Cambridge 13 Listening Test 2 - Answers With Explanation

1. The gap needs a plural noun paired with "cycling and ___" describing what membership covers geographically ("all over Australia"); the answer 'races' — membership includes entry to races nationwide.

2. A second item bundled into the membership cost; 'insurance' is a single noun commonly paired with club fees in membership descriptions.

3. This gap is a proper noun — a brand/company name — so expect it to be spelled out or stressed clearly in the recording; the answer is 'Jerriz'.

4. A numeric gap giving an approximate speed; write the numeral '25' as required when the instruction allows 'A NUMBER', paired with the unit 'kph' already given in the note.

5. A location noun for the Tuesday meeting point; 'stadium' — listen for named venues when a note gives a day/time followed by "meet at the ___".

6. Parallel structure to the Tuesday entry but for Thursdays; the gap is a place noun — 'park', with "entrance to the" already specifying it's an entrance rather than the venue itself.

7. A social-activity noun following group rides; 'coffee' — a common wrap-up activity for cycling clubs after group sessions.

8. The gap is a role noun; 'leader' — the note flags that a guide isn't guaranteed on every ride, useful safety-related information for club calls.

9. An instructional gap about pre-ride preparation; 'route' — the noun for the planned cycling path, checked online in advance.

10. A safety-equipment requirement; 'lights' (plural) — a standard piece of required cycling gear mentioned at the end of the membership/safety notes.

11. Answer C: "8 hours per year." This is a specific-figure question testing whether you catch the correct combination of number and time unit — A and B use different but plausible-sounding units (hours/week, day/month) that are easy to confuse with the real allowance.

12. Answer B: "job satisfaction." The feedback question targets overall wellbeing at work rather than career advancement (A) or social relationships (C), which are related but different benefits.

13. Answer C: "communication skills." The volunteering activity described is soft-skill coaching rather than literacy (A) or specifically application-writing (B).

14. Answer B: "park." The new partnership is environmental/outdoor in nature, distinguishing it from an education partner (A) or a general charity (C).

15. Answer B: "at a college." The venue is an educational institution rather than the company's own facility (A) or a community centre (C).

16. Answer A: "fill in a form." Sign-up is administrative (paperwork) rather than requiring prior training (B) or managerial approval (C).

17–18. Two correct statements about participants: "Their phones were mostly old-fashioned" (C) and "They initially showed little interest" (E). The other options — being all over 70 (A), never using a computer (B), and only using phones for calls (D) — are plausible-sounding but overstate or misstate the details, a common distractor pattern in TWO-letter questions.

19–20. The two useful activities named are "communicating with family" (B) and "playing online games" (D), rather than tablets (A), online shopping (C), or emails (E) — all plausible digital-skills activities but not the two singled out as useful by participants.

21. Answer B: "his uncertainty about what he should try to achieve." The difficulty is about unclear purpose/goals, not subject knowledge (A) or time pressure (C).

22. Answer A: "to concentrate on how nanotechnology is used in one field." They settle on a narrow, focused approach rather than a historical overview (B) or a broad survey of uses (C).

23. Answer C: "consider omitting slides altogether." The advice is to potentially do without visual slides entirely, a stronger recommendation than merely finding matching slides (A/B).

24. Answer C: "to provide an example." Opening with a concrete example is the agreed strategy, rather than audience interaction (A) or a statement of intent (B).

25. Answer A: "summarise the main point he wants to make." The next practical step is distilling a central message, rather than reviewing existing notes (B) or listing topics (C).

26. The comment on 'structure' is A: it "lacked a conclusion" — a structural weakness (missing ending) rather than a delivery issue.

27. The comment on 'eye contact' is C: 'not enough' — a quantity judgement about how often Russ looked at the audience.

28. The comment on 'body language' is D: 'sometimes distracting' — his physical movements occasionally pulled focus away from the content.

29. The comment on 'choice of words' is G: 'not too technical' — positive feedback that his vocabulary stayed accessible rather than overly specialised.

30. The comment on 'handouts' is B: 'useful in the future' — a forward-looking positive comment about reusing the material later, rather than an assessment of the previous talk itself.

31. The gap is a noun paired with "time and ___" describing another detail recalled about past events; 'location' — place is the natural pairing with time when defining episodic memory.

32. The gap defines semantic memory's scope; 'world' — general knowledge about the world, contrasted with the personal, episodic recall defined around it.

33. Continuing the contrast from the previous note, the gap is an adjective; 'personal' — semantic memory lacks the personal dimension that defines episodic memory.

34. This is a "the more X, the more Y" structure; the gap is the first variable — 'attention' — a factor affecting memory encoding strength.

35. The gap gives a concrete example of an information type that benefits from an encoding strategy; 'name' — a common example in memory lectures of information that's easily forgotten without technique.

36. The gap describes a structure that aids memory; 'network' — encoding is more effective when new memories connect to an existing network of related knowledge.

37. The gap is the subject of the sentence — a noun describing how often something happens; 'frequency' — how often a memory is retrieved affects how strong it becomes.

38. The gap gives a concrete example of a retrieval prompt; 'colour' (UK) or 'color' (US, both accepted) — a visual cue like an object's colour helps trigger recall of where something was left.

39. The gap names what kind of games are beneficial; 'brain' — brain-training/stimulating games, linked here to a clinical population (schizophrenia).

40. The gap explains a possible cause tied to identity; 'self' — a weaker sense of self is proposed as the reason autistic children may struggle with episodic memory, since episodic memories are inherently self-referential.