IELTS Listening
คู่มือเทคนิค + แบบทดสอบจำลอง 40 ข้อ

M: Good morning, Fenwick Cycling Club, Daniel speaking. How can I help? W: Hello. I'd like to find out about joining the club. M: Of course. Could I take your name? W: Yes, it's Claire Hargreaves. That's H-A-R-G-R-E-A-V-E-S. M: Lovely. And a number we can reach you on? W: It's oh-seven-four-four, three-one-two, nine-six-five. M: Thank you. Now, we run three types of membership: Standard, Family and Junior. W: I was going to say Standard, but actually my husband rides as well, so Family would make more sense for us. M: Family it is. That comes to twenty-two pounds a month. Sorry, hang on — that was last year's rate. It went up in January, so it's twenty-five now. W: Fine. And when does the club actually ride? M: The main group ride is on Sunday mornings. There's a shorter, gentler one on Wednesday evenings, mainly for newcomers. W: And where do you all meet? M: We used to gather at the sports centre car park, but these days everyone meets outside the war memorial. It's easier to find. W: Is there anything I need to bring? M: A helmet is compulsory — we won't let anyone ride without one. Gloves and a rear light are recommended but not essential. W: How far do you usually go? M: The standard loop is forty kilometres. In winter we shorten it to thirty, because of the light. W: And is there any reduction on the fee? M: Yes, we offer a discount to students. You'd need to show a valid card each September. W: Perfect. Anything else I should know? M: Every new member receives a free water bottle when they sign up, and if you join before the end of the month, a club cap as well. W: That's excellent. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to the Riverside Activity Centre. I'm Marcus, and I'll be showing you round today. Let me start with the building itself. A lot of people look at the tall windows and assume it must once have been a school. In fact, it started life as a flour mill, back in eighteen seventy-eight, and the original grinding stones are still on display in the entrance hall. Now, regular visitors will have noticed some changes over the past year. We did look seriously at creating extra parking, and a proper café is still on the drawing board for next spring. But the change most of you actually noticed was that we now stay open until nine every evening. A quick word about booking. You can turn up and pay on the day, and yes, we still take cash. However, sessions fill up remarkably fast in the summer, so I'd strongly advise reserving your place through the website before you travel. Our most popular activity is the introductory kayaking course. It assumes absolutely no previous experience whatsoever — you don't need to have sat in a boat before. Do note, though, that participants must be at least eight years old, and it's certainly not designed for anyone training competitively. I should be honest about our difficulties too. The river did burst its banks in March, but that only closed us for a single day. We've had one or two paddles go missing, nothing serious. The real headache, and it's an ongoing one, has been finding qualified instructors — that's what limits how many sessions we can offer. On funding: the council grant covers roughly a fifth of what we spend, and membership fees a little more than that. But what genuinely keeps this place running is our summer holiday camps — they bring in well over half our annual income. Right, let me orient you on the plan. You're standing at reception, at the bottom. If you walk straight ahead along the main path towards the water, the boat store is the long, low building on your left, just before you reach the jetty. Back inside, the first aid room is directly opposite reception, on the far side of the corridor. Then, if you follow the corridor past the changing rooms, right at the end, in the corner beside the fire exit, you'll find the drying room. Do use it — nobody enjoys putting on a wet wetsuit. And finally, cross the footbridge, turn right, and carry on past the picnic area. The viewing platform is on the far side, overlooking the weir. It's the best spot for photographs.

T: So, Nadia, Tom — how's the sleep and academic performance project coming along? N: Better now. The first questionnaire was a bit of a disaster, though. T: We actually got plenty of responses, so the sample size was fine, and nobody complained about the length. N: The trouble was the wording. Several items could be read in two completely different ways — "a good night's sleep" meant something different to almost everyone. T: So we rewrote the whole thing. T: We also dropped the follow-up interviews in favour of sleep diaries. N: People assume that was about cost, but interviews would actually have been cheaper for us. T: And diaries are far more work to analyse, honestly. We switched because a diary shows what happens night after night, rather than giving us one isolated snapshot. T: The results were interesting. Older students didn't sleep noticeably less than the first years. N: And weekend sleep did have some effect, just a small one. What genuinely surprised us was that the total number of hours mattered far less than we expected. It was how regular the bedtime was that predicted performance. T: Right — consistency beat quantity. T: Now, about the write-up. Do we need more up-to-date references? Tu: Your references are adequate, and the graphs you've produced are perfectly clear. What I will not accept is a report without a proper limitations section. That's non-negotiable. N: Understood. N: What do we do about the eleven people who dropped out halfway? Tu: Don't chase them, and don't pretend they never existed either. Describe them in an appendix — who they were, and when they withdrew. T: Now, the rehearsal. Wednesday afternoon? N: I'm in the lab all Wednesday. Friday morning? T: Friday's too late — the presentation is that afternoon. What about Thursday morning? N: Thursday morning works. Let's fix it. Tu: Sensible. Now, your sources. What did you make of Ellison? N: Very readable. The argument was laid out so clearly that we understood it on the first pass. T: Baptiste was the opposite problem — only nineteen participants, which really isn't enough to generalise from. N: Okonjo we found genuinely valuable. The statistical tables in the appendix gave us exactly the comparison figures we needed. T: And Ramanathan was the odd one out. The conclusions run directly against what almost every other study reports. Tu: Good. Make sure you say so explicitly in your discussion.

Good morning. Today we're looking at urban rooftop farming — growing food on the roofs of city buildings. Now, rooftop gardens themselves are nothing new. The earliest examples we have records of existed almost entirely for decoration — they were ornamental spaces for wealthy households, with no expectation that they would produce anything edible. Commercial food production on roofs is a very recent development. In this city, the first genuinely commercial rooftop farm opened in two thousand and nine, on top of a disused warehouse near the docks. Let's turn to the technical side, because this is where most projects succeed or fail. When engineers assess a building, the question they ask first is not about sunlight or drainage — it's about the load the roof can carry. Wet soil is extraordinarily heavy, and a great many older buildings simply cannot take it. That's why growers rarely use ordinary garden soil. Instead, they use a specially prepared medium which is kept light by adding pumice — a porous volcanic rock that holds water without adding much weight. Water supply is the next issue. Piping water up to a roof is expensive, so the overwhelming majority of the water used on these farms is collected as rainwater, stored in tanks and fed back through drip irrigation. Crop selection matters enormously as well. Rooftops are exposed places, and the plants that survive are the ones that can withstand strong wind. Tall, top-heavy varieties are almost always a mistake. Now, the economics. You might expect salad leaves or tomatoes to be the money-maker. In practice, the most profitable crop group so far has been herbs — they're light, they command a high price per kilo, and they don't travel well from the countryside, so local supply has a real advantage. Who buys all this? A small amount goes to farmers' markets, and some farms run box schemes for residents. But the bulk of the produce is sold to local restaurants, which value the freshness and the story behind it. On the cost side, people usually assume energy is the biggest expense. It isn't. By a considerable margin, the largest ongoing cost is labour — rooftop farming is far harder to mechanise than field agriculture. Looking ahead, the next stage for most of these operations is to install solar panels alongside the growing beds, which would cut running costs and make the whole model considerably more sustainable.