INTO EUROPE Prepare for Modern English Exams Listening INTO EUROPE Series editor: J. Charles Alderson Other volumes in this series: Reading and Use of English The Speaking Handbook The Writing Handbook Into Europe Prepare for Modern English Exams Listening Katalin Fehérváryné Horváth Karmen Piμorn CONTENTS Acknowledgements 7 PART ONE Introduction 13 Chapter 1: To the Teacher and the Student 15 Chapter 2: Listening 19 PART TWO Listening Tasks 29 Chapter 3: Short-answer questions 31 Chapter 4: Multiple-choice tasks 47 Chapter 5: True/false tasks 61 Chapter 6: Completion tasks 71 Chapter 7: Matching tasks 91 PART THREE Answer Keys 103 APPENDICES 1 Guidelines for Writers of Listening Tasks 115 2 Contents of the CDs 127 [...]... find this publication useful in preparing for a modern European English exam Chapter 1 To the Teacher and the Student This book has been written to help students as well as their teachers to prepare for modern European English examinations People take language exams for many different reasons They can help them to improve their English, follow a course taught in English at university or college, get a... famous English writers, or explain a list of expressions, or understand each and every word of a discussion of a radio programme Modern European examinations in English assess how well a student is able to communicate in realistic situations They usually cover all the four main language skills European Standards The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, devised by the Council of Europe, ... Different levels will be required for different purposes For instance, the planned Hungarian school-leaving examination is, in current documents, said to be at levels A2 or B1 for the so-called Intermediate level, and at B2 for the so-called Advanced level Cambridge’s Preliminary English Test (PET) is at level B1 and the First Certificate in English (FCE) is at B2 Typically, modern language examinations... skill, which is tested by most European examination systems We believe that this collection of tasks is useful not only for those students who are preparing for examinations, but also for teachers who are preparing their students for these exams Why do we need to practise listening? Preparing for the listening part of a language examination is in some ways similar to training for a sports competition: you... Listening The aim of this book is to help you develop the skills needed to understand spoken English in real life situations, as well as to prepare for the listening part of modern European English examinations In this chapter, we will focus on listening as an activity and listening as a skill When preparing for an exam, it is essential that you understand what is being tested and how it is being tested... life we listen for different purposes We are sometimes more interested in the main idea and sometimes our aim is to understand a specific piece of information The same is true for modern listening tests Some tasks will require you to extract the main point of a recorded passage, and others will oblige you to listen for a very particular piece of information When we watch TV we do not listen for each and... listeners listen for a variety of purposes, they listen to a range of different texts, they may understand different sorts of information from these texts, and they may need different skills in order to understand what is being said We have also seen that modern European exams use a variety of testing techniques to test a learner’s ability to understand spoken texts It is crucial that you prepare for the listening... as Use of English, for the reform of the Hungarian School-leaving Examinations in English The Project was conducted under an agreement with the Hungarian Ministry of Education, through its agency OKI (the National Institute of Education) The task of the Project was to design test specifications, guidelines for test writers and test tasks The test tasks were developed according to modern European testing... spoken texts in a modern listening test may not be very interesting and challenging for everyone However, good listeners try to remain interested in the topic, they work hard to get the meaning and they try to avoid distractions as much as possible Listening skills Modern language exams try to simulate what we do on a regular basis outside the classroom or examination hall Therefore, most modern listening... the Council of Europe Framework, and the levels of difficulty it describes Below we present a series of descriptions of what learners at particular levels of the Framework can do, when listening in a foreign language – in this case in English (The original Council of Europe descriptions were simplified by the DIALANG Project, and are found in Appendix C to the Council of Europe Common European Framework, . INTO EUROPE Prepare for Modern English Exams Listening INTO EUROPE Series editor: J. Charles Alderson Other. series: Reading and Use of English The Speaking Handbook The Writing Handbook Into Europe Prepare for Modern English Exams Listening Katalin