Before you start
Read all ten questions first. You will be given a short pause to do this in the real test and it is the most valuable thirty seconds on the paper — knowing that question 3 wants a number and question 5 wants a plural noun is most of what makes completion questions answerable in real time.
- Word limit: no more than two words and/or a number. Three words scores zero even when the meaning is right. This rule is applied mechanically in the real test and it is applied here.
- Spelling counts. An answer spelled wrong is an answer marked wrong.
- Singular and plural must match what you hear.
- Do not stop for a question you have missed. Missing one answer costs one mark; staying with it while the lecture moves on costs four. Practise the recovery deliberately — it is a skill, not an attitude.
Part 4 — a lecture on street trees
You will hear part of a lecture given to first-year students on an urban planning course. Answer questions 1 to 10.
Questions 1–10
Six notes to complete, then four multiple-choice questions.
Questions 1–10, as they appear on the page. The answers and an explanation for every one are in the key below.
- 1. Urban heat island — the summer night-time difference in a mid-sized European city is about ______.word list: four degrees, transpiration, 400, two point five, fifteen, a third, shade, twenty, thirty
- 2. The second cooling mechanism, besides shade, is ______.word list: four degrees, transpiration, 400, two point five, fifteen, a third, shade, twenty, thirty
- 3. A mature street tree can move about ______ litres of water on a hot day.word list: four degrees, transpiration, 400, two point five, fifteen, a third, shade, twenty, thirty
- 4. Lisbon study — air temperature difference at 3pm: ______ degrees.word list: four degrees, transpiration, 400, two point five, fifteen, a third, shade, twenty, thirty
- 5. A tree outgrows its planting pit within roughly ______ years.word list: four degrees, transpiration, 400, two point five, fifteen, a third, shade, twenty, thirty
- 6. Proportion of street trees lost in the first three years: ______.word list: four degrees, transpiration, 400, two point five, fifteen, a third, shade, twenty, thirty
- 7. According to the speaker, the urban heat island effect is greatestin the middle of the afternoon / after dark / during rainfall / in winter
- 8. The difference in SURFACE temperature in the Lisbon study wastwo point five degrees / four degrees / close to twenty degrees / not measured
- 9. The speaker says the main reason young street trees die isdisease / vandalism / drought / pollution
- 10. In the speaker’s view, the biggest obstacle to planting more street trees isthe cost of watering / the compaction of soil / the time before benefits appear / the choice of species
Show the answer key — every answer explained
- 1. Night-time urban heat island difference
- four degrees — Said once, early: "the difference on a summer night is typically about four degrees". The very next sentence tells you this is not the daytime figure — that sentence exists to catch a candidate who writes down the first number they hear and stops listening.
- 2. The second cooling mechanism
- transpiration — The speaker flags it as a two-part structure ("in two separate ways, and it is worth keeping them apart") before naming shade and then transpiration. Signposting like that is the single most useful thing to listen for in Part 4.
- 3. Litres of water moved per hot day
- 400 — Spoken as "four hundred litres". Writing the digits is safe and faster; writing "four hundred" is also accepted. Adding "litres" would take the answer to three words in the real test, which scores zero — the unit is already printed in the note.
- 4. Lisbon study, air temperature difference at 3pm
- two point five — Two point five degrees. The trap is the surface figure later in the same paragraph, which is nearly ten times larger and arrives while you are still writing.
- 5. Years before a tree outgrows its pit
- fifteen — "a container it will outgrow within about fifteen years". Note "about" — approximation words never change the answer, they just make candidates hesitate.
- 6. Proportion lost in the first three years
- a third — "roughly a third are lost in the first three years". "One third" and "1/3" would also be marked correct. "A third of trees" would be three words.
- 7. When the heat island effect is greatest
- B — after dark — Explicitly stated, with the reason attached. The afternoon distractor is drawn from a different part of the lecture.
- 8. Surface temperature difference
- C — close to twenty degrees — The lecture separates air and surface temperature in consecutive sentences. Both numbers are correct answers to different questions, which is the commonest way marks are lost in Part 4.
- 9. Main cause of young tree deaths
- C — drought — "the overwhelming cause is drought rather than disease or vandalism". The two wrong options are named in the recording, which is the point: hearing a word is not evidence that it is the answer.
- 10. The biggest obstacle
- C — the time before benefits appear — All four are discussed. The speaker ranks them in the final line: "that, more than money, is the reason planting rates are what they are". Opinion questions in Part 4 are almost always decided by a comparative phrase like this one.
Full transcript
Read this only after you have answered. Then read it again with the questions beside you and find the exact sentence that settles each one — that review is worth more than another attempt at the section.
Good morning. In this session I want to look at street trees — the trees planted along roads and in squares — and at what a city actually gets back from them. Let me start with the temperature problem. A large city is measurably warmer than the countryside around it. The effect has a name: the urban heat island. In a mid-sized European city the difference on a summer night is typically about four degrees. That is not the daytime figure, which is smaller. The gap is largest after dark, because concrete and asphalt release heat they absorbed during the day. Trees work against that in two separate ways, and it is worth keeping them apart. The first is shade, which is obvious. The second is transpiration. A tree draws water up from the soil and releases it as vapour through its leaves, and evaporating water takes heat with it. A single mature street tree can move something like four hundred litres of water on a hot day. In effect it is a very slow air conditioner that runs on sunlight. Now, the measured effect. A study carried out in Lisbon compared two streets that were similar in width, in traffic and in building height. One had a continuous canopy of trees; the other had none. At three in the afternoon the difference in air temperature was two point five degrees. The difference in surface temperature — the temperature of the road itself — was very much larger, close to twenty degrees. That is the headline. But I want to spend most of this session on the reasons cities still find this difficult, because the benefit is not in doubt and the planting rate in most places is still low. The first difficulty is soil. A street tree is planted in a pit, and the pit is usually far too small. Beneath a pavement the soil is compacted, deliberately, so that the surface does not sink. Compacted soil holds very little air and almost no water. So the tree is asked to live in a container it will outgrow within about fifteen years. The second difficulty is water in the first two summers. Most street trees that die, die young. The figure people in the industry use is that roughly a third are lost in the first three years, and the overwhelming cause is drought rather than disease or vandalism. Watering a young tree is cheap. It is also the first thing cut from a maintenance budget, because nothing visibly goes wrong for two years. The third is species choice, and this is where the argument gets interesting. Councils have historically planted whatever tolerates pollution and grows fast. That produces streets with one species on them, and a street with one species on it is one pest away from being a street with no trees on it. The current advice is a rule of thumb: no more than ten per cent of a city’s trees from any single species. And the fourth difficulty is time. A tree delivers almost nothing in its first decade. The cooling figures I quoted come from mature canopies, and a canopy takes thirty years. Which means the decision is taken by one administration and the benefit arrives under a later one — and that, more than money, is the reason planting rates are what they are. For next week, please read the Lisbon paper, and come with one question about measurement. How would you actually prove that a particular tree cooled a particular street? It is harder than it sounds.
What to do with the result
Ten questions is a quarter of a real Listening paper, so the score is not a band and should not be converted into one. What it is good for is diagnosis, and there are only three interesting outcomes.
| Pattern | What it usually means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Lost marks on 1–6, not on 7–10 | Not a comprehension problem. Either the answer form defeated you — word limit, spelling, plural — or you were still writing question 2 when question 3 was said. | Practise predicting the gap before you listen. Decide what part of speech and what kind of information belongs there. |
| Lost marks on 7–10, not on 1–6 | You are catching facts and missing the argument. Part 4 questions about a speaker’s view turn on comparative phrases, not on nouns. | Re-listen with the transcript and mark every phrase that ranks or dismisses something: rather than, more than, the real reason. |
| Lost marks in a run | One missed answer took the next three with it. This is the most common and most fixable pattern on the whole paper. | Deliberately skip a question mid-recording in practice and force yourself back on track. Abandonment is a trainable skill. |
Reading your own result on a ten-question section.
For a longer timed listening section with a real recording and adaptive routing, the free placement exam on this site includes one. It is a CEFR placement test rather than an IELTS test and it does not report a band — but it is the closest thing here to sitting a full listening paper under pressure.