Four parts, thirty questions, about forty minutes, under exam conditions: the transcripts stay hidden, nothing is checked as you go, and the clock starts on your first answer. Until the audio is recorded, do this paper with a partner — one of you reads each part aloud, twice, at normal speed, with the pauses — and hand in at the end. Every part is marked at once, and only then do the transcripts and the support open for the debrief.
This is the exam-conditions mock: nothing is checked until you hand in. The clock starts when you answer your first question. After you hand in, every part is marked at once and the support opens for the debrief.
You will hear people talking in eight different situations. For questions 1–8, choose the best answer (A, B or C).
Part 1. You will hear people talking in eight different situations. For questions 1 to 8, choose the best answer, A, B or C. You will hear each extract twice.
One. You hear a man talking about a queue he stood in.
MAN: Two hours outside the passport office, in the rain, and nobody said a word to anyone — that's normal, that's a British queue. What struck me was what happened when a man tried to slide in at the front, next to his friend. Nobody shouted. Nobody even spoke to him. Twenty people just looked at him, together, and after about ten seconds he went to the back. The staff came out twice to apologise and everyone said “no, no, it's fine”, and meant it. It wasn't the office people were policing. It was the line.
Two. You hear two colleagues discussing a trip abroad for work.
MAN: Lisbon in March — you must be pleased. I'd swap with you in a second.
WOMAN: Would you? Be my guest. I know the city's lovely, I've been, and the language isn't a problem; the meetings are in English. It's just three days of hotel breakfasts and a presentation I didn't write, when I could be here finishing the thing that actually matters. I'll go, obviously. I'll smile in the photos. But if they'd asked me, I'd have said send someone who wants it.
MAN: I want it.
WOMAN: I know. I did say.
Three. You hear a radio report about a new bus service in a rural area.
PRESENTER: The number 17 was launched in April to get people from the villages into town for work, and the council will tell you it's a success — the buses are full. What they won't tell you, because they've only just noticed, is who's on them. It isn't commuters. It's pensioners, in the middle of the day, going nowhere in particular: to the end of the route and back, for the view and the company. The drivers have started calling it the social club. Nobody planned that. The question now is whether the council decides it's a problem — or the point.
Four. You hear a man phoning a garage about his car.
MAN: Hi, it's Dan Okoro, about the blue Astra — you rang earlier while I was in a meeting. I got the message about the brake pads. Yes — go ahead, do those as well, I'd rather it was done properly while it's in. I know that'll push it to tomorrow rather than tonight; that's fine, I can manage without it. If it's going to be more than the two hundred you mentioned, give me a ring first, otherwise just crack on. Thanks.
Five. You hear a woman describing her first winter in Britain.
WOMAN: I'd been warned about the houses — everyone from a warm country gets that speech — and mine was fine, actually; the heating worked. And the weather talk, yes, all the time, but I'd read about that and I rather liked it, it gave me something to say. What nobody had told me was about the light. In December it was dark at four. Four o'clock! I'd leave the library and it was night, and it did something to me I couldn't explain — I kept thinking it was much later than it was and going to bed at eight. It took me until February to trust the clock again.
Six. You hear a teacher talking about a school trip to a museum in London.
TEACHER: We'd planned it for months — the Egyptian galleries, the worksheets, the lot. The coach was fine, the museum was busy but no worse than we'd expected. And then on the way out, in a side room nobody had put on the plan, they found a clock. Just a clock, six hundred years old, still going. Thirty fourteen-year-olds stood in silence and watched it tick. Three weeks later, that's what they write about. Not the mummies, not the gold. The clock. I've stopped making plans that don't leave room for that.
Seven. You hear a man talking about learning to play the bagpipes.
MAN: Two years, and I can play one tune. One. My teacher says that's normal — it's a year on the practice chanter before you're allowed near the actual pipes, so I'm not behind, and I don't feel I am. The neighbours were a worry at the start and, to be fair, they still are; I practise in the garage with the door shut and I still get looks. But last month I played that one tune at my brother's wedding, all the way through, in front of a hundred people, and nobody laughed. That'll do me for now. I'm not in a hurry for the second one.
Eight. You hear a radio review of a television documentary.
REVIEWER: Sixty minutes on the history of the British seaside — and I mean the whole history: the Romans, the Georgians, the railways, the package holiday, the decline, the comeback, all in an hour. Each part was handled well; the section on the 1950s could have been a film on its own, and I wished it had been. That's the problem. Nothing got the time it deserved, because everything got some. The length was right and the audience, families on a Sunday night, was right. What it needed was a producer brave enough to leave nine-tenths of it out.
That is the end of Part 1.
How to read this part. If this part went badly, here is what usually happened: you heard words from an option and chose it. In six of these eight extracts the speaker names the wrong options out loud and then puts them aside — the neighbours who “still are” a worry, the length that “was right”. Part 1 is decided in the pause, by knowing what you are listening for, and in the second hearing, by catching the dismissal.
Do it in this order.
The B2 Part 1 distractor is almost always something the speaker really said, put under the wrong question — a delay that was mentioned and accepted, a city the other person is keen on. If an option matches words you definitely heard, that is not evidence; check it answers the question that was asked, about the person it was asked about.
On each question. The help for the ones you missed is now attached to the question itself — the options that cannot be right are crossed out, and the place to look is marked.
You will hear a woman called Jo Kemp, who drives a mobile library in the Scottish Highlands, giving a talk about her work. For questions 9–18, complete the sentences with a word or short phrase.
Part 2. You will hear a woman called Jo Kemp, who drives a mobile library in the Scottish Highlands, giving a talk about her work. For questions 9 to 18, complete the sentences with a word or short phrase. You now have forty-five seconds to look at Part 2.
JO: Thank you for having me. I drive a library. That's the simplest way to put it: a van with two thousand books in it, and a route of four hundred miles every fortnight, from the coast to the glens and back. I've done it for nine years. Before that I was a nurse, at the hospital in Inverness, and people assume it was a big change, but it isn't really. Both jobs are going to people who can't easily come to you.
JO: What do they borrow? The council, when they set the route up, assumed romance — I've seen the paperwork. It's crime. By a mile. Crime, then gardening, then anything with a map in it. I've one gentleman who has read every detective novel in the Highlands and now reads them again in a different order.
JO: The books, though, are only half of it. The van's a place. In villages without a shop, without a post office, I'm the thing that arrives. So people come to the van to collect prescriptions — the surgery leaves a bag with me — and to hand in forms, and to find out who's died and who's had a baby. I know more about some of those villages than the council does.
JO: Winter's the hard part, and it's not what you'd think. Ice, the van copes with; it's got good tyres and I've got good nerves. It's the snow. Twice or three times a winter the high road closes, and I have to go round by the coast, which adds two hours and means the far villages get me late or not at all. I ring ahead. They understand. They've lived there longer than I have.
JO: My favourite stop? Easy. There's a primary school at the head of one of the glens — eleven children, one teacher — and when the van comes the whole school comes out, all eleven of them, and they've already decided what they want before the door's open. That's twenty minutes of the fortnight I would not give up for anything.
JO: My oldest borrower is ninety-four. Two books a fortnight, large print, and she's never once returned one late. She told me the van is the only thing that comes to her door that isn't the post or the doctor, and she'd rather it was me.
JO: One thing's changed recently. Half the glens still have no proper internet, so I've started carrying a laptop. Not for the catalogue — for the people. Somebody needs to renew a passport, or check a bill, or talk to a grandchild in Australia, and they can do it in the van with a cup of tea, and I pretend not to listen.
JO: You'll have guessed the money's not what it was. The council's talked about cutting the route, and one year somebody suggested replacing the van with an app. An app. For people who don't have internet. I said I'd be happy to demonstrate it to them from the top of the glen, and the idea went away.
JO: So if any of you fancy it — and they will need someone after me — the job is not about books. You'll be told it's about books. The skill it actually needs is reversing. Single-track roads, a passing place every quarter of a mile, and a tractor coming the other way. Be good at reversing. The rest you can learn.
Now listen again. [the whole talk is repeated]
That is the end of Part 2.
How to read this part. If this part went badly, here is what usually happened: you wrote the first plausible word you heard. Four of these ten answers come after a rejected option — romance before crime, ice before snow, books before reversing — and if you wrote in the first hearing and never checked in the second, the rejected one is what you wrote.
Do it in this order.
Two traps ran through this part. The rejected option — “Ice, the van copes with. It's the snow” — and the neighbouring number: two thousand books beside four hundred miles, two books beside ninety-four years. The printed sentence tells you which number belongs to it; read the word after the gap before you write the figure.
On each question. The help for the ones you missed is now attached to the question itself — the options that cannot be right are crossed out, and the place to look is marked.
You will hear five short extracts in which people talk about a family tradition. For questions 19–23, choose from the list (A–H) what each speaker says about the tradition. There are three extra letters you will not need.
Part 3. You will hear five short extracts in which people talk about a family tradition. For questions 19 to 23, choose from the list A to H what each speaker says about the tradition. Use the letters only once. There are three extra letters which you do not need to use. You now have thirty seconds to look at Part 3.
Speaker 1: Every Boxing Day we walk to the top of the hill behind my parents' house, all of us, whatever the weather. People think it's some ancient thing. It isn't. In 1998 the car wouldn't start, my dad wanted to get everyone out of the house, and the hill was there. That's it. Nobody decided anything. We just did it again the year after, and now there are twenty-three of us and a flask the size of a bucket, and my nephew's fiancée thinks we're mad.
Speaker 2: We do a barbecue on the first Saturday in August, at my aunt's, and it's the one day — the only day — that all the cousins are in the same garden. There are fourteen of us now and we're spread from Aberdeen to Plymouth. Christmas is split between in-laws, weddings are one branch at a time. This is the lot of us. My mum still runs it, thank goodness; I'm on paper plates and that's plenty.
Speaker 3: New Year's Day, the whole family goes into the sea. My grandfather started it, and when he died, in 2015, we all assumed that was that — nobody said it out loud, but nobody was planning it either. Then on the morning, my daughter, who was nine, came downstairs in her swimming costume. So we went. It's bigger now than it ever was. But it came within one nine-year-old of stopping.
Speaker 4: We have a quiz. Every Easter Sunday, after lunch, my father reads out fifty questions he's written himself, mostly about the family — who broke the greenhouse in 1987, that kind of thing — and it goes on for two hours and there's a trophy. My boyfriend came for the first time this year and sat through the whole thing with a fixed smile, and afterwards he said, very gently, “So is that… every year?” It is. He'll learn the answers eventually. Everyone does.
Speaker 5: Sunday lunch at my mother's, every week, forty years. She did it through three house moves and my father's illness and she never missed one. Then last year she handed me the apron. Literally — she took it off, put it on me, and sat down at the table, and that was the handover. So it's at my house now, and it's my gravy, and she tells me every week what's wrong with it. It hasn't got any cheaper, I'll say that. Twelve for lunch.
Now listen again. [all five extracts are repeated]
That is the end of Part 3.
How to read this part. If this part went badly, here is what usually happened: you matched a speaker to the last thing they said, or the most vivid. Every speaker here mentions two or three of the eight options — a fiancée who thinks they are mad, a lunch that is not getting cheaper — and the answer is the one the whole extract is about, not the one that got a laugh.
Do it in this order.
The distractor in Part 3 is the aside: a true detail dropped in one line, matching an option word for word. Speaker 1's fiancée, Speaker 5's cost. The main point is what the speaker spends the extract on, and it is nearly always what they return to at the close — “Nobody decided anything”, “that was the handover”.
On each question. The help for the ones you missed is now attached to the question itself — the options that cannot be right are crossed out, and the place to look is marked.
You will hear an interview with Marcus Reid, who has driven a London black cab for twenty-two years. For questions 24–30, choose the best answer (A, B or C).
Part 4. You will hear an interview with a man called Marcus Reid, who has driven a London black cab for twenty-two years. For questions 24 to 30, choose the best answer, A, B or C. You now have one minute to look at Part 4.
MAYA: Marcus Reid has driven a London black cab for twenty-two years. Marcus, the Knowledge — the test where you learn every street in London — takes most people three or four years. Why on earth did you start it?
MARCUS: My uncle. He drove a cab for thirty years, and when I was nineteen and drifting he said, “You've got the memory for it, you've just never used it.” I didn't believe him. I did the first six months mainly to prove him wrong, and by then I'd fallen for it. It was never about the driving — I didn't even like driving.
MAYA: What was the hardest part?
MARCUS: People think it's the learning. It isn't. Twenty-five thousand streets, three hundred and twenty runs — you do that on a moped, in the rain, for three years, and it's just work; it goes in. The hard part was the appearances — the oral exams. You sit in a room, an examiner names two points, and you have to call the route, street by street, out loud, while he watches you. I failed the first four. Time never bothered me. That room bothered me.
MAYA: And now every phone has a map. Do you use one?
MARCUS: I do, and I'll surprise you — for postcodes out in the suburbs, new estates, places that didn't exist when I did the Knowledge, of course I do. What I won't do is use it in the centre. In town the phone's slower than I am. It doesn't know the bus lane's closed, it doesn't know the school's coming out. Anyone who says they never use it is lying, and anyone who uses it everywhere hasn't done the Knowledge.
MAYA: The apps — the minicabs you book on your phone — have taken a lot of your trade.
MARCUS: They have. I was angry for about five years, if I'm honest — the rules were different for them, and we all said so, loudly. I've stopped. Half my old regulars tried them and came back, and half didn't, and they're not coming back, and shouting about it doesn't change the maths. What's left is the work I like: the airport runs, the people who want to talk, the ones who want to get there. I've made my peace.
MAYA: Do you talk to your passengers?
MARCUS: Only if they want me to. That's the whole skill, and it took me ten years. Someone gets in and says “Paddington” and looks at their phone — you say nothing. Someone gets in and says “Paddington — is it always this busy?” — that's an invitation. My uncle talked to everyone, and half of them hated it. I read the first sentence and I go from there.
MAYA: Is the city harder to drive in than it was?
MARCUS: Slower — definitely slower. Not because of the traffic, actually; there's less traffic than twenty years ago. It's the road layout. Bus lanes, cycle lanes, twenty miles an hour everywhere, the junctions they've redesigned. A journey that took me twenty minutes takes thirty now. But — and I say this to the other drivers who won't hear it — fewer people get hurt. I've seen the numbers. I'll take thirty minutes for that.
MAYA: What do you want for the trade, in twenty years?
MARCUS: Not for my son to do it — he's an engineer and good luck to him. And I'll drive for as long as they let me, so that's not it either. What I want is for the test to stay as it is. Every few years someone says, make the Knowledge shorter, make it easier, let them use the phone. And the day they do that is the day it stops meaning anything. It's hard on purpose. That's what you're paying for.
MAYA: Marcus Reid, thank you.
Now listen again. [the whole interview is repeated]
That is the end of Part 4. That is the end of the test.
How to read this part. If this part went badly, here is what usually happened: you lost your place. Part 4 runs in order — question 24 in the first exchange, 30 in the last — and a candidate who is still hunting for 26 while the answer to 27 goes past loses both. The second habit is taking the past feeling for the present one: he was angry; the question asks how he feels now.
Do it in this order.
The B2 Part 4 distractor is often true of the wrong time — angry five years ago, not now — or true of the wrong person: his uncle talked to everyone; he does not. Match the option to the person and the tense the question names.
On each question. The help for the ones you missed is now attached to the question itself — the options that cannot be right are crossed out, and the place to look is marked.
Listening marks move faster than any other paper's, because most of what is lost is lost to method rather than to hearing: not reading the questions in the pause, writing in the first hearing instead of the second, changing a right answer.
This is the last mock before the real thing. For each part you lost marks on, the debrief names the habit that usually costs them. Read it, redo the part once with the transcript, then once without — and then stop. The night before the exam is for sleeping, not for a fifth listening.