New
7 Listening Exam – Listening Script
Part 1
14
Speaker 0
What do these people do all day? It’s certainly not
dealing with the customers, even though that’s what
they’re supposed to do. I’ve spoken to various very
polite staff members and they’ve done their best but I
keep hitting the same snag – she’s not in today, she’s in a
meeting, she’s at a conference, and so on. I have to get
her to deal with it though, because she’s the senior
person and she’s the one that has to authorize the
documents I need. But you just can’t pin her down and
that’s all wrong – someone in her position needs to be
available to deal with this sort of thing.
Speaker 1
Well, I opened a new bank account. I filled in all the
forms and sent in all the required paperwork, and that
all seemed straightforward enough. I was expecting it
to take a little while before everything was set up and
the account was up and running, but in fact all that
happened quite rapidly. What wasn’t so good is that
they set up the wrong kind of account for me. The
member of staff I’d spoken to about this when I first
enquired was very clear, but she got it wrong. The
manager I contacted said it was a training issue and not
that person’s fault. Now I’ll have to start all over again,
which is incredibly annoying.
Speaker 2
We sat on that train for over an hour and we had no
idea what was going on. It was a really unpleasant
experience. You’d have thought they could have told us
what the cause of this delay was, but there wasn’t a
single public announcement to let us know anything.
We kept asking the staff on the train what was going on,
but they all said they were as puzzled as we were. We
asked them to contact the driver but if they did that, we
never heard anything. In those sorts of situations,
people ought to be kept up to date with what’s going on,
but we were in the dark the whole time.
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Speaker 3
I had some problems with my email so I got in touch
with the server. Well, I got lost in that conversation
pretty quickly. I couldn’t follow what the person at the
other end of the phone was saying at all! He was one of
those people who assumes everyone knows all the
technical terms and all that, and started getting
annoyed with me when I asked him to repeat things or
simplify them. He talked to me as if I was a complete
idiot – not exactly the right approach for ‘customer
service’. I’m so cross about it I’m going to try and speak
to his manager.
Speaker 4
I rang up to change my tickets and you wouldn’t believe
how hard it was just to get that done. First of all I had to
go through a whole nightmare of pressing buttons and
giving details into the phone, in response to all sorts of
automated questions – most of them totally
unconnected with what I wanted to do. Then I had to
be transferred over and over again to exactly the right
person to deal with this particular issue. When I
actually spoke to that person, the change got made with
no fuss at all. But just getting to that point was such a
performance. I said to the staff member on the phone
that it was all a totally unnecessary palaver and she said
she quite agreed and I should tell the management that.
Speaker 5
If it had been the first time, I wouldn’t have been so
annoyed, but I keep having to call in the IT experts to
look at the thing. It’s very frustrating because it holds
me up and means I get my work done much more
slowly, and sometimes I have to rearrange deadlines. Of
course, I don’t know the first thing about computers, so
I have no idea why it happens. To be honest, I’m not
sure the IT people really know either. But surely the
thing shouldn’t go wrong all the time, should it? I mean,
you have to expect problems with anything
technological I know, but this is too much. And my
boss just shrugs his shoulders when I try to raise the
issue with him.
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Part 2
15

Okay, that’s the end of the class, but before you go, I’m going to tell all you aspiring
portrait painters about an exciting new competition, the Portrait Awards. This is
run by the National Portrait Gallery. The winner gets a big cash prize, plus a
commission to paint a portrait for the gallery.
As well as cash prizes for the runner-up and third place, there’s a Young Artist
Award and a Travel Award. The former is for artists aged 18 to 30 ... so it’s relevant
to all of you! The latter is aimed at giving an artist the chance to experience
working in a different environment, either in Britain or abroad, on a portrait-
related project. The work produced will then be part of next year’s Portrait Award
exhibition and tour.
This year’s exhibition will of course include the winning entries plus some other
entries selected for it, and it will be accompanied by an 80-page catalogue, that
will feature all of the selected entries, and an essay by a leading art author. It’s a
really important competition in the art world, this one, and winning it or being
selected for the exhibition is very prestigious. Last year there were over 1,100
entries and the exhibition, which on average has around 50 paintings in it, was
seen by nearly 200,000 people in London alone, and many more on tour.
Quite a few artists who’ve had their work exhibited in the Portrait Awards
exhibition have got commissions as a result of this. For example, one recent
winner got a commission to paint a portrait of a very famous author. Another was
commissioned to do a portrait of a leading figure in the world of medicine.
Now to the rules. Well, first of all, you need to register to enter. You can do that
online or by post, and there’s a registration fee. You can only put in one entry per
artist. Your portrait must be painted in oil, tempera, or acrylic, and it has to be on
a canvas or board, and preferably framed. You can’t submit watercolours, works
on paper, or pastels. It has to be based on a sitting (or a study from life) and the
human figure must be the dominant feature.
Your entry must be delivered to one of the collection points listed on the Gallery’s
website – I’ll give you details of that in a minute ... so get something to jot the
details down with if you’re thinking of entering. You’ll find there are different
places you can take your entry to, and make sure you look carefully there at the
dates when paintings must reach those places. When your painting is delivered,
you’ll get a receipt for it from a representative of the Gallery. If your entry is above
a certain size – again details on the website – you have to tell the Exhibitions
Department of the Gallery in advance of delivering it and take it straight to the
Gallery itself.
OK, now the entries will be judged by a panel of experts and you’ll be told their
decisions, either by email or post, depending on the preference you made on the
entry form. If you haven’t heard anything by the date mentioned on the form, you
should contact the Exhibitions Department.
What else ... Ah, anyone who gets shortlisted for one of the prizes must attend the
prize-giving ceremony, where the winners will be announced. Those who get
shortlisted are also expected to go to the Press View event on the morning of the
day of the ceremony...
Well, I really hope that some of you will be keen. You can find all the details on the
website, which is www. ...

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