An IELTS listening answer sheet pdf with dialogues and exercises 6

IELTS Course Lesson 23 – IELTS listening answer sheet pdf

IELTS Listening #6

You will now have 4 listening exercises: 4 videos each followed by 1 quiz and a IELTS listening answer sheet pdf.

Section 1

Comprehension Questions 1 to 10 (Section 1)

Section 2

Section two: you will hear the information about tickets to one of the royal palaces in London. First you have some time to look at questions 11 to 16. As you listen to the first part of the talk answer questions 11 to 15.

So you’ve finally decided to start a fitness program and are now on the lookout for the perfect gym to join.

Fitness land is an ideal gym for both group trainings and individual workout. We offer you a variety of sports facilities, which will make your training effective and pleasant. One of the most famous are our yoga classes. We have seven different yoga programs including: yoga laits, yoga nidra and hatha yoga. We also want to open pilots section soon which will combine relaxation techniques and keep fit exercises. For those people who seek cardio and fat burn workouts, we offer a lot of active classes. For instance, if you love dancing you can go to our step dance classes. These classes are famous for their intensive rhythm and include many elements from dancing classes and aerobics classes. At the moment we don’t have aerobics or belly dance programs so step dance can be a good alternative. We also offer great barbell workouts for people who want to build muscle. These classes use very effective strength training strategy and are very helpful for both men and women. There is also a kickboxing room in our gym where you can find all essential facilities to practice kickboxing yourself, and group programs are likely to open in the next season. But some of fitness programs and stretching workouts are already running, so be quick to take part in these wonderful activities.

You now listen and answer question 16 to 20.

And now I’d like to present you the timetable of fitness programs for the coming week. Monday is dedicated to muscle building activities. You’ll begin the weekly program with a full body training split, meaning you’ll train all major body parts in each workout. Such fitness classes are designed by famous bodybuilders and sport professionals who were passionate for training others. On Tuesday we offer a variety of fat loss activities. These are high-intensity classes that require a lot of physical effort, so we recommend to drink much water during such classes. We also have something called “healthy body activities” these activities run on Wednesday. During these programs you’ll do keep fit exercises in a moderate rhythm alternating upper body and lower body workouts. The next day come relaxation activities. These activities are developed for physical, mental and spiritual practice and include different kinds of yoga and pilots. Friday is the last day of the week with group activities, in particular interval trainings. Such programs involve series of low to high intensity exercise workouts interspersed with rest or relief periods. We hope that you’ll find your ideal activities in this timetable. But don’t forget that you can train individually any day of the week!

That is the end of section 2. You now have half a minute to check your answers.

Comprehension Questions 11 to 20 (Section 2)

Section 3

Section three: you will hear a scientific discussion about how people experience pain. First you have some time to look at questions 21 to 25. As you listen to the first part of the discussion answer questions 21 to 25.

Presenter: Scientists at University College London have made a discovery which makes mice pain free and have reversed painless in a woman with a rare condition. I’m joined by Dr. Natasha Curran consultant in anaesthesia and pain medicine at University College London hospitals. and by Professor John Wood, lead author of the study and a neuroscientist at UCL. Welcome to the podcast.

Natasha: Thank you!

John: Thank you!

Presenter: Natasha, perhaps we can start with perhaps a rather basic question which is: why do we experience pain at all? What’s its purpose?

Natasha: Pain is highly preserved in humans because we need painters to prevent us further damaging ourselves. However what we know in many people is that pain continues past when it’s useful for us.

Presenter: and we’ll familiar with the idea of sort of …feeling pain but, what is happening inside one’s body? So when I stub my toe in ER and I scream and shout? What’s actually happening inside my body from that moment?

Natasha: Well, receptors in your toe are getting stimulated and they send messages down your nerves which end up in your brain. In your brain various things happen. In one part of your brain which is the somatosensory cortex, that’s the part of the brain that says it’s your toe that’s feeling the pain or the injury, rather than your.. your hand or your head. So that’s one part, but then it’s much more complex than that, because pain is an emotional experience. So it’s connected then to all the other parts of the brain which they give us our experience of pain if you like. So that depends on our the context in which we’re having pain our past experience, what we think the pain means, lots of factors. And then also it connects to what we think we’re going to do about the pain, so parts of the brain light up. If you like which how we’re going to respond to the pain that we’re experiencing.

Presenter: how big a problem is paining? How big a burden is this for people to be dealing with?

Natasha: in the UK its massive. In 2011 the national pain audit reported that 31 percent of men and 37 percent of women live with persistent pain, so that’s 40 million people! Their quality of life is very very poor much lower than other medical conditions. It’s as bad as people who have for example Parkinson’s disease. One of the reasons it’s really important to understand this is because we know that we can actually help these people, if they attend specialist pain management services. We can improve their quality of life and specialist pain management services have doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, psychologists and potentially occupational therapists psychiatrists in order to help them.

Presenter: John, how is our understanding of pain? Is, for example, chronic pain different to the pain we feel when we knock our knee or have a headache?

John: Well.. there are clearly enormous mechanistic differences. It’s very striking how mechanisms to experience pain are conserved across evolution. And pain is really an essential survival mechanism. So the mechanisms that are current people are quite similar to those that occurring in mice for example. So we can make comparisons between animal models and and the human experience. We really know very little at all about how pain is experienced centrally. There are various parts of the brains being correlated with the experience of pain but this is very very weakly done. In fact it’s to define a precise locus in the brain where pain is perceived has proved completely elusive. So the way we feel pain and the intensity of pain is is regulated by all kinds of things like circadian rhythms emotional state and we don’t have many insights into how this actually works.

Presenter: Why is consciousness linked so much with pain and pain with consciousness?

John – Well… there’s a wonderful book by Philip K Dick, the person who wrote so many perceptive science fiction novels, and he says that pain and beauty are the two underlying themes of human nature. In fact, you know, trying to understand where the brain perceives beauty is just as difficult as trying to understand where the pain is perceived in the brain. Consciousness obviously is required for any kind of sensation. Pain is just one of those types of sensations that were aware of when we’re alive and awake.

Natasha: Anisa tiss that’s part of our main role because surgery can’t go ahead unless we have anaesthesia because in, obviously in the modern world, we’d and in most parts of the world we want to be able to Anisa toys so that people don’t experience the pain of surgery. And we know that there are some states of consciousness where people can undergo quite stimulating and unpleasant to most people experience is such a surgery. But for most people they need to be unconscious so in a state of anaesthesia.

You now listen and answer questions 26 to 30.

Presenter: It sounds like we have some clues as to how pain works although there’s a lot that we don’t know. Is that why it’s so difficult to find ways to block it, because we don’t really understand the mechanisms particularly well?

John: I think what we do understand is the kind of area that Natasha works in. Which is the the sensation of tissue damage by specialised nerves in the skin and the muscle and the viscera. And how those nodes are activated and send electrical signals. So the activity of those nerves is absolutely required for most pain States. And so by focusing on them we can actually find ways to treat pain without understanding anything about pain perception and so that’s the focus of interest of most pain scientists. That’s where Anissa tests also are working in terms of blocking the drive into the central nervous system. But pain perception itself is completely mysterious.

Natasha: A good example of this might be when I explain to my patients which is a phantom limb pain. Listeners might have heard of this already. It’s when people can have a painful limb once they’ve had an amputation. So a person may have had to have an amputation for medical reasons such as the leg in this case. Let’s say might become gangrenous. So that’s been under anaesthesia. It was a surgical procedure but after the operation and the wounds healed then people who are unfortunate enough to get this phenomenon can then experience sensations in that leg which has been removed. And not just sensations that if they’ve had pain there before they can often experience pain. So even though the legs not there it’s no longer physically present, the patient still feels that their legs there and it can be painful. Of course that’s very distressing. And it also gives us the notion that pain is not just in the nerves that there’s the peripheral nerves ones in the leg. Its modulated in the brain.

John: Yeah. If I can come in there..

Presenter: Yes …

John: Pain is nothing to do with the peripheral nerves. Pain is in the brain. But the there is a requirement for nervous input from the periphery, in order to feel pain and in almost all states. There are situations where you can get pain after a stroke because you have lesions in your thalamus and that’s obviously some form of central pain syndrome. But almost all inflammatory pain states like rheumatoid, arthritis or osteoarthritis or diabetic neuropathy all these chronic pain states require the activity of peripheral nerves, and that’s what we try to block. Without understanding the perception of the the painful stimulus itself.

Presenter: So it’s actually interesting point that John was saying about us needing stimulation of our nerves.. sort of throughout her body uh peripheral nerves. So what’s happening in the case of a phantom limb?

Natasha: Well… there’s several theories and there’s probably not one overarching the thing that’s happening. We know that pain can create a memory of itself just like any other experience that people have. You might have, you know, heard some records on the radio recently about David Bowie, for example, and that takes you listening to that record takes you back to a certain point. So listening to music can take you to a certain point in time. And some sort of stimulation, for example movement in that limb or something else which is the peripheral that John’s talking about that peripheral input, can cause a learn sensation to be reinstalling to recall that painful experience who would want that. But it’s so it’s like anything that’s learned. That the nervous system is really really good at learning things that’s how we’ve learned to do all the you know the great things that humans and people do in their lives. Unfortunately it’s almost like it can get switched on for some sensations and then the person continues to feel that that pain. Even though there’s no obvious mechanistic reason for them to continue to feel it.

That is the end of section 3 you now have half a minute to check your answers

Comprehension Questions 21 to 30 (Section 3)

Section 4

Section four: you will hear a podcast about technology and mental health. First you have some time to look at questions 31 to 40. Now listen carefully and answer questions 31 to 40.

Presenter: I spoke to psychologist Thomas tomorrow / music about the risks he believes are posed by social media and technology.

THOMAS: If narcissism is fire Facebook is gasoline. So people wouldn’t have gravitated towards Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or snapchat if they hadn’t been narcissistic in the first place, by which I mean you know if they hadn’t had this desire to broadcast their lives to behave like celebrities. And share personal information about themselves as if it’s really interesting. And also seek positive feedback from others and that reinforces their kind of a self-concept and self-esteem and perhaps self-centred needs. Now it is also true that if you.. if you throw gasoline into the fire, you know I mean, these inherent tendencies narcissistic tendencies that were there in the first place will become more exaggerated. And research has shown this. Research has shown very simple summary of the studies is that the more narcissistic you are the more time you are likely to spend on these various social networks. But at the same time the more time you spend on this social the more narcissistic you become.

Presenter: Snowballing effect…

Thomas: Exactly. The depression one is a different kind of phenomenon is the fact that a lot of people spend so much time following or snooping on others on social media. They’re unaware of the fact that the people that they are seeing there are not the real people they know, and because most people portray themselves in an unrealistically positive vane. Facebook and other social networks encourage the suppression of negative emotions. And reward presentation or display of positive emotions, it makes people miserable and depressed to see others as so happy because you compare yourself to others and you’re like why and is so successful so good-looking or so you know happy.

Presenter: Okay. So when we’re talking about tech and also about the impact of technology on our behaviour, I think something that’s again garnering quite a lot of attention is the impact of screen time on wellbeing, on performance, on cognitive ability and development when we were looking at younger people. There was an interesting piece in ARS-technica that cited two separate studies that have been conducted in the US. The first is by Common Sense Media which looked at just under 3,000 US children aged 8 to 18, about their media habits. They found that teenagers were spending about nine hours a day online with media and tweens, so 8 to 12 year olds, were using media for about six hours a day. So this is within quite a substantial amount of time and then also a time in which they would probably be better off outside either playing or socialising in person with other people. Do you think that there’s an impact there on for instance being able to read emotional cues? Or being able to form relationships in a way that’s deep and meaningful? Is anything.. is there anything to suggest that that’s starting to be compromised because of our use of screens in tech?

Thomas: So we don’t… we don’t have solid or reliable data on this yet. But at least conceptually it would make sense. We all come to the world with a set of really basic and rudimentary skills that are developed or nurtured when they are put into practice or when we interact with the right triggers of these skills in the environment. So much like growing up isolated from others in a basement will lead to not having many social skills if you grow up in the digital world mostly and you don’t have much time to practice face-to-face interaction. You probably won’t develop many people skills. The other thing that is of course problematic is that, you know, if people were spending 6 or 10 hours online reading books or getting educated, you know. You could argue at least they’re developing intellectual skills or intellectual curiosity. But that’s not the case. You know, at most they can spend 18 minutes on a TED Talk which will him them, you know, and more it’s entertainment rather than education. So it’s the stuff that people do when they’re online that is most problematic.

Presenter: What about things like the sensory input that we received? So for instance if you’ve got very young children aged 6 to 12 months to 18 months, who are looking at screens instead of looking out than developing in depth of field. What might that do for their development potentially in the longer term?

Thomas: One could argue that if… for them adaptation to the world will be even more technologically mediated, it’s okay you know. So it would only be a problem if you put them in a farm, ask them to hunt animals or make them force them live in an image community. So you know in that sense the average five-year-old today, is better equipped to interact with much of the industrialised world than a 60 year old or 70 year olds you know because they can pick up any gadget and they know how it works. So I think the main deficit is around social and emotional skills. Connecting through people via technology is very different than having an effective face-to-face interaction. And so until this date, for example, we haven’t worked out a way in which people can reproduce via technological means the fact.. the fact that the fact may be that maybe we will and may be virtual reality can generate this in the future but, you know, it’s been pointed out many times that there are now more iPhones being sold every year.. Everyday, not just every year, than people being born. And this difference between these two numbers keeps increasing. I think probably there’s a causal relationship you know the more people’s more time people spend on their smartphones or interacting with technology. The less time they have for physical interactions with others. So until we work out how to do certain things online I mean, offline is the way to go and most people now young people don’t have these capabilities to develop certain skills in the physical or analog world.

Presenter: So we’ve heard how tech can have adverse effects on our mental states. But how is it being used in a positive way to help us with us? In the studio today to discuss we have psychotherapist Dr. Gillian Isaac’s Russell author of new book “Screen Relations – the limits of computer mediated psychoanalysis and psychotherapy”. We also have Dr. Richard Dobson, who’s head of the bioinformatics at the NIH our biomedical research center for mental health and the tech team zone Hannah Jane Parkinson. Welcome everybody! So Gillian may I start with you. So your practice things like therapists how do you find that Tech has affected your profession? So maybe with the advent of remote online therapy? Yes.. we start there.

Gillian: Yes. Well I actually have done quite a bit of technologically mediated treatment. Partly because I moved from the UK in 2008 to remote area in Black Hills of South Dakota, but wanted to keep practicing. And so I attempted to use a platform like Skype in order to see patients. And thought that it was going to really help me to avoid any of the pitfalls of space distance time. I could just be anywhere anytime. What I discovered and what led to my research and this book was that there are some very distinct differences between working on the screen and working Co presently in the room.

Presenter: So.. we’re all familiar with this idea of traditional Union psychoanalysis of lying back in a room, on a couch. And having our dreams interpreted. Being in relationship presence with the psychotherapist, but that’s not the kind of therapy that we’re talking about. When we’re talking about screen mediated therapy. And what have you seen in terms of the change? and possibly the lead the use of CBT with screen mediated technology? And why is it suitable for online use?

Gillian: I think that… the therapies like CBT or positive psychology self-help could be very appropriate for online use, because they are didactic. They aren’t based in a relationship. And the kind of talking therapies you were referring to earlier, are actually very strongly anchored in having a relationship. So… if you’re actually giving instructions to someone, if you are teaching them something, then of course it can be communicated through a screen. But if you are actually having to pay attention to the implicit nonverbal part of the relationship which we must do, then it doesn’t come across in the same way. 60% of our communication is nonverbal and implicit. And actually informatics researchers themselves that is specialists in information via technology, are talking about the fact that these kinds of implicit communications can’t be carried over a screen at the moment two dimensionally.

Presenter: So do you think that there are risks associated with the more deductive kind of instructive practices? Like cognitive behavioural therapy, where the patient is getting a list of instructions? Are there risks kind of taking that approach can this treatment kind of mask or even potentially worse than real problems?

Gillian: I think that some of the risks may be that because we’re not in the same room. We can’t see the whole body if you’ve ever worked on screen you know that it’s usually from the shoulders up. We’re not able to see a lot of this the intimate things that are going on with our patients. And so that means that for instance, if someone is struggling with an eating disorder, it’s going to be very difficult to see where they are in that which could be dangerous.

That is the end of section 4. you now have half a minute to check your answers.

You will now have 10 minutes to transfer your answers to the listening answer sheet.