IELTS Listening Practice Test | 2026-03-03

**Customer Service Representative:** Okay. Who's next, please?
**Jenny:** I think I am.
**Customer Service Representative:** How can I help you?
**Jenny:** I just came in on flight 372 from Singapore at 11:30 and my luggage hasn't arrived. I've been waiting at the baggage claim for about half an hour now and everything seems to have come off the plane. The conveyor belt has stopped and all the passengers have gone. So, I came here to find out what has happened to my bag.
**Customer Service Representative:** Can I see your ticket, please?
**Jenny:** Here it is.
**Customer Service Representative:** So, you came from Hong Kong today and change planes in Singapore, right?
**Jenny:** Yes. The connection in Singapore was a tight one. The plane got in late and I had to rush to get to the next flight.
**Customer Service Representative:** That's the problem right there. There wasn't enough time to get your bags onto the connecting flight. Normally, Singapore airport is very efficient. Now, I need you to fill in these forms. Your name?
**Jenny:** Jenny Lee.
**Customer Service Representative:** Address.
**Jenny:** I guess you want my address here. I'm staying with relatives. Just a minute. I'll have to look it up. It looks like 583. No, it's 533 East 67th Street in Riverside.
**Customer Service Representative:** Do you have the phone number there?
**Jenny:** Yes, I do. It's um 93 014269.
**Customer Service Representative:** So, you came in on Qantas flight 372. Do you know the number of the flight out of Hong Kong?
**Jenny:** Let me see. I think it was Cathay Pacific 90 or something. Oh, yes. It says here CX912.
**Customer Service Representative:** Right now I need a description of the luggage. How many pieces did you check in?
**Jenny:** Just one.
**Customer Service Representative:** Can you describe it for me? Here is a picture to help you.
**Jenny:** Okay. It's a big bag like this one. Rectangular, not hard shell, but soft covered. And it has a zipper around the front.
**Customer Service Representative:** Is it black?
**Jenny:** No, sort of a gray color.
**Customer Service Representative:** Any identification?
**Jenny:** Just a tag with my name on it.
**Customer Service Representative:** Any other features?
**Jenny:** Well, it has wheels and a retractable handle on the end so you can pull it as well as the handle in the middle.
**Customer Service Representative:** Okay, that's fine. Now, if your bag missed the connection, I'm sure it'll be put on the next flight. I'll email Singapore as soon as I finish here. The next flight comes in at 17:50. That's 10 to 6 this evening. You can pick it up then.
**Jenny:** 10 to 6? That's too long to wait. Can I get my uncle to pick up the bag on his way home from work?
**Customer Service Representative:** Sorry, you have to be here yourself to clear customs.
**Jenny:** Of course, I almost forgot. Will the bag come here to this desk?
**Customer Service Representative:** Yes. You pick it up here, then take it over to the customs area. By the way, don't forget to bring your passport. You will also need to have the key plus your ticket with a baggage claim number on it.
**Jenny:** Oh, okay. Guess I'll have to come back tomorrow then. It's lucky I packed everything I need for now in my carry-on bag.
**Customer Service Representative:** Yes, that's always a good idea. Be prepared.

**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 um 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. Uh, 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. Um, no questions.
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 in-depth analysis at this stage. Um, 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.

**Tutor:** So the task I gave you both was to choose an article about a small-scale research project.
**Leela:** Yes.
**Tutor:** You were then required to try to reproduce the research procedures in your own context, i.e. try it out for yourselves.
**Jake:** Yeah. And that's what we've done.
**Tutor:** Great. So, I'd like you to tell me a bit about the article and why you chose it.
**Leela:** Well, the article's written by two university lecturers who had started using crosswords to help their students revise terminology for exams.
**Jake:** And the crosswords were designed and set on computers. And we selected the article because well it seemed an accessible topic even though we weren't familiar with the technique. You know, using it to design crosswords for higher education.
**Tutor:** That's a good reason. So these lecturers wanted to see how well this innovation was received by their students.
**Leela:** Yes. So how did you go about reproducing the research?
**Jake:** Well, we drew up a list of terms from one of our own modules and designed a crossword for revising these terms.
**Leela:** Then we asked our classmates to try out the crossword and give us feedback. You know, their opinions on how they felt about using the technique.
**Tutor:** Was it easy to find participants?
**Jake:** It wasn't easy at first, but then we convinced them that by taking part in the research, they were actually benefiting themselves by preparing for an exam which is coming up later this term.
**Leela:** And it worked.
**Tutor:** Good. So, how did you find out what the students thought about doing the crosswords?
**Leela:** A questionnaire. The original article used a two-page long questionnaire. There were lots of excellent questions on it, but the whole section on difficulties using it is now obsolete. Old-fashioned even, even though it had only been written a couple of years ago.
**Tutor:** So, you designed a shorter version.
**Jake:** Yeah. Then we sent it to the 40 students by email and got 28 replies. I was taken aback by the fact that everybody we talked to thought this was a good return. I mean, the responses were well written. You know, people had taken a lot of care, but I was really disappointed with the low numbers.
**Tutor:** Yes, an important lesson to learn for an apprentice researcher.
**Jake:** Yeah.
**Tutor:** So what results did you get?
**Leela:** Well, basically the responses were extremely positive. The students said that doing the crossword on a computer helped them really focus on the work in hand and not be distracted, which is something that commonly happens with other ways of doing revision.
**Jake:** Yeah, that was really clear. But something that struck me was that having fun hardly featured in their responses, nor did anything to do with spelling of hard words, which I thought would be an obvious benefit.
**Leela:** No.
**Tutor:** Okay.
**Jake:** Respondents also said that doing the crossword hadn't really increased their general motivation to study, but that it had highlighted the gaps in their memory, so they knew what further work was necessary.
**Tutor:** Right? So, how did your findings tally with those of the original researchers?
**Leela:** There were lots of similarities, but there were probably two main differences. We found that more males than females like the technique, whereas the original study found the reverse. Also, our respondents said they wouldn't mind doing a crossword as a final official exam, whereas in the original study, students said they would hate doing it, even if it meant having a shorter test. But of course, both sets of respondents said they'd be interested in doing more crosswords for informal purposes, revision, and so forth.
**Tutor:** Right. So, let's have a think about the whole project and what you've learned from doing it.
**Jake:** Well, it was very time-consuming.
**Leela:** Yeah, and I don't think we managed that aspect very well.
**Jake:** It could have been worse. I mean, we didn't have a lot of data, so we didn't have to spend ages processing it. And of course, we'd already done a course on numerical data processing, so there wasn't much new there.
**Leela:** Yeah, that's true. Anyway, I think we designed our questions well so that they gave us manageable data.
**Jake:** Yeah, it really helped having the original study to guide us as it were and that helped us to see what a good research instrument is, what a good questionnaire should be like.
**Leela:** Absolutely. We got a lot from that. But when we were writing up the project, I'm not sure whether we'll know how to acknowledge the work of the original study, you know, our referencing.
**Jake:** No, that's something we'll both have to work on in the future.
**Leela:** Actually, that part's been great. Finding ways to share and support another person.
**Jake:** That's the real plus from the project, learning ways to do that.
**Tutor:** Well, it's obviously been very successful.

**Lecturer:** River Dance is not just an expression of self-confidence, a kind of culturally interesting pop song. It tells the story of a people through song and dance. It tells the story of the people whose spirit was broken by an event which occurred in the middle of the last century but continued to affect the society until 1961, the Great Famine.
What is a famine? In 1840, the official population of Ireland was 8 million. They were largely poor and living in the countryside. They were beginning to have an interest in independence and perhaps had things been different, Ireland might have been independent much earlier, but there was a serious problem in the agricultural system. All crops were grown to pay the rent of the land, and all that was grown to eat was the potato.
This was fine until the potato crop failed, as it did from 1845 to 1848. The stories of what happened in those times live on in the popular culture of Ireland. And I won't tell them here, but the result was that 2 million people died or left the country by 1851. When you realize that the population continued to go down until 1961, you can realize what a disastrous effect this famine had on the people.
Compared with China, imagine if the famine of 1960 reduced the population by a quarter and it kept falling to less than half of its pre-famine figure. Anybody with ideas left and went to England, America or Australia. The people left behind were broken by their experiences and in effect the famine and its consequences put an end to all serious development in the country until well into this century.
The Irish in Ireland lost all hope and self-confidence. And much of our modern culture is about the sadness of that time and the sorrow of saying goodbye to those who left and left well into this century. Ireland has the highest immigration rate of any country in Europe for the last two centuries. We even have an expression for this saying goodbye. It is called the American wake. It means the ceremony like that of a funeral for someone going to America because you will never see him or her again.
Do you know why there is Irish music on the film Titanic? It is because most of the people killed were Irish. The leaving continued until the 1970s because independence in 1921 was followed by a civil war and an economic depression. Almost every family in Ireland has relatives abroad and up to the 60s in some places of a class of 30 graduating from high school all left. Along the West Coast, closed up houses from that time falling into ruin are still common.