IELTS Mock Test 2021 September

SECTION 2

Good afternoon and welcome to Stanton University. I’m here to tell you about the various halls of residence we have available should you choose to come here. We aim to offer accommodation in Halls to all first-year students and you’ll find there’s a good variety to choose from.

First of all, there’s Brown Hall, which, as you’ll see, is not the most modern of buildings but it is very popular with some students. It’s got a good sense of community, some nice refurbished kitchens and, unlike the other halls, it has recently had a gym built in its basement. Another option is Blake Residence, which is built like a large house and so everybody cooks and eats together. It has its own sectioned-off bit of private garden and is even more peaceful because this is an all-girls residence, although of course boys are allowed to visit the Hall and, I understand, frequently take part in cooking dinner! The largest hall we have is Queens Building and this has been upgraded recently. The original parking area has been built on so that the hall now has a large common room and each bedroom now has its own shower room, which many students regard as a real bonus. A further option is the Parkway Flats, which won an award for design in its day and this building now has a preservation order on it. This has meant that only a limited amount could be done to upgrade it and the surrounding area is important so parking is not permitted around the Flats. However, the Flats do have many extra facilities such as a special computer room, a small library and a self-service restaurant. The cost of breakfast, lunch and dinner is covered in the fees for this hall so it does look a bit more expensive. The last residence we can offer you is Temple Rise, which again is slightly more expensive than other halls as the rooms are larger. This has got very lovely views across to the coast and this more than compensates for the fact that bathrooms here are shared between six students. However, the hall has domestic staff who clean the rooms once a week so this is perhaps an attractive option for the messier amongst you.

Now if I can just show on this wall map here where they all are, you might like to go and have a look round. If you come into the main university entrance, at the first junction you’ll find that Brown Hall is on the corner opposite the theatre. So you’re nice and near the station here – though I think it can get a bit noisy with traffic. The same applies to Blake Residence, which is directly facing the junction to the university entrance. These Halls are often used by medical students and such like as they’re out all day so don’t notice the noise. Anyway, if you then walk along Campus Road towards the main Circle, you’ll see the library on the corner and Queens Building is just past that as you head north. You will find that it is quieter here and you may get fewer visitors! By the way the Circle is quite a feature of the campus as it’s set into the hills and has a brand new sports centre in the middle – it’s worth going to look around it.

Now, the Parkway Flats are on the opposite corner to the library, facing the Circle, as you head towards the main buildings. The main buildings are only about a five-minute walk from here and places in these halls go quickly so my advice is to reserve your place as soon as possible. Then Temple Rise is inside the Circle, next to the sports centre, but further from the main university buildings. Now, if you’d like to go off and …

SECTION 3

J: Come on Marco. We’ve got to get on and sort out this project for Professor Barclay.

M: Hang on. I want to make sure we’ve got all the information. Now …… where are we?

J: Well, today we need to sort out exactly what we’re going to do and how we’re going to divide the work up.

M: OK. How long have we got, by the way?

J: Um… the end of term is April 6th and he said to hand it in on week 8, so that’s March 25th at the latest because the beginning of that week is the 21st. So not long!

M: Right. Have you got the notes there?

J: Yes, he wants us to do a fairly small-scale study, like the last one, on whether or not businesses were offering more benefits to staff. We’ve now got to look at the rise in older workers. Should be fairly straightforward.

M: Yeah, as long as we keep it small. Who’s marking it?

J: Don’t know – sometimes he gets the PhD students to mark it for him.

M: Oh actually it just says here ‘a senior lecturer’. I suppose it’s too much for Professor Barclay to do them all.

J: Yeah. Anyway, how are we going to go about this?

M: Well, we have to decide how big we want it to be and who we’re…

J: … Yeah, but I think we must sort out a timetable for the project otherwise nothing will get done.

M: OK. Do you want to do that?

J: Alright. I'll do it as soon as we finish here.

M: OK – what do we have to do now for the project? What’s the best way to go about it? Um… well, Professor Carter suggested we set up a focus group to get some in-depth interviews but I think that’ll take a lot of time.

J: Yeah, I agree. If we did a focus group, we’d have to spend time deciding who to include in it and it’s not necessary to do one anyway.

M: Oh, fine.

J: And, if you agree, I think we should get in touch with the businesses on the list Professor Carter gave us and ask them if they’re prepared to participate .

M: Sounds good – then we can go there, give them questionnaires and collect them later.

J: Exactly.

M: OK. Then do we need to book one of those study rooms in the library so we can work together to input the data? Perhaps not, as I guess just one of us could just sort it out, actually.

J: Yes, that would be easier. A lot of what we’re doing is qualitative, so it’ll be writing up rather than statistics. No software for that I’m afraid! ,

M: And I think it would look better if we had actual shots of some of the staff because we’re citing appearance as a factor in employability, aren’t we?

J: Yeah. OK. I’ll factor that all in when I sort everything out tonight.

M: I’m glad we decided to work together. I think it’s going to work out well.

J: Yes, well, given that we had to work in pairs on this project, I think we were right to choose each other. We complement each other academically as we’re each good at what the other isn’t! In fact, we should have tried working together before!

M: Yes! Now, how shall we split the work? I’ll do the analysis, shall I?

J: Oh – OK.

M: It’s just that it might be faster because I’m used to doing it – although your English is better than mine. I need more practice at reading, really.

J: OK. I’ll do the presentation then. If that’s OK with you?

M: Yeah, sure. I don’t mind speaking in public but I hate preparing all the notes for them.

J: Thing is, the tutor said one person should do the whole presentation and he said he expected me to do it because I haven’t done one yet.

M: No, that’s fine. Now…

SECTION 4

OK, 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 leadership 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 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 along 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.

Now one very critical fact 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...

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Great thanks to volunteer P.Lan Anh has contributed these explanations and question markings.

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