Exam Training: Quizzes & Listening

Opening 

Rich: Fingers on buzzers everyone. Here’s question one. This one's for £1,000.

Rich: True or False? The people who watch a match at the stadium are called viewers.

Jack: [Buzz]. I know this one, it’s...

Rich: Correct. Question two for £2,000. Which ‘R’ is the place you go ice skating?

Jack: Buzz. Easy. It’s ...

Rich: Good work. Question three for another thousand pounds. Ice hockey is played with (A) a bat, (B) a stick or © a cue?

Jack: Buzz. No problem. The correct answer is ...

Rich: Well played. Question four. What do you call a player who replaces another because he is injured?

Jack: Buzz. I’m sure of this one. The answer is ...

Rich: Well done. That’s four thousand pounds. Do you want to carry on?

Jack: Yes

Rich: OK. Question five. This player was top scorer in the Premier League in 2017/18.

Jack: Buzz. I know this one, too. The player is ...

Rich: You’re doing really well. We’ll be right back after this commercial break to see if Jack will take the money and run or go all the way to tonight’s top prize of £10,000.

...

Rich: Welcome back. Jack is up to question nine for £9,000. Are you ready Jack?

Jack: I’m ready, Rich.

Rich: Question 9. What is the missing word? In football you have referees, in boxing, you have referees and judges but in cricket and tennis, you have ______.

Jack: Buzz. In tennis, you have ...

Rich: Fantastic. You have made it all the way to tonight’s £10,000 big question. You have a decision to make, Jack. Do you take what you have and go home or do you risk it all for the top prize of £10,000?

Jack: I’m going to go for it.

Rich: Are you sure? Remember you go home with nothing if you get it wrong.

Jack: I know. Let’s go.

Rich: Here we go. Tonight’s £10,000 big question is: What’s the best football team in the world?

Jack: That’s a tough question. It’s subjective - there can’t be a right answer.

Rich: There is. You have 10 more seconds. 

Jack: Manchester United?, Real Madrid? Barcelona? Manchester United - I’m going for Manchester United.

Rich: I’m sorry, the correct answer was Liverpool. You’re going home with nothing! Thanks, everyone for joining us …

Jack: You can’t do that. That’s not fair. That’s just your favourite team.

Rich: Thanks for joining us and we’ll see you next time on the £10,000 big question. Get off! Don’t touch me.

Jack: Come here! I want to speak to you!

Rich: Music, people! Can someone call security, please?

Welcome -  Listening Exams

Rich: Hello my name’s Rich

Jack: and I’m Jack

Rich: and welcome to this week’s Premier Skills English podcast

Jack: Where we talk about football and help you with your English.

Jack: What’s happening this week, Rich?

Rich: In this week’s podcast, we’re going to look at some vocabulary connected to sports and give you some advice about the types of questions which are used in listening exams.

Jack: That’s right. Listening exams can be a lot easier if you prepare for the exam in the right way.

Rich: We’re going to start by giving a few general tips for dealing with listening exams and the questions they use.

Jack: Then, we’re going to focus on one exam question that learners often find difficult.

Rich: After this, we will go back to the quiz you heard at the beginning of the podcast and look at the answers and some vocabulary connected to sports that is sometimes a bit confusing.

Jack: And, Don’t forget to listen to the end of the podcast because we have this week’s football phrase for you to guess.

Types of  Listening Exam Questions and General Advice

Rich: In the quiz, at the beginning of the podcast you heard some of the most common types of question you might come across in listening exams.

Jack: You have probably come across or seen these types of questions before because they are very common.

Rich: You have true or false questions, complete the gap and multiple choice. When you see this type of question you usually know exactly what to do, but here is some general advice that will help you even more. Some of it might seem obvious but it’s amazing how many people don’t do it when they are under stress in an exam.

Jack: The first thing to remember is to read the question or questions before the listening starts. This will help you know what information you need to be listening for.

Rich: If you wait until after the listening it becomes more a test of memory and not your listening abilities.

Jack: At the beginning of an exam, you might be given a specific amount of time to read the questions, or instructions might be given. Take advantage of this time to read the questions.

Rich: Another piece of advice is to make predictions before you listen. Sometimes there are only a few possible answers; especially with gap fill type questions.

Jack: Think about the topic and the grammar. What type of word could be in the gap?

Rich: Another good thing to remember is that the answers are nearly always in order. The answer to question one will be at the beginning of the listening and the last answer near the end.

Jack: If the first answer you hear is the answer to question three, forget about questions one and two and start listening for the answer to question four.

Rich: OK, there’s some general advice for listening exams, in the next section we’re going to look at one type of question that is a bit more difficult.

Summary Completion Activity

Jack: One question type that is becoming more common in listening exams is the summary completion activity.

Rich: In this type of activity, you listen to something and then you will see a paragraph with some gaps in it. It is a summary of what you have just listened to.

Jack: The text is not the same as what you heard as it’s a summary; the task is to complete the gaps using the exact words you heard in the listening.

Rich: The instructions might say use one word or a maximum of two or three words you heard in the listening.

Jack: The task is difficult because the text you are looking at is not the same as what you heard but has the same meaning.

Rich: We’re going to look at two of these activities. We’ll start off with an easy one and the other will be a little more difficult.

Jack: In this first example, the topic is baseball and the summary question is ‘The baseball season is in the ___________.’ You need to complete the sentence with one word from the listening.

Rich: Before we listen, think about two or three possible answers. ‘The baseball season is in the _________.’

Jack: OK, let’s listen:

Rich: “Baseball is one of the most popular sports in the United States and is usually played in the summer months when the football and basketball seasons have ended.”

Jack: The answer is ‘summer’. Did you get it right?

Rich: Right we’re going to do another example. We want you to listen to the sentence with the gap, think of some possible answers and then listen to the summary.

Jack: If you know the answer, write it in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

Rich: Example two: Doing physical education at school can improve your concentration due to the _______ which are released when we do sports.

Jack: Think of some possible answers … now listen and complete the gap with one word that you hear.

Rich: Sport can help us feel happy and put us in a good mood because of chemicals that are present in our bodies when we exercise. It also improves our capacity to concentrate, which is why doing PE at school can actually help you do better in exams.

Jack: If you want to practise this style of question a little more, you can look at the take IELTS British Council website. We’ve put a link to this website on this podcast page on the Premier Skills English website.

Quiz

Jack: We said at the beginning of the podcast that we’re going to look at some words connected to sports that can be a bit confusing.

Rich: Let’s go back to the quiz you heard earlier and Jack’s answers.

...

Rich: True or False? The people who watch a match at the stadium are called viewers.

Jack: Buzz. It’s false. Viewers are people who watch on television.

Rich: That’s right. Viewers watch on TV. In the stadium, you have spectators, or more informally, fans if they are following their team. We don’t usually use the word audience for sports events; audience is usually used for the theatre or cinema.

Rich: Question two for £2,000. Which ‘R’ is the place you go ice skating?

Jack: Buzz. It’s a rink an ice rink or ice skating rink.

Rich: Well done. A rink with a K, not a ring. That’s for boxing. A boxing ring.

Rich: Question three for another thousand pounds. Ice hockey is played with (A) a bat, (B) a stick or © a cue?

Jack: Buzz. Hockey and ice hockey are played with sticks. Hockey sticks.

Rich: Well played. Hockey sticks, cricket bats and snooker cues. Easy.

Jack: I’m ready for the next question.

Rich: Question 9. What is the missing word? In football you have referees, in boxing, you have referees and judges but in cricket and tennis, you have ______.

Jack: Buzz. In tennis you have umpires. 

Rich: Well done you are right again. In some sports we have umpires and in others referees.

Task

Jack: We’ve got more explanations and activities about words to describe sports on the website. You can find this podcast on the Premier Skills English homepage.

Rich: Right, your task this week is to write a question about sports.

Jack: Use one of the types of questions we have used in this podcast. You could choose a true or false question, a gap fill or a multiple choice question.

Rich: You can choose to test other listener’s knowledge of sports or English. Let’s see how many questions and answers we can get on the website.

Football Phrase

Rich: Have you got a football phrase for us this week? 

Jack: Yes, I have, but first, our last football phrase. The phrase was the spine of the team. This phrase describes the players who play in central positions on the pitch.

Rich: Well done to Ahmed Adam from Sudan, Liubomyr and Sabanoleg from Ukraine, Thaitn from Vietnam, Lakerwang from China and Acicala from Spain. You all got the right answer! What’s this week’s phrase, Jack?

Jack: This week’s football phrase is just a word. The word is ******. You hear this a lot in football when a player or manager doesn’t agree with a decision made by the referee or football association. If someone doesn’t agree with something they can ****** against the decision by making a formal request to the authorities for the decision to be changed.

Rich: Oh yeah, you can sometimes get ******* overturned but usually ******* are upheld.

Jack: Right, that’s all we have time for this week. Don’t forget to write your answers to the task and football phrase in the comments section below.

Rich: Bye for now and enjoy your football!