Skillful Progress Test

Listening&Speaking Answer Key

Level 1

Progress test 1
Listening one
Global listening
1 e, 2 g, 3 f, 4 c, 5 b

Close listening
1 we can call, 2 known as, 3 so-called, 4 what we call, 5 called

Listening two
Global listening
1 g, 2 b, 3 f, 4 c, 5 e

Close listening
1 meaning, 2 like, 3 which means, 4 including, 5 such as

Vocabulary
A 1 typical, 2 personal, 3 biologist, 4 ecology, 5 home, 6 house
B 1 microscope, 2 proof, 3 miniseries, 4 relationship

Grammar
A
1 Do you study every evening?
2 Where do you do your homework?
3 High-rise towers are getting taller and taller.
4 Solar energy is becoming more and more common.
5 It is impolite to ask about people’s salaries.
6 You shouldn’t ask too many personal questions.
B
1 There are too many things to do for tomorrow.
2 There aren’t enough chairs for everybody.
3 He told me to meet him here at 10 o’clock.
4 They really enjoyed working together as a team.

Speaking skill
a 7, 2; b 5, 1; c 6, 8; d 10, 4; e 9, 3

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Listening&Speaking Answer Key
Level 1

Listening one
Creating characters
Interviewer: Welcome to this week’s episode of Creative People. I’m
delighted to have with me Mirka Sedlak, author of several
novels and short stories, including the prize-winning Clouds
and Shadows. Thank you for coming, Mirka.
Mirka: My pleasure, Hamad. Thanks for inviting me.
Interviewer: Today you’re going to share with us some of the secrets of
your success … how you create the very real and very strong
characters which populate your books. So, let’s begin. Mirka,
how do you start creating your characters?
Mirka: Well, Hamad, there are many different aspects to a
character—there is the character’s inner and outer life, what
the character looks like, and how he or she speaks, which we
can call “characterization,” and why the character is there in
the story.
Interviewer: Could you tell us some more about the character’s two
different lives?
Mirka: Yes, these lives as I mentioned, are known as the “inner”
and “outer” lives. The first is to do with the character’s
psychology. What are they like emotionally? What do they
like, what do they fear, what do they need? Their outer life
has to do with their so-called “social roles”—who is in their
family, who they are friends with, who they work with.
Interviewer: And so what about the characterization? How does that
work?
Mirka: This is shown to the reader, as I said, through what the
person looks like and how they speak. The person’s physical
appearance reveals something about him or her. Also,
everyone has a particular way of speaking and this tells the
outer world something about them. Another important thing
is what we call the character’s “private spaces”—the things
the character likes and the places they go to also reflect what
the person is like.
Interviewer: What about why the character is actually there? Could you
tell us a little more about that?
Mirka: This feature, called the “function” of the character, is very
important for the story. Each character in a story has their
own function, or reason for being there. The two main
characters, good and bad, must have the strongest functions
for the story to work.
Interviewer: Are there any typical characters that we see again and again
in stories?
Mirka: Oh yes, there are a few key common characters, which recur
throughout, all stories across history. Some examples of
these are the “hero,” the “director,” and the “trouble-maker.”
Interviewer: They sound interesting. Could you give us some detail on
those…

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Listening&Speaking Answer Key
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Listening two
Snowflakes
Professor: So, Khadija, you’re presenting your research this week? Is that
right?
Khadija: Yes, that’s right. For our science project on patterns in nature,
I decided to focus on the work done by Wilson Bentley, an
American born in the nineteenth century. He wasn’t in fact a
scientist, but he did some excellent work in one particular area
of natural patterns.
Professor: Well, Khadija, you’ve certainly got our interest up. Are you
ready to start?
Khadija: Yes, I am.
Professor: Excellent, so, let’s hear all about your research.
Khadija: Today I’m going to share with you my research into some of the
most amazing patterns in nature—those found in snow. I want
to look especially at these patterns and their connection with
Wilson Bentley. Bentley was also known as “Snowflake Bentley”
because of the ground-breaking work he did photographing
snowflakes. However, before I give more details on his life,
let us look first at snowflakes, and how they are a very special
pattern in nature.
Snowflakes, meaning those tiny ice crystals which come
together to form snow, are one of the great beauties and one of
the great mysteries of nature. Scientists, despite years of study,
still do not know exactly why each snowflake is different. Every
single one of the billions and billions and billions of snowflakes
that have ever fallen has had a different pattern.
What scientists do know is that all snowflakes have a few
things in common, like the six sides that each one has. They
are also all made up of the same things, which means water
droplets turned to ice. A snowflake grows one molecule at a
time, and it is affected by several changes, including changes in
temperature as it moves around in the sky. It is these changes
that give each snowflake its unique pattern, and it is these
changes that scientists don’t fully understand.
Professor: So, how does Snowflake Bentley fit into this, Khadija?
Khadija: It’s an interesting story. Bentley was one of the first and best
photographers of snowflakes. He did it so well, in fact, that
it was said that no one else even tried to photograph them
differently for the next 100 years.
Bentley was self-taught. He was from a farming family and
he became a farmer himself, but he had been interested in
snowflakes since he was a teenager. This love of snowflakes led
him to invent a way to photograph them.
Photographing snowflakes, as you can imagine, is a difficult
job. They are very, very small, and, of course, they melt quickly.
Bentley’s method was to catch the snowflakes on a blackboard
and then move them quickly to a microscope slide with a
camera attached. In his lifetime, Bentley photographed more
than 5,000 snowflakes, or “ice flowers” as he called them. His
work can now be found in several organizations and museums
such as the Jericho Vermont Historical Society, and many of his

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Level 1

photos are now digitized. The pictures show us just how unique
and beautiful nature’s patterns can be.
Professor: That’s fascinating, Khadija. Do you have any of the pictures
here?
Khadija: Yes, let’s look now at some of these beautiful patterns…

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Progress test 2
Listening one
Global listening
1 So / early history 4 So / speaking of / aircraft speed
2 Speaking of / caused 5 And / airliners
3 So / speed

Close listening
1 217 3 1235 5 1976 / 2193.17
2 1004.5 4 144

Listening two
Global listening
1 [1 mark in total]
1 disappearing jobs
2 examples of disappearing jobs
3 growing jobs
4 examples of growing jobs
5 This will affect the listeners.
2 On the other hand, 3 Unlike, 4 Despite, 5 in contrast

Close listening
1 as well, 2 most importantly, 3 that’s not all, 4 In addition, 5 above all

Vocabulary
1 relaxed, 2 surprising, 3 good, 4 creative, 5 expensive,
6 experiment, 7 charity, 8 voluntary, 9 Before long, 10 in the next

Grammar
A
1 famous, 2 better, 3 knowledge, 4 fact
B
1 They cannot come to the lecture tomorrow afternoon.
2 What time are you able to arrive this afternoon?
3 Where were the students last week?
4 When did you return from college?
5 I will definitely apply for a job next week.
6 Are you going to attend the presentation this afternoon?

Speaking skill
a 3, 8; b 1, 9; c 2, 5; d 6, 10; e 4, 7
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Listening&Speaking Answer Key
Level 1

Listening one
Airplane speed tutorial
Professor: Good morning, everyone. I’m glad you’re all on time…
Oscar and Mari Good morning.
Professor: Let’s get started right away. As you know, we are
beginning the topic of transport and speed by looking
at airplanes, and I asked Oscar and Mari to do some
research on it. So, Oscar, what did you find out in your
research about the early history of the speed of airplanes?
Oscar: Well, it’s amazing, really amazing just how quickly
planes got … quicker! I mean, at the start of the
twentieth century there weren’t any planes. In 1903,
the Wright Brothers flew the first plane at about 10
kilometers an hour. By the beginning of the First World
War, in 1914, the fastest plane could fly at about 220
kilometers an hour—217, to be exact, according to
my notes, and by the end of the war, four years later,
the record was about 270. Then, just another 20 or so
years later, during the Second World War, planes were
travelling at around a thousand kilometers an hour,
although there were no official records at that time. There
were reports that a rocket-powered plane flew at 1004.5
km/h.
Professor: Thanks, Oscar. Speaking of amazing increases in
speed, Mari, what do you think caused this remarkable
improvement?
Mari: Well, I tried to read about that, but I couldn’t find a clear
answer. But what I think happened is that the wars really
accelerated the increase in speed. Planes needed to get
faster and faster. But one thing was clear—the biggest
breakthrough, the thing that changed everything was the
invention of the jet engine in the 1930s.
Professor: I see. Yes, I think you are right. So, what effect did the jet
engine have on speed, Mari?
Mari: Well, speeds shot up! Not just military planes but
passenger planes too got faster, and that meant that
suddenly much longer trips were possible and practical.
Professor: So, Oscar, speaking of other factors that influenced
aircraft speed, did you find anything else that you think
was significant?
Oscar: One thing, yes. It’s quite interesting, really, if you like
physics, as I do. The biggest factor is—was—the speed
of sound. A lot of strange things happen when an
aircraft reaches the speed of sound, which is about 1235
kilometers an hour. They call this speed Mach 1, and
anything above it is “supersonic.” Mach 2 is twice the
speed of sound, Mach 3 three times the speed of sound,
and so on.
Professor: OK. And have there been any supersonic airliners?
Oscar: Yes, but not many—it is not really worth it from a

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business point of view. The Russians won the race to

have the first supersonic passenger plane, the Tupolev
T-U-1-4-4, which was followed by the Anglo-French
plane, the famous Concorde. But other than that, the
huge costs involved and other difficulties have meant
that passenger planes are designed to go below the speed
of sound—subsonic, they call it.
Professor: What about military aircraft, Mari? What speeds do they
go at?
Mari: Oh, Mach 3 or more … back in 1976 the Blackbird set
a record of 2193.17 miles an hour—that’s 3529 km an
hour! Since then planes have gotten faster but a lot of the
speeds are kept secret. The whole thing is amazing when
you think we have only been flying for about a hundred
years!
Professor: Yes, that’s a good point, Mari, a good point. Well, your
research seems to have been very detailed …

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Listening&Speaking Answer Key
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Listening two
Disappearing jobs
Lecturer: Welcome to the second talk in our career development series.
Today I’m going to outline some changing patterns in work
by exploring two different areas. These areas show a lot of
rapid change, some positive and some negative. So what are
we looking at? Well, I am talking about those jobs which are
disappearing, as well as those which are growing.
Let’s start with the disappearing jobs first. Research shows us
that these jobs will not exist in the future in the way they do
now. They may still be popular at the moment as they were
in the past. However, because of a number of factors, in the
future fewer and fewer people will work in these areas. Factors
affecting these types of job include: the change in people’s
habits, globalization and, most importantly of all, the growth of
technology. In many areas of work now, because of technology,
people can do two or three times the amount of work that they
could do even ten years ago. And that’s not all. In some areas,
technology has made the job totally unnecessary—the job just
isn’t needed any more.
Let’s look at some examples of these disappearing jobs:
many examples are jobs in which people use their hands,
such as people who put together products on assembly lines.
Technology and, notably, robots are taking over these jobs.
In addition, the work of typists and word processors is also
quickly disappearing as people are now expected to do their
own typing and word processing.
On the other hand, there are whole areas of work which are
expanding rapidly, with more and more people needed to work
in these fields. One example of these types of jobs is in the
aviation industry, with more and more aircraft builders needed
all the time. Unlike other areas of manufacturing, airplanes
still need people, rather than robots to put them together.
Interestingly, counseling and advising are other growth
areas. Despite the growth of technology, it seems that people
increasingly want advice from other people, not from books,
technology, or the Internet. Demand for so-called “thinking
jobs” is also increasing all the time, for example, jobs for library
workers and teachers. Finally, in contrast with the decreasing
number of word-processing jobs, the number of positions for
specialist multimedia experts is expanding rapidly.
So, with this overview in mind, let’s look more closely now at
how these changes in the job market will affect you as young
graduates soon to be looking for work …

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