hi everyone um i'm making a video to explain um some tips and tricks for the cambridge proficiency listening paper as part of the cpe the cambridge proficiency exam what i'll do is um we will do the listening exercises together and then i'll show you uh how to go about learning how to learn a strategy which will help you improve your listening uh performance on this particular exam and improve your listening skills in general okay so in part one of the cpe you'll be given three of these that is uh so six in total two two two in which you're given multiple choice questions it's always abc and you need to listen closely to what you hear in order to find the right answer so take a moment pause the video and read through the questions and what is this about well you will you hear a science lecturer talking to students about the sense of taste okay take a moment read through the questions now you've done that i will read the audio script in my best cambridge voice um listen closely you'll hear it twice and see if you can't guess make an informed choice as to which answer is correct all right the received wisdom used to be that there were four tastes and that each was perceived at a specific location on the tongue sweet tastes at the tip salty and then sour along the sides and bitter at the back this so-called tongue map was based on some rudimentary research originally done in 1901 and then later misinterpreted but these assumptions went unchallenged for a staggering 73 years until a researcher called virginia collings proved that in fact every part of the tongue has receptors for every basic taste including umami a fifth taste which most western scientists ignored until relatively recently why textbooks should persist in printing this so-called map is quite beyond me frankly it certainly baffled me back when i was a kid at school i could never get the experiment right in science class and i i failed for insisting that i could taste sugar at the back of my mouth goes to show you shouldn't always take for granted what your textbook or your teachers tell you in fact the remarkable thing about our sense of taste is just how little is known about it now my advice is to rewind this video and play the text again you will always have a chance during the cpe to hear everything twice so listen again i'm not going to read it again you can just play it back and then we'll move on okay now we're ready to look for the answers now when i teach this live in class um we i give everyone the script that is uh yeah i show everyone what they just heard so you see the text and oops sorry spoiler you see the text in front of you here okay now again reviewing the questions how does the lecturer feel so what cambridge is basically asking here is that you are able to infer tone or feeling on the part of the speaker based on well tone of voice but also vocabulary um i'm going to give you the answer and show you where you would find this in the text all right the answer is a the lecturer was surprised that this tongue map as a concept was accepted for so long now where do we find the answer in the text here it is why textbooks should persist in printing this so-called map is quite beyond me frankly now basically what you're looking for actually you're listening for but this technique also applies to the reading part of the cpe as well that is the reading use of english the reading texts basically when someone says that something is beyond them what's beyond me why what they're expecting is um surprise or astonishment or yeah so they were surprised that it was that it was persisted in being printed for so long okay the answer to number two is why did the lecturer refer to his own experience as a school child because he wanted to encourage his students to trust their own judgment now again if we look back at the text to encourage students to trust their own judgment aha here the speaker says it goes to show you shouldn't always take for granted what your textbook or your teachers tell you now this is another way of saying trust your own judgment right so again what you're looking what you're listening for because we're working on listening skills um is vocabulary that is similar or synonyms essentially to what you see in the answer okay so surprise and encouraging someone to trust their own judgment again with take for granted that's telling someone it's another way of saying trust your own judgment right let's try another one okay this is a bit more of an in-depth um exercise because here the task is to complete the sentences with a word or short phrase so generally you won't be writing more than three words here maybe four you will hear part of a lecture that's my cambridge voice about ancient egyptian ships and an attempt to reconstruct one now you have one minute to read the questions let's do this together archaeologists believe that the site called mersa gowasus was once a on the red sea to gain the support from the the pharaoh hot chipset imported incense by ship ancient egyptian shipbuilders differed from modern ones in that they did not make a for the ship they were building the speaker compares building an ancient egyptian ship to doing a wood from trees grown in was used in the reconstruction of the ship the modern shipbuilders were provided with a by the archaeologists the modern shipbuilders used to make the ship watertight the modern team used a to get the ship to the sea now let's learn a strategy first of all in number seven my question i would always ask my students preparing for cpe or learning to improve their listening skills is what kind of a word do you need in number seven look at the context and the words around it if you have an article a lid word a the an what kind of a word will you need here that's right a noun a a person a place a thing an idea you need a noun similarly in number eight you'll need a noun now this is called the strategy is known as prediction so what can we predict might be the answer here the site was once a on the red sea i don't know uh a dock a um a port what about here to gain the support from the the pharaoh imported incense by ship so what kind of word or idea could go in the gap who do you gain support from well to gain the support from the government uh the ministers you know probably people right again here in number nine you're going to need a thing how do you know that because you have an article in number 10 as well an article a definite an indefinite article a something and here wood from trees grown in this would probably be a location right a noun the modern shipbuilders used something to make the ship watertight and they used a something to get the ship to the sea all right what i'm going to do is read this in my best pronunciation and see if you can fill in the blanks as we go and keep in mind everyone spelling counts we know that the ancient egyptians built ships but until recently people thought these were just for river transport for example the remains of an elegant wooden ship 4500 years old were found by the great pyramid but this wouldn't have been strong enough to go out to sea however archaeologists working at the desert site of mersagowasis on the shores of the red sea about 160 kilometers from the famous temples of luxor have recently started uncovering amazing artifacts things like stone anchors and planks of wood that were once part of ships and they now believe this was the site of a harbor from where ships sailed down the red sea they believe the ships were sent out by hotshipset a woman who ruled over egypt 3500 years ago she already had a strong army but to retain her power as pharaoh she had to have the backing of the priests and one way of getting this was to provide them with the incense they burned during religious ceremonies this wasn't available in egypt so she had it brought in by ship support for this theory comes from carvings made at the time of sailing ships with their crew sails and cargo all shown in amazing detail so a team attempted to reconstruct struct one of these ships uh to find out whether it actually could carry out a sea voyage they started by examining both the remains of the river ship and the carvings of hot chipsets ships to find out as much as they could about the design of the ships they were surprised to find that while modern shipbuilders start by constructing a framework and then build the ship around it the ancient egyptian shipbuilders didn't do this instead the planks of wood which formed the outside of the ship were carefully shaped so that they all fit it together constructing the whole thing out of so many differently shaped pieces of wood must have been rather like trying to solve a puzzle but on a huge scale and without knowing if there was actually a solution or not this was true for both the riverships and for seagoing ships but in other ways there were differences in their construction for example the pieces of wood on the rivership had holes in at regular intervals not for nails as in modern ships but for ropes to add more support and keep the planks from coming apart but there was no evidence of this on the carvings of the sea going ships instead they relied solely on wooden joints reconstruction of the ship required massive pieces of wood egypt has never been a great place to find giant trees and the pharaohs used cedar trunks imported from lebanon but today the cedars of lebanon are rare so the timber was imported from france from 150 year old douglas fir trees the actual building of the ship was carried out by the lahma family several brothers who run a shipyard in egypt and have a lot of experience with modern wooden ships rather than the archaeologists providing them with a written two-dimensional plan they provided the brothers with a model of what was required no one's built a ship like this for three thousand years but the lahma brothers were able to understand the way it all fitted together and translate this to the real thing once the ship was built one problem remained there were still cracks between the planks of wood which would mean that it would leak when it was floated on water modern wooden ships use epoxy resin but that wasn't available three thousand years ago so they decided to use beeswax instead they knew the ancient egyptians were familiar with this and that they used it on their furniture so finally the ship was ready the inscriptions on the carvings had said that the seafaring ships were constructed on the river nile and that they were taken apart again plank by plank and carried across the desert to the red sea by donkey but the research team decided to cheat a little here and instead of dismantling the ship they loaded the entire thing onto a truck and drove it there so at last they were ready to launch the ship but they had no idea [Music] okay there's our text now what you want to do is rewind this video and listen to the text again do that now beep okay now you've had a chance to listen to the listening extract twice what we now need to figure out aha by looking at the script is what the answers are and again the strategy is the same as before we're looking for synonyms so in number seven the question reads archaeologists believe that the site called mersagowasis was once a on the red c okay now we know that this is going to be a location a thing a place right and here this the text reads they now believe who is they archaeologists they now believe this was the site of a harbor from where ships sailed down the red sea so the site that is mersa govassis uh-huh was a harbor and that's the answer to number seven do you see what cambridge does here it's tricky you hear the words mersagowasis or you hear the word sight right so automatically your ears are pricked up and you're listening closely but then you have this whole what is it 30 words in between before you actually get to the answer that's part of the challenge with cpe listening you have to really listen closely and focus uh consistently now here again if we look for synonyms to gain the support so we're looking for what is hot chipset what did hot chipset have to do to gain support now when you hear it they will not say the word support that would make it too easy this is the highest level of english that's tested so what's another way of saying how chipset needed to get support backing to have backing is another way of saying to get support and who provided the backing she needed the backing from the priests so the answer to number eight is the priests okay what i'm going to do is skip um to well let's go here um okay let's try number 13. the modern ship builders were provided with a by the archaeologists now we know it's going to be somewhere in here right aha okay a team attempted to reconstruct they started by examining the carvings to find out as much as they could about the design they who the modern shipbuilders were surprised to find that while modern shipbuilders start by constructing a framework and then build the ship around it the ancient shipbuilders didn't do this so the modern shipbuilders were provided with a what by the archaeologists well they were provided with a the planks of wood constructing the whole thing um ah okay constructing a framework so here the modern shipbuilders were provided with a framework and then what did they use to make the ship watertight that is the modern uh shipbuilders let's see where it is um oh i'm sorry guys i made a mistake here's the answer to number 13. they were provided with a by the archaeologists there we go the archaeologists provided them with a two-dimensional plan they provided the brothers with a model okay so the answer should be ah model 14 i'll show you these answers again in just a moment beeswax now some of you might have written in number 14 that they used resin or epoxy resin to make the ship water tight but again this is tricky because why is that not the answer let's see if we can find it ah yeah modern ships use epoxy resin but that wasn't available again you have to listen consistently and closely so they that's the modern shipbuilders decided to use beeswax instead because that's what the ancient egyptians used all right so 13 is sorry 14 is beeswax i think you're i'm hoping that you're starting to see a pattern here that you're looking for synonyms the speaker compares building a ship to doing a see if we can find the answer aha and here it was they of course the answers come in order which is nice it makes it a little bit easier planks of wood fitted together constructing the whole thing out of so many differently shaped pieces of wood must have been rather like trying to solve a puzzle so again the speaker compares building at the ancient ship to doing a puzzle solving a puzzle doing a puzzle okay i'm not going to read to you anymore oh here are the answers pause the video and make sure that you understand why these answers are the answers if you're not sure then go back to the script and find the answers and this way you train your brain for both listening and reading now let's do just one more a short one okay this is a part of the cpe that students quite often find difficult because they hear the same five speakers twice so speaker one in both case says he says the same things so 21 and 26 it's the same text out loud 22 and 27 it's the same text that you hear but each time you're listening for different information here you're listening for why each speaker read the book here you're listening for each speaker's opinion of the book now let's just practice one together and of course in cpe you will have time you now have one minute to read the questions so read through if there are words you don't understand don't worry about them too much yet see if you can make an educated guess okay now i'm going to read speaker one here we go and see if you can figure out why speaker one read the book from these options and why what was speaker one's opinion of the book from these options speaker one i decided it was something i ought to know more about i had some recollections of that period but i was very young then and i wanted to find out more about what was going on then my parents and relatives that generation talked about a lot of things but i didn't really engage with it all then i was too young i picked it from a list i found on a website because it looked as if it wouldn't be dull and that was right it was lively and very accessible and not at all dry it made the events and changes of that period come to life okay now pause the video rewind it and play it back and you'll be looking for the answer to 21 and 26 and without further ado okay here is what you just heard now what are the answers to 21 and 26 21 is h 26 is b the question is why 21 h the speaker read the book because of an interest in the subject and they thought it was very entertaining where is that in the text oh it was something i ought to know more about i wanted to find out more that's another way of saying they had an interest in the subject but where does the speaker say that it was entertaining ah it was lively and very accessible it made the events and changes come to life another way of saying it was entertaining so now give it a go yourself train your brain here you can read through the script so this will be 22 and 27 23 and 28 um 24 and 29 and then 25 and 30. give it a try and if you get an answer wrong you can look back in the script and figure out what the answer is and in the end take a moment calculate your score how many answers did you have correct divide that number into the total number of questions and then you find out the percentage if you had at least 60 percent correct this means you passed however keep in mind that you needn't pass each part of the cpe you will get an average mark listening speaking reading use of english and writing however it's wise to try to do as best you can on each individual part now i do hope this walkthrough has helped and thanks for watching and listening