IELTSリスニング｜頻出単語一覧

Shirley: Hello?

Tom: Oh hello. I was hoping to speak to Jack Fitzgerald about renting a cottage.

Shirley: I’m his wife, Shirley, and we own the cottages together, so I’m sure I can help you.

Tom: Great. My name’s Tom. Some friends of ours rented Granary Cottage from you last year, and they thought it was great. So my wife and I are hoping to come in May for a week.

Shirley: What date did you have in mind?

Tom: The week beginning the 14th, if possible.

Shirley: I’ll just check … I’m sorry, Tom, it’s already booked that week. It’s free the week beginning the 28th, though, for seven nights. In fact, that’s the only time you could have it in May.

Tom: Oh. Well, we could manage that, I think. We’d just need to change a couple of things. How much would it cost?

Shirley: That’s the beginning of high season, so it’d be £550 for the week.

Tom: Ah. That’s a bit more than we wanted to pay, I’m afraid. We’ve budgeted up to £500 for accommodation.

Shirley: Well, we’ve just finished converting another building into a cottage, which we’re calling Chervil Cottage.

Tom: Sorry? What was that again?

Shirley: Chervil. C-H-E-R-V for Victor, I-L.

Tom: Oh, that’s a herb, isn’t it?

Shirley: That’s right. It grows fairly wild around here. You could have that for the week you want for £480.

Tom: OK. So could you tell me something about it, please?

Shirley: Of course. The building was built as a garage. It’s a little smaller than Granary Cottage.

Tom: So that must sleep two people, as well?

Shirley: That’s right. There’s a double bedroom.

Tom: Does it have a garden?

Shirley: Yes. you get to it from the living room through French doors, and we provide two deckchairs. We hope to build a patio in the near future, but I wouldn’t like to guarantee it’ll be finished by May.

Tom: OK.

Shirley: The front door opens onto the old farmyard, and parking isn’t a problem – there’s plenty of room at the front for that. There are some trees and potted plants there.

OK, let me tell you about some of the changes that have been made – and some things that have been retained. If you look at this map, you’ll see the familiar outline of the park, with the river forming the northern boundary, and a gate in each of the other three walls. The statue of Diane Gosforth has been moved: it used to be close to the south gate, but it’s now immediately to the north of the lily pond, almost in the centre of the park, which makes it much more visible.

There’s a new area of wooden sculptures, which are on the river bank, where the path from the east gate makes a sharp bend. There are two areas that are particularly intended for children. The playground has been enlarged and improved, and that’s between the river and the path that leads from the pond to the river. Then there’s a new maze, a circular series of paths, separated by low hedges. That’s near the west gate – you go north from there towards the river and then turn left to reach it.

There have been tennis courts in the park for many years, and they’ve been doubled, from four to eight. They’re still in the south-west corner of the park, where there’s a right-angle bend in the path. Something else I’d like to mention is the new fitness area. This is right next to the lily pond on the same side as the west gate.

Now, as you’re all gardeners, I’m sure you’ll like to hear about the plants that have been chosen for the park.

Susie: So shall we plan what we have to do for this assignment?

Luke: OK.

Susie: First, we have to decide on our research question. So how about ‘Is there a relationship between hours of sleep and number of dreams?’

Luke: OK. Then we need to think about who we’ll do the study on. About 12 people?

Susie: Right. And shall we use other psychology students?

Luke: Let’s use people from a different department. What about history?

Susie: Yes, they might have interesting dreams! Or literature students?

Luke: I don’t really know any.

Susie: OK, forget that idea. Then we have to think about our methodology. So we could use observation, but that doesn’t seem appropriate.

Luke: No. It needs to be self-reporting I think. And we could ask them to answer questions online.

Susie: But in this case, paper might be better as they’ll be doing it straight after they wake up … in fact while they’re still half-asleep.

Luke: Right. And we’ll have to check the ethical guidelines for this sort of research.

Susie: Mm, because our experiment involves humans, so there are special regulations.

Luke: Yes, I had a look at those for another assignment I did. There’s a whole section on risk assessment, and another section on making sure they aren’t put under any unnecessary stress.

Susie: Let’s hope they don’t have any bad dreams!

Luke: Yeah.

Susie: Then when we’ve collected all our data we have to analyse it and calculate the correlation between our two variables, that’s time sleeping and number of dreams and then present our results visually in a graph.

Luke: Right. And the final thing is to think about our research and evaluate it. So that seems quite straightforward.

Susie: Yeah. So now let’s …

Today I’m going to talk about the eucalyptus tree. This is a very common tree here in Australia, where it’s also sometimes called the gum tree. First I’m going to talk about why it’s important, then I’m going to describe some problems it faces at present.
Right, well the eucalyptus tree is an important tree for lots of reasons. For example, it gives shelter to creatures like birds and bats, and these and other species also depend on it for food, particularly the nectar from its flowers.
So it supports biodiversity. It’s useful to us humans too, because we can kill germs with a disinfectant made from oil extracted from eucalyptus leaves.
The eucalyptus grows all over Australia and the trees can live for up to four hundred years. So it’s alarming that all across the country, numbers of eucalyptus are falling because the trees are dying off prematurely.
So what are the reasons for this? One possible reason is disease. As far back as the 1970s the trees started getting a disease called Mundulla Yellows.
The trees’ leaves would gradually turn yellow, then the tree would die. It wasn’t until 2004 that they found the cause of the problem was lime, or calcium hydroxide to give it its proper chemical name, which was being used in the construction of roads.
The lime was being washed away into the ground and affecting the roots of the eucalyptus trees nearby. What is was doing was preventing the trees from sucking up the iron they needed for healthy growth. When this was injected back into the affected trees, they immediately recovered.
But this problem only affected a relatively small number of trees. By 2000, huge numbers of eucalyptus were dying along Australia’s East Coast, of a disease known as Bell-miner Associated Die-back.
The bell-miner is a bird, and the disease seems to be common where there are high populations of bell-miners. Again it’s the leaves of the trees that are affected. What happens is that insects settle on the leaves and eat their way round them, destroying them as they go, and at the same time they secrete a solution which has sugar in it.
The bell-miner birds really like this solution, and in order to get as much as possible, they keep away other creatures that might try to get it. So these birds and insects flourish at the expense of other species, and eventually so much damage is done to the leaves that the tree dies.