IELTS Listening Practice Test | 2026-01-27

**Narrator:** Now turn to section one. You will hear a woman talking to some students about her job. Now you have some time to look at questions 1 to 4. Listen carefully and answer questions 1 to 4.
**Police Officer:** Hello everyone. Thank you for inviting me to give a talk in this series of employment lectures. I'm here this evening to tell you about my job. I'm going to tell you what I like about it, what I don't like about it, and what I hope to do in the future. Okay. Well, I'm a police officer. I've been in the police for just over 5 years, and part of my job is to give talks to students about police work. People often ask why I joined the police, so maybe I'll start there. I've always been interested in law and order, so I went to study law at university. But when I got there, I realized that I was more interested in the practical side of law than the theory. So I applied to work with the police force in my spare time. Then as soon as I graduated, I was accepted for training.
**Narrator:** Before you hear the rest of the conversation, you have some time to look at questions 5 to 10. Now listen and answer questions 5 to 10.
**Police Officer:** As you know, our job is to protect the public from criminals and defend the law. So obviously the police force has to work every day of the week, day and night. This means we're often at work when everyone else is relaxing with friends and family, and we can't always be around for special occasions like birthdays and New Year's Eve. On top of that, we have a lot of extra work at weekends, especially when there's a football match and the fans are out celebrating. So, our working hours are one disadvantage of police work. A lot of the time we have to work with the public to avoid problems and we get special training for that. But we can't always prevent trouble. So another disadvantage of the job is the danger. I mean we know that some of the people we have to arrest will attack us.
Now for the advantages. Well, one of the advantages is that police work is well paid. As I've said, it's a difficult job and police officers work hard for their pay. But there are many more advantages. For example, sometimes the work's fun, especially when we have to protect famous people from their own fans. I've met quite a lot of celebrities in my job, and I must say I enjoy seeing them close up and finding out what they're really like as people. But for me, the biggest advantage is the job satisfaction. Speaking for myself, I would say I get the most job satisfaction when I help someone or solve a problem in a community. And in the future, I'd like to train to be a detective. I think I'd be good at that.
**Narrator:** That is the end of part one. You now have half a minute to check your answers.
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**Narrator:** Now turn to section two. Section two, you are going to hear a tutor talking to a group of philosophy students. First look at questions 11 to 13. Now listen carefully and answer questions 11 to 13.
**Dr. Russell:** Good morning everyone. My name is Dr. Russell and I am your tutor for philosophy this year. I think we're all here. Let's see. 5, 6, 7. Yes, that's everyone. Before we look at the three lectures you've had on philosophy this week, I would just like to run through a few things about what you can expect of me as tutor and what in turn we expect of you. As for myself, my function as tutor is to help you in all things relating to your work in the philosophy course. The help that I am able to give is of course mainly academic. For personal matters, I can refer you to other support services in the university, ranging from counseling to welfare. One thing that I would point out is that if you feel that you need to talk to someone, no matter how insignificant it is, don't leave it. Oh, and the last thing is if you do need to make an appointment, the times are listed on the door of my room. You just write your name in a time slot. But I would point out that the appointment slots get booked up quite quickly. If it's urgent, catching me between sessions is the best idea. That way, we can sort something out quickly. No questions?
**Narrator:** Before the talk continues, look at questions 14 to 20. As you listen to the second part of the talk, answer the questions 14 to 20.
**Dr. Russell:** Okay. As regards you as students, the tutorials are voluntary. You're not obliged to attend, but you are encouraged to do so. Last year, for the first time, a register was kept of students attending lectures. And this year, tutors are being asked to keep a register of tutorial attendants. This is not a formal register and not all tutors will be doing it but in the philosophy department all of us have chosen to keep registers. Another point that's being emphasized this year is punctuality. When we did exit questionnaires we found that people arriving late for tutorials and lectures was the single most annoying thing for the majority of students. I would therefore ask you to try to be on time for the tutorials and for all your other classes for that matter.
As regards the tutorials themselves, we will have a review of the philosophy lectures of the week before with the discussion being led by one of you each week. There is of course some planning involved, but you should rely primarily on the notes you made at the lectures. This will not take up the whole of the 90 minutes allocated to the tutorial. For the rest of the time, we will look at a particular philosopher period or concept for which you will be expected to do some preparation each week. This will range from reading about a particular individual or concept to preparing a brief outline on a subject of your choice. How much you put into this depends on you, but we're not expecting indepth analysis at this stage. Are there any questions so far?
**Student:** I'd just like to ask whether the work we do in the tutorials counts towards our continuous assessment and if so, how much?
**Dr. Russell:** I was just coming on to that point. All the work you do in the way of essays and project work that is graded counts towards your continuous assessment grades. The mini presentations and lecture discussions will not be graded but obviously as time goes on these activities will I hope have an impact on your work and hence your scores. Does that answer your question?
**Student:** Basically yes.
**Narrator:** That is the end of section two. You now have half a minute to check your answers.
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**Narrator:** Now turn to part three. Part three. You will hear a conversation between a tutor and two students, Amanda and Jake. First, you have some time to look at questions 21 to 25. Now listen carefully and answer questions 21 to 25.
**Dr. Hinton:** So Jake and Amanda, how did the project go?
**Amanda:** Very well, I think. Dr. Hinton, I certainly learned a lot and enjoyed myself at the same time.
**Jake:** Me too.
**Dr. Hinton:** So remind me, what was your project about?
**Amanda:** Basically, what makes successful people? Let's call them top achievers.
**Jake:** Successful. Yes. How are they different from us? What do they do that other less successful people don't do?
**Dr. Hinton:** Interesting. And did you come to any conclusions?
**Jake:** Quite a few, actually.
**Dr. Hinton:** Good. Share some with me then.
**Amanda:** Well, I'd always thought that a top achiever would be the sort of person who would bring work home every night and slave over it, but it appears not. Those types tend to peak early and then go into decline. They become addicted to work itself with much less concern for results. We found that high achievers were certainly ready to work hard, but within strict limits. They knew how to relax, could leave their work at the office, prize close friends and family life, and spend a healthy amount of time with their children and friends. There's a lesson for us all there.
**Dr. Hinton:** Anyway, go on.
**Jake:** It's also very important to choose a career which you enjoy, not just one that pays well or which assures you of a pension many years down the line.
**Dr. Hinton:** Surely that's important though, Amanda.
**Amanda:** Yes, I agree. But being happy in your work is far more important than anything else. Top achievers spend over 2/3 of their working hours on doing work they truly prefer and only one-third on disliked chores. They want internal satisfaction, not just external rewards such as pay rises and promotions.
**Narrator:** Before you hear the rest of the conversation, you have some time to look at questions 26 to 30. Now listen and answer questions 26 to 30.
**Jake:** Actually in the end they often have both because they enjoy what they are doing. So their work is better and their rewards higher.
**Dr. Hinton:** Yes, Jake, that certainly makes sense. Now, can I ask you something? Do high achievers, as you call them, take many risks?
**Jake:** Yes and no. I interviewed one business executive who told me he was able to take risks because he carefully considered how he could salvage the situation if it all went wrong. He imagined the worst that could happen and if he could live with that, he went ahead. If not, he didn't take the chance. Other people prefer to stay in what I heard described as the comfort zone setting for security, even if it means settling for mediocrity and boredom, too.
**Dr. Hinton:** Would you call top achievers perfectionists?
**Amanda:** Contrary to what I expected, no, I wouldn't. We came to the conclusion that a lot of ambitious and hardworking people are so obsessed with perfection that they actually turn out very little work. I happen to know a university teacher, a friend of my mother's who has spent over 10 years preparing a study about a playwright. She is so worried that she has missed something, she still hasn't sent the manuscript to a publisher. Meanwhile, the playwright, who was at the height of his fame when the project began, has faded from public view. The woman's study, even if finally published, will interest few people.
**Dr. Hinton:** So, what has this got to do with top achievers?
**Amanda:** Well, top achievers are almost always free of the compulsion to be perfect. They don't think of their mistakes as failures. Instead, they learn from them so they can do better next time.
**Dr. Hinton:** Well, would you call them competitive?
**Jake:** High performers focus more on bettering their own previous efforts than on beating competitors. In fact, I or we came to the conclusion that worrying too much about competitors' abilities and possible superiority can be self-defeating.
**Amanda:** Yes. And we found that top achievers tend to be team players rather than loners. They recognize that groups can solve certain complicated problems better than individuals and are eager to let other people do part of the work.
**Dr. Hinton:** Yes, loners who are often overconcerned about rivals can't delegate important work or decision-making. Their performance is limited because they must do everything themselves. Well, it looks as if you two have done a thorough job and learned something into the bargain, too. Now, there are just a couple of points I'd like to clarify with you.
**Narrator:** That is the end of part three. You now have half a minute to check your answers.
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**Narrator:** Now turn to section four. Section four. You will hear a media studies tutor giving a lecture about news sources. You now have 30 seconds to read questions 31 to 35. Now listen carefully and answer questions 31 to 35.
**Lecturer:** Okay. Now, many of you will have heard about the predicted death of newspapers as people increasingly access the TV and the internet for their news. Today, I want to look at the USA, which has very advanced news sources, to see if this is actually true. In the USA, the main news sources without doubt are TV, the internet, and the press. That is traditional newspapers. And although they are each surviving and growing, they are also changing. Obviously, TV news has been around for a while and the early evening bulletins when people get in from work are very popular. I suppose we traditionally think of the morning newspaper arriving on our doorstep with the daily news. Interestingly, this is not borne out by the statistics which show that readership in the US is much higher when people have time to relax when they're not working, especially on Sundays. The internet is also a popular weekend activity, but shows no variation with weekday access. So, people are using the different sources in different ways. Interestingly, local radio has been hit less by the grip of quite strong local newspapers than by the internet, which is seen to offer a better regional service. But just because the internet is seen as the new force in news media, does not mean it is dominant. Television has of course been global for a while, but now technological changes which have fueled the rise of online news have also allowed newspapers to print and distribute editions across the world. In fact, internet news which is seen as the big competitor for traditional markets does not offer that much variety. Often the sources are the online versions of the newspapers whereas television in order to offer something different has had to come up with a much more mixed bag of reporting from hard news to light reports on celebrity events. Another issue is reliability. The internet is virtually unregulated. So anything can be reported there whether true or not. Journalists on newspapers have fought a long hard battle to fight intervention and to retain the freedom of the press. Television, however, is seen as critical to political power and has become subject to harsh controls about what it can or cannot say.
**Narrator:** You now have 30 seconds to read questions 36 to 40. Now listen carefully and answer questions 36 to 40.
**Lecturer:** Now, one very critical factor in keeping newspapers alive and well in the USA has been their approach to advertising. Obviously, newspapers are heavily dependent on advertising revenue and they have become more and more imaginative in what they offer in order to make sure that advertisers use them and not other news sources. This has meant that contrary to popular belief, newspapers now have a significantly higher profit margin than the rest of American industry. So, how have they managed to raise advertising revenue in this way? Well, they have put a lot of effort into developing and maintaining a very strong association with the retail trade and they've come up with a winner. A critical tool in their sales plan has been suggesting that the adverts they run can have vouchers. This has been enormously effective because they have found that not only do more people buy the paper to get the discounts, but also that this inevitably means much higher sales for the clients who advertised. As well as doing this, the newspapers have also introduced aggressive sales campaigns over the last few years. This has resulted in a significant and continuing rise in the number of advertisers prepared to pay the extra for full page ads. So what I would like to move on to...
**Narrator:** That is the end of section 4. You now have half a minute to check your answers. That is the end of the listening test.