can replace the one in your old phone. MAN: Yes, that’s perfect. So, how much are the SIM cards? WOMAN: Well the expense isn’t really in the card. To use it, you’ll need to set up a plan, and that can range from just over 10 dollars a month upwards. The card itself is just 2 dollars, and that gives you about 15 minutes of local calls. MAN: Ok, I knew I’d need a new plan from you guys, but I don’t have much money at the moment. Can you tell me about the cheaper plans? WOMAN: Yes. Our least expensive is the ‘Minimal Plan’ … it’s only 12 dollars a month. MAN: That’s good … WOMAN: … but it’s for someone who doesn’t use their phone very much. You only get 40 minutes a month of talking time. MAN: Ah … how about internet access with that one? WOMAN: No, sorry, that’s not included. MAN: No, no, that plan’s not for me. I’ll definitely need to go online. WOMAN: For browsing the net, or for things like Facebook and We Chat? MAN: Mostly social media. It’s how I keep in touch with people back home. WOMAN: Well, we do have what we call a Social Plan. That might really suit you. You get unlimited data on social media websites. MAN: That sounds great. How much is that one? WOMAN: That’s 40 dollars a month. But you get 200 minutes of talking time, 500 texts and 2 gigabytes of data, which is about 15 hours of watching videos, and thousands of photo uploads. MAN: Well, I do upload lots of photos for my friends back home, so that’s fine. But I’m worried that I’ll need more texts than that. Do you have any plans with unlimited texting? WOMAN: … Well, there is one other plan. On that one, you choose five people, or five phone numbers, and you can talk to or text them as much as you want. That’s called the Friends and Family Plan. MAN: OK, that sounds like the one for me! What’s the catch? WOMAN: Well it’s not exactly cheap. That plan costs 70 dollars a month, but it does come with 3 gigabytes and unlimited texts, as well as your 5 designated people. MAN: That’s a bit too pricey for me, but I do like it. Can I choose a cheaper plan now and change after I find a job? WOMAN: Yes, you can just come in and let us know whenever you like. It’s also possible to log into our website and manage your account yourself online. MAN: OK. I think the social media plan is the best option for the time being. WOMAN: Great, so we’ll set you up today. We’ll just fill in this sales form. Here’s your new SIM card. I’ll just need to record the number for you. Can you read me that number on the top left hand side of the card? It’s your new phone number. MAN: Uh yes … it’s 0 – 4 – 7 – 8 – double 7 – 9 – 2 – double 3. WOMAN: Ok, I got it. So remember, that’s your new number, so you should write it down as well so you can inform your contacts. Hold onto this package that the SIM comes in. There’s information on that about how to contact us, you know, just in case your phone gets lost or something like that. MAN: Oh yes, that’s important. WOMAN: So, next I’ll need your name. MAN: Sure. It’s Steven, that’s Steven with a v. And my surname is Conway. That’s C – O – N – W – A – Y. WOMAN: Ok, that’s cool, and your address please? MAN: Well, at the moment I’m living in temporary accommodation. Once I’ve found work, I’ll be moving to a different place. Do you think that matters? WOMAN: Well, not really for now, but please let us know when you get a permanent address, OK? MAN: Yes, fine. So I’ll just give you my current address for now, then. It’s 375 Thompson Avenue. WOMAN: Is that spelled T-H-O-M-P-S-O-N? MAN: Yes, that’s right. It’s in Greenpark. WOMAN: Ah, yes. OK. So, the total for today is $42.50, that’s the SIM card and the first month’s plan. MAN: So just to confirm, I’ll be able to get the SIM card today and start using it immediately? WOMAN: Yep. You’ve got the SIM card already. MAN: Oh … yeah, right, sorry! … Now, let me see if I have enough cash. Ten, twenty, thirty … No, it doesn’t look like I have enough. I guess I’ll have to put it on my credit card. Here you are. WOMAN: No problem … Just a moment … So, just sign here, please. Now, do you want help putting the SIM card into your phone?

Part 2 — Burger restaurant kitchen tour

SPEAKER: Good afternoon, everyone. Can you all hear me? … Good. Let’s go through to the kitchen now so you can see the full operation of the restaurant. First, I want to emphasise the importance of kitchen hygiene. It’s crucial for our business reputation. On the wall here we have a dispenser of plastic shower caps. Forget about fashion statements; everyone who goes into the kitchen must wear one, to protect against stray hairs getting into the food. Please take one and put it on now. Alongside it is the sanitiser – again, you all need to use this and scrub your hands thoroughly before we go in. Also, please be aware that this is a working kitchen, so many of the counter surfaces inside could be hot. It’s best not to touch anything as you go through, just in case. It’s just basic safety and common sense. You’ll notice the number pad on the door here. We have full security in the kitchen. Now that most people pay with a bankcard rather than cash, there’s no great concern about robbery; again, it’s our reputation that we are protecting here. We restrict access mainly because we need to be certain that our food cannot be contaminated, and that our workers can get on with the job without interference from unauthorised people. Right, come on in. First, here’s the storeroom. Our ordering systems are very efficient. The quantities in each burger must be exact, and this is ensured by the various food dispensers we use. For example, 20 mls of our famous home brand mayonnaise is dispensed in our most popular burger. So, at the end of the day, when I check how many burgers have been sold or binned, I know if the mayonnaise stocks are running low and I can order more. OK, now on to the operational side of things. Consistency is the key here. Every burger in any of the brand’s restaurants should have the same quantities of the same ingredients, so that all our customers are sure of what they’re ordering. Our delivery standard is to keep the customer waiting no longer than two minutes for their burger – that’s truly fast food! We don’t like wastage, so we analyse our sales statistics to predict the demand for each day, and even the times of day when there is most need. However, to make sure that we can meet the production targets, we can’t avoid some waste. At busy times sometimes there’ll be a stack of six burgers in the warming rack. We know these won’t stay at their best for long, so after ten minutes they must go into the bin. Another key area is efficient staffing. We have some full time staff, of course, but part-time staff will do maybe two hours at noon and another two at six and other casual staff are on call at peak times. This really helps us with efficiency of service and the economy of the operation. We train all our staff at all the different stations, but when we’re busy, each member of staff works at one particular station; grilling the buns, cooking the meat, adding salad, cheese and sauces, or packaging. I’m sure you’ve all seen our famous paper tray covers. They’re an important part of our marketing strategy. If you look on the reverse side, you’ll see a food analysis of all our products, the grams of fat, the carbohydrates and so on. You may be asking yourself, how can we be sure these are accurate? Well, quantities are a key issue here. With the ice cream, for example, we train our staff to serve exactly 150 grams of ice cream into a cone, and 200 grams into the plastic cups. This allows us to oversee our stocks for reordering, and also gives reliability. The key aspect for us, though, is that we are being accurate about nutritional information. This is so important that head office sends us secret customers. They will take an order back to a table and weigh and measure the ingredients! OK, now on to sales. On our left you can see the two women wearing headphones. They communicate with each other, with the public, and with the food preparation team. The drive-through that they’re servicing is a very important part of our business; in fact, it generates one third of our revenue. The other two thirds comes from restaurant visitors, and about 20 per cent of that comes from our themed children’s parties. Now we’ll look at another aspect of our service – just cluster around this till. The till is the point of sale and, as you see, our products are pictured on the keyboard as well as named. The till operator just taps in the client’s order by choosing the correct picture. As soon as the order is confirmed by cash or card payment, it appears on two screens; one above the cooking areas and one behind the servers. This dual system means that the staff at the cooking stations get good notice of any build-up in demand, and the servers have an onscreen reminder of the earlier orders they’ve taken. They can also use this to prepare any drinks or ice-creams that customers have ordered. When the hot food is delivered, the order is complete, so they delete the entry on that screen. That keeps everything instantly up-to-date. Now…

Part 3 — Planning a crab experiment

MADDIE: OK, John. We’re studying the crabs on the local beaches, right? JOHN: Yep. MADDIE: And we’ve got this form to fill in. So, our idea is that we find out if there’s any impact from people using the beach … JOHN: … and the rubbish they leave. MADDIE: And there’s other rubbish too, like from passing boats. JOHN: Oh, right … so our experimental hypothesis is that people’s use of the beach impacts on the crabs living in the sand. MADDIE: To include everything we probably need to write down human activity. JOHN: Fair enough, I agree. OK, so what are we including as our variables? Of course, the first one has to be the overall number of visitors to the beach, right? MADDIE: Yeah, on the form I’ll call that … visitor numbers. JOHN: OK … and then another one is time of day… MADDIE: … yeah, I think Mr Benn said we need to look at the beach when it’s busy in the daytime, when people are running around, those four-wheel bikes are charging up and down, so the noise levels are really high… JOHN: Yeah … and again at night when it’s quiet. MADDIE: OK fine … and I was wondering… JOHN: What? MADDIE: What if some of the rubbish and food that people leave around is actually tasty for the crabs? JOHN: Good thinking. So, another variable is whether people actually feed the crabs, without meaning to. How can we phrase that? Um … people feeding the crabs? MADDIE: No, that won’t do, they’re not doing it on purpose … How about … umm … food left on the beach? JOHN: Yes OK, but can we make that shorter? How about … edible rubbish? MADDIE: Yes, good … So, we need to have several beaches, don’t we? … You know, at least one that’s hard for people to get to, that has almost no rubbish, and others with more visitors. JOHN: Yes, that’s right … though of course there’ll still be floating stuff from the sea on all the beaches, and pollution from passing boats, won’t there? MADDIE: True … I guess we have to take those as constants. JOHN: Well, we have three beaches to work with — the first one is the busy beach right in the town alongside the promenade. That’ll be perfect for the high use one. MADDIE: Right. JOHN: Then, there’s the little bay round the corner that you can only reach on foot by going over the hill, so I guess not so many people visit that one. MADDIE: No, but some do. It’s quite popular in summer for picnics. JOHN: Yeah, so it gets a little use, but not that much. MADDIE: And do we have one where no one goes, as a control? JOHN: Well, Mr Benn has asked a farmer to let us go across his land to another one the public never gets to. MADDIE: Oh, right, I remember. It’s called Sandy Point, isn’t it? JOHN: Yeah, that’s right. MADDIE: OK. So, what’s our experimental method? How are we going to judge if the crabs are affected or not? And how can we measure three beaches with two observers? JOHN: Don’t worry about that; my younger brother will help us out. He’s really keen. So, we’ll need to count the crabs – or at least their holes in the sand – during a particular time period, count how many we see. MADDIE: Yeah OK, so we need to be precise about the time, uh, and surely we need to choose a specific part of the beach to measure? JOHN: Yeah that’s right. So we need things to measure the time and the area with, right … what else do we need to think about? MADDIE: Well, to compare the beaches properly we’ll need to visit them all first, won’t we? … To see the lay of the land. Because we also need to set the identical distance from the actual water’s edge, for each beach … and of course that will change as the tide goes in and out. Let’s see … we’ll need measuring tapes and string and little posts to mark the area – shall we say two square metres, three or maybe four metres from the water’s edge? That should give us some leeway with the tide coming in. JOHN: And to do it properly, we’ll each have to be in position at the same time, so we’ll all need mobile phones to synchronise the observation periods, and stop watches to time the observation precisely. MADDIE: So … one more question … how are we going to see them at night? And will we need to count holes again, in the dark? Oh, that’s 2 questions, sorry! JOHN: Yes, well, we will need to count again each time … the holes come and go, apparently, as the crabs are quite mobile – they steal each others’ homes too, so if a larger intruder comes along, the previous owner digs himself another hole. As for the night vision problem, the department’s got goggles for that – so, what else? MADDIE: Well, we need to think about timing, don’t we? Do we sit for an hour … or two hours … at a time? JOHN: Let’s say an hour for starters. Remember we have to do this again after dusk – I’ve read that most crabs are nocturnal anyway. MADDIE: Yeah, so how many times do we need to repeat all this? For two weeks, d’you reckon? Or longer? JOHN: Well, that’s 28 hours’ total observation time; that’ll make it harder for doing the stats, won’t it? MADDIE: Yeah, that’s true. So how about we go for a fortnight, adding up to 20 hours in total. That’ll allow for any bad weather. JOHN: Yeah … sounds fine to me …

Part 4 — Themes in world mythologies

LECTURER: Today’s lecture is about some of the common themes in world mythologies. Why do all cultures invent mythologies, and what do they have in common? Well firstly, these stories provide explanations for the questions we all ask: How was the universe created? Where does the sun come from? What are the stars? A mythology is not the same as a religious doctrine, but nevertheless, most mythologies describe the creation of the world, and how it was populated with people and animals. Mythological heroes are usually god-like characters with superhuman abilities and qualities, though they are not always benevolent. Some of them are jealous, proud and deceitful, just like the humans who invent them. Although they are fantastical, the stories are accepted as a psychological reality by the cultures that create them. However, mythology has more than psychological meaning. Here’s one example. In the period of ancient Chinese history known as the Warring States, China was changing, but the traditional mythologies reinforced the old political order. The Emperor’s chief minister noticed that some scholars were undermining the Emperor by travelling through the country telling the old legends to the common people. Their stories were exerting a powerful influence on the community. The Emperor forbade the telling of myths and commissioned the writing of new stories that supported his political ideas. Do not dismiss mythology as being old-fashioned and irrelevant to modern society. For example, George Lucas’s Star Wars saga is a powerful retelling of an ancient mythological theme. When Luke Skywalker’s story begins, he is an exiled and orphaned member of royalty, who is then called to an adventure where he meets the powerful wizard Ben Kenobi. During his quest he overcomes many dangers, slays the evil character Darth Vader, and rescues his beautiful sister princess Leia. So, you can see that we’re still busily creating new myths in the form of movies, comic books and science fiction stories. This retelling of ancient legends speaks to us all at any age, as do the old stories that we have inherited from our own cultures. Stories from widely different cultures bear a strong resemblance to each other, and one of the best examples of this is the striking similarity of creation myths from around the world. In some of these stories, such as those from some American Indian tribes and Aboriginal Australians, there is a creature, for example, a crab or a giant tortoise. This creature dives into the ocean and retrieves a small piece of earth from which everything else is created. Water and earth are the two most common elements in all the creation myths. However, in many creation myths, the world starts in a state of chaos, or a void, where there is no delineation of earth and sky. In Norse mythology, for example, a supernatural human being emerges from this void and mountains, rivers and earth are formed from his flesh and blood. This god-like creature is called Ymir. This creation of natural features from the bodies of the gods is a common thread in other creation mythologies, such as those of Mesopotamia. It frequently takes place after a god has died or been killed, and this introduces another common mythological theme: family rivalry. The Greek culture is a good example of a creation myth that features a family of quarrelsome and aggressive gods, all battling for power and a role in the creation of the earth. Gaia the earth gives birth to Uranus, the sky, and these two create a family of children, including monsters, who imprison, torture and sometimes even kill and eat their own offspring. Creation myths do not provide examples of the cardinal virtues, but they do address universal themes of jealousy, war and lust for power. Another common element is the image of a cosmic egg. One of the Chinese myths represents chaos as a hen’s egg, from which a creature called Pangu hatches. The parts of the egg separated; the heavy parts formed the earth, while the light parts formed the sky. For eighteen thousand years, the distance between earth and sky increased by 3 metres a day, while Pangu grew at the same rate, his body filling the space between the two. Another mythology which features the earth and the sky separating comes from the Maori culture in New Zealand. In this story, the sky father Rangi, and the earth mother Papa, lie touching each other. They have many children, all boys, and these children plot together to separate their parents, so that they can live in the light. After many failed attempts at separation, Tane, the god of the forest, lies on his back and pushes his parents apart with his legs. And where do humans feature in these stories? Most often, they are formed after the creation of other natural features. For example, in the Chinese myth, humans were created from the fleas on Pangu’s body. Once they had arrived on the scene, the humans often tried to elevate themselves to god-like status by taking knowledge from the gods. In Greek mythology, the humans tried to secretly take the knowledge of how to make fire.