IELTS Practice Test 10

Transcript (on the real test you hear this once)

You will hear two students, Siobhan and Kwame, talking to their tutor, Dr Ferris, about a field project for their ecology course.

Dr Ferris: Come in, Siobhan, Kwame. I’ve read your outline. First, remind me why you chose community gardens rather than the university grounds.

Siobhan: At first it was mostly about access. We assumed the campus would be full of restrictions, but the grounds staff said we could go more or less anywhere. And it helps that two of the gardens are on my bus route, though honestly that wasn’t the reason.

Kwame: No, what decided it was the planting. Each plot is looked after by a different person, so what’s in flower changes enormously from one plot to the next.

Dr Ferris: That’s a sound reason. How many gardens will you visit?

Kwame: We originally said twelve, but once we’d worked out the travelling time we cut it to eight.

Dr Ferris: Eight’s fine. What worries me more is the number of visits. If you see each garden only once, the weather on that one day could distort everything.

Siobhan: So you’d rather we went to fewer gardens?

Dr Ferris: No, keep the eight. But go back to every one at least three times, ideally at different times of day.

Siobhan: OK. In the pilot we watched each flower patch for fifteen minutes, but it felt rushed — the bees kept arriving just as we stopped. So we’re making it twenty.

Kwame: Twenty minutes per patch, two patches per garden.

Dr Ferris: Good. What else did the pilot show up?

Kwame: Identification, mainly. Some hoverflies look almost exactly like small wasps, and we couldn’t tell them apart. We’d been worried the phone cameras would run out of battery, but that was fine.

Siobhan: The other thing was the recording sheet. We’d put the plants down one side and the insects along the top, and we kept writing in the wrong box. We’ve redesigned it completely.

Dr Ferris: Wasn’t it windy that week? That can keep insects away.

Siobhan: It was, but surprisingly it made little difference to the numbers. And the gardeners were lovely — one even showed us where the bees were nesting.

Kwame: About the hoverflies — I’ve found an identification app. Would that solve it?

Dr Ferris: Those apps are unreliable with insects that won’t keep still. I’d normally say send your photos to the museum’s insect specialist, but she’s away all term. For your question you don’t need species. Just record broad groups — bees, hoverflies, butterflies, everything else.

Siobhan: That simplifies the sheet. Now, the gardens. Riverside has hives on the allotment next door, so we’re expecting a lot of honeybees there.

Kwame: Then Hilltop. I’d written that it’s mainly native plants, but no — I’ve mixed them up. That’s Station Road; their committee replanted with natives last spring. Hilltop is the one up on the ridge with nothing to shelter it from the wind.

Siobhan: And I thought Old Quarry would be shady, with the old quarry walls, but the plots are all out in the open. It’s almost all vegetables — beans, courgettes, pumpkins.

Dr Ferris: And the analysis?

Siobhan: Some sessions were cut short by rain, so we’ll convert the raw counts into visit rates — visits per hour — so the patches can be compared fairly.

Kwame: Then we’ll compare those with something about each patch. We thought about soil type, but we can’t test it properly, so it’ll be plant variety — how many different species are flowering.

Siobhan: I wanted to present it all in a summary table, but Kwame’s persuaded me a scatter graph will show the pattern better.

Dr Ferris: Agreed. One more thing — photographs. Some gardeners won’t want to appear in a university report.

Kwame: I could blur any faces afterwards.

Dr Ferris: The garden committees say you don’t need anyone’s written permission as long as nobody can be identified. But it’s simpler not to capture anyone in the first place.

Siobhan: So close-ups of the flowers only. Fine.

Dr Ferris: For the write-up, don’t spend pages on previous studies — a short review is enough. Discuss your limitations early in the discussion rather than tacking them on at the end. And include a section on the pilot; markers like to see how a method developed. Skip the raw data sheets, and one or two photos of the gardens is plenty.

Kwame: Should we bring a draft of the introduction next week?

Dr Ferris: Leave the introduction — it’s easier to write last. Bring me a draft of the methods section instead.