By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

• Listen for connecting words.

• Follow the logical flow of a conversation.

• Determine the function of what a speaker is saying.

• Practise strategies for answering Table/Summary Completion, Sentence Completion and Matching

Questions.

The third Listening recording you will hear will usually be a conversation between two people, often

university students, sometimes being guided by a tutor.

Even though you may not have ever discussed these exact topics before, you will have had similar styles of discussions with your classmates, college friends or work colleagues.

The most common question formats for this section are Table/Summary Completion, Sentence Completion and Matching questions.

If you want to get an IELTS band score of between 5.5 and 6.5, this can be achieved even if you get some questions wrong in this section.

Strategies

• Check how many words or numbers you can include in each answer.

• Predict what sort of information you will need for each answer.

• For Table Completion: Check the order of the answers. Be ready to move through them in numerical order, regardless of where they appear.

• For Summary Completion: Look for clues that will tell you when to move on to the next sentence

1. Set a timer for 7 minutes to skim the two passages below ('Ada Lovelace' and 'Glastonbury') and underline all the connecting words you find. Check your answers in the Answer Key. How did you do?

2. Many of these connectives have the same function in the sentence. Look at the following categories and match the answers you underlined (in question 1) to each of the categories:

• Addition

• Comparison and Contrast

• Time and sequence

• Cause/effect and condition

• Examples and emphasis

• Conclusion

3. How can recognising and understanding connecting words help in the Listening and Reading modules of the IELTS?

4. How can being able to use connecting words effectively help in the Speaking and Writing part of the test?

The child of the famous poet Lord Byron seems an unlikely candidate to be thought of as the first ever computer programmer, especially since this child was female, but Ada Lovelace was just that. Born in 1815 at a time when there were no recognised computer engineers, let alone female computer engineers, Ada helped shape the field.

Ada Lovelace came from a very wealthy background with a high position in society and a very intelligent mother, although her father left when Ada was just a month old. Her mother instilled in her a love of mathematics, hoping that she would not become a poet like her father. Despite her mother's best efforts, though, Ada continued to a have a passion for both science and poetry. Ada became Countess Lovelace after she married a man named William King in 1835. They had three children together and lived in London.

Ada's future career in computing first took flight when she was just 17 and was introduced to Charles Babbage at a friend's dinner party in London. Babbage was working in Cambridge on the first computer-like machine ever made. The two brilliant minds corresponded frequently by long distance letter throughout their partnership and Ada was very supportive of Babbage's ideas. In particular, she helped Babbage in the design of his second computing machine, called the Analytical Engine. Up until then, Babbage had been working with a mathematician in Italy to come up with some ideas for a new machine, which were published in a French journal. Babbage asked Ada to translate the French journal article so it could be published in England. Following this, Ada wrote to him with further suggestions and ideas, expanding the concept of the article even further than Babbage had. Indeed, she even came up with the steps needed to allow the machine to calculate Bernoulli numbers, a complex mathematical sequence. Ada's efforts here marked the beginnings of computer programming, as we know it today. Ada also predicted the future; she wrote that computers would eventually be used to create music and

graphics.

So influential was this English mother of three, that the United States Defense Department named a software code after her. As a result of her remarkable achievements, Ada Lovelace is still celebrated today around the world on Ada Lovelace Day in October, which is a day to commemorate great women in science and technology.

Everyone has heard of Glastonbury, although it is perhaps less familiar for its ruined abbey than for other reasons. Glastonbury Abbey was originally built in 712 and was almost completely destroyed by a fire in 1184. Throughout history, there have been many familiar stories about Glastonbury Abbey, including that it was visited by Joseph of Arimathea, the man who is depicted in the Bible as having donated his tomb so it could be used for the burial of Jesus. In the familiar story, Joseph of Arimathea travelled to England following the death of Jesus; upon arrival he proceeded to put his walking stick in the ground at Glastonbury, as a result a tree sprung from it and the abbey was built on that very site; this hawthorn tree is known as the 'holy thorn'. The story of Joseph coming to England is so popular that it is included in the first line of William Blake's Jerusalem: 'And did those feet in ancient time/Walk upon England's mountains green': the 'ancient feet' are commonly thought to belong to Jesus, who (according to a legend popular in Blake's time) visited England in his childhood with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea. Thus, the holy thorn is linked directly to Jesus's visit to England. This tree remains so popular today that every Christmas morning, a posy from this hawthorn is sent to be displayed on the Queen's breakfast table.

However, recent research by archaeologists has complicated the history of Glastonbury. A team of 31 medieval archaeology specialists, under the direction of Professor Roberta Gilchrist of the University of Reading, discovered that there is no contemporary evidence for the story of Joseph of Arimathea prior to the 17th century. Despite the popularity of this legend, it has proven to be not more than 150 years older than William Blake himself, who was born in the mid-18th century. It is now thought that previous generations of scholars and church authorities either ignored or suppressed the evidence that would have disproved the myth of Joseph of Arimathea visiting Glastonbury.

Gilchrist and her team uncovered evidence of a medieval glassworks at the site of the abbey, which must have made the fragments of glass with elaborate, multi-coloured patterns found at the site dating back as early as the 7th century, prior to the construction of the first church at the abbey. The site also contains ceramic fragments which prove that,in addition to being the earliest known glassworks in Saxon England, the abbey had also imported wine from the continent even earlier than it made glass.

Gilchrist's research reveals that many of the concerns of the English during the Middle Ages (which dates to 500-1500) are not very different from our own. The fire that devastated the abbey in 1184 caused severe financial difficulties to the monks; it is now believed that the legends about Glastonbury were invented at this time, in order to help with fundraising to build a replacement for the original wooden church. The stone church whose ruins you can visit at the site in the present day was built thanks to this fundraising drive. Stories that circulated at the time include claims that the original church at Glastonbury was built by Jesus's disciples (which likely influenced the later legend that Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea had visited England and planted the holy thorn), and that King Arthur and Guinevere were buried nearby. This last legend had 'proor in the form of a lead cross bearing a Latin inscription with the name of the king, now lost to history, which supported the idea that the legendary Avalon - Arthur's burial site - was right by Glastonbury Abbey. In fact, historians now agree that the monks at the abbey merely made up this claim, due to the popularity of stories about Arthur and Guinevere at the time of the fire in the late 12th century.

Before listening to the recording, look over questions 1-8 below and take 30 seconds to answer the questions a-e. Then, take a moment to review the answers for a-e at the back of the book before listening to the recording.

a. What type of question is this?

b. How many numbers can you write for any answer?

c. Which question has a place as an answer?

d. Which questions have verbs or verb forms as answers?

e. Which questions have nouns as answers?

Some words in English contain letters which we write but we don't say. These are called silent

letters.

1. Which word in the answers to the Listening Track 9 contains a silent letter?

2. Look at the words below and underline the silent letter.

wrap* knee sandwich Wednesday debt

know* receipt wrong write*

3. Why do you need to be careful with those words marked with an asterisk?

6 the old pier ............. .

7 Abbey Park ............ ..

8 the beach ............. .

9 shops on The Strand ............. .

10 Royal Art Gallery ............. .

After listening to the recording and answering the questions, check all your answers. How did you do?

When preparing for a Matching question, underline the key words in the 'answers' and think of possible synonyms. Once you have used an 'answer' draw a line through it. This will make it easier to check the options that remain.

Look back at the answers to the Listening above. Can you see a word that can have a different

spelling with a different meaning, but still sounds the same? What is the other word?

Words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings are called homophones.

In IELTS Listening the context will tell you which homophone is being used, but it is important that you spell the right word correctly.

Look at the pairs of homophones below. Match the meaning with the correct homophone and give the meaning for the other one.

In the Listening module and also in the Writing module it is important to be able to understand

and produce percentages correctly.

The key to percentages is in the prepositions that we use when talking about changes.

Look at the following information and then complete the sentences.