Practice Listening English Exercises for A2 – The past

The false statements are: 1 a)   2 b)   3 c)   4 a)   5 c)   6 b)

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1   Is Lionel Messi the best soccer player in the world? A lot of people think so. Messi was born in Argentina. At school, he was a very good student, but there was a problem: He was very small. Doctors in Spain helped him, and now he lives in Spain and plays soccer for Barcelona. Interesting fact? He always plays with his hair wet.

2   Oprah Winfrey’s life is amazing. She was born in 1954 in Mississippi, in the U.S., Oprah’s parents were very poor, but at the age of thirty-two she was a millionaire from her radio and TV shows. She is also famous for her book club and her work with poor girls. Interesting fact? Oprah hates chewing gum.

3   Benedict Cumberbatch is an English actor, famous for Sherlock on the BBC and also many movies, including The Hobbit and Star Trek. At school, his hobbies were acting, sports and painting. He is very popular in China and Korea. Interesting facts: He rides a motorcycle around London. He was an English teacher for a year before he was an actor.

4   Taylor Swift is an American singer-songwriter. She was born in 1989, and her childhood was on a Christmas tree farm. Her first hobbies were horse riding and singing. She was a songwriter from the age of five, and her first number one song was Our Song when she was eighteen years old. Her songs are about her life and loves. Interesting facts: Her grandmother was an opera singer, and her favorite number is thirteen.

5   Actress Michelle Yeoh was born in Malaysia. She was a dancer before she was an actress. As an actress, she was ­first famous in the West for her role in the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, but Yeoh’s movies films weren’t American – they were from Hong Kong. Interesting fact: She was the winner of the Miss Malaysia beauty contest in 1983.

6   Quentin Tarantino is a director, actor and producer and writer of movies such as Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill movies. His movies often have a lot of violence, but Tarantino says he hates violence. He plans to stop making movies at age sixty and write books instead. Interesting fact: His mother was part Irish and part Cherokee Indian.

They were born on the same day.

They were shy as children.

There was an important change in their lives when they were ­fifteen.

They bought their parents a new house.

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Samiya was born in Nigeria on the eighteenth of August 1993, in a village near Lagos. Her parents didn’t have a lot of money, and the family lived in a small house. Samiya’s father worked as a taxi driver, and her mother was a teacher. In her childhood, Samiya was shy, but her parents knew she was very intelligent; she was really good at math and computer games. When she was fifteen, she went to college and studied information technology. In her fourth year at college, she met her future husband, Obi, and after they finished college, they got married. Samiya and Obi had some great ideas for apps and together they started a company. The company made apps for teaching children math and English. Their apps made a lot of money, and with the money, Samiya bough t her parents a new house.

Lidia was born on the eighteenth of August 1993, in Poland, in a large town near Gdansk. She was tall for her age and very beautiful, but she was shy. She hated school, but she loved sports and played basketball every day after school with a group of boys. She wanted to be an international basketball star. When she was fifteen, her family moved to Italy. One day she went to a park in Rome to play basketball, and a man walked up to her and took pictures of her. Lidia thought “This is it, it’s my big moment!” It was her big moment, but she didn’t become a basketball star; the man was a fashion photographer, and Lidia became a professional model. With the money from her first year’s work, she bought her parents a new house.

Isabel:   Saturday: went for a walk (by the sea); Sunday: –

Ahmed:   Saturday: nothing much; Sunday: went running (with some old friends from school) and saw a movie (in the evening)

Jane:   Saturday: slept; Sunday: went into town (with some friends) and had a coffee

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A = Ahmed   I = Isabel   J = Jane

1

A:   Hi, Isabel!

I:   Hi, Ahmed. How was your weekend?

A:   Good. And yours? What did you do?

I:   On Saturday, I went for a walk. It was really good. Nice weather.

A:   Yes, it was lovely. Where did you go?

I:   Down by the sea. It was really beautiful.

A:   That sounds nice.

I:   And you? What did you do?

A:   Nothing much on Saturday, but on Sunday we went running.

I:   Oh, who did you go with?

A:   Some old friends of mine from school. And then we saw a movie in the evening.

I:   Oh, what was it?

2

A:   Oh look, there’s Jane.

I:   Jane, hey, come and sit with us.

J:   Hi, guys.

A:   Did you have a good weekend?

J:   Weekend? Yes, it was OK.

I:   What did you do?

J:   I slept.

I:   You slept? You stayed in bed? All weekend?

J:   Yeah. Well, on Saturday. I was very tired. Oh, I saw some friends on Sunday afternoon, yesterday afternoon. We went into town and had a coffee.

I:   That sounds good.

J:   How about you? What did you do?

I:   Oh I went for a walk …

She works with poor children/orphans. She opened an orphanage in 2006.

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F = Fernanda   I = Interviewer

I:   Thank you for joining us today and welcome to the show, Fernanda.

F:   Thank you.

I:   We are all very interested to know more about your work. But ­first of all, let’s start from the beginning…uh, where were you born?

F:   I was born in San Pedro in Honduras in 1973.

I:   Can I ask you about your childhood?

F:   Yes, of course. I was the fourth child in a very big family – there were eleven of us. My father was a teacher, and my mother cleaned houses for rich people.

I:   Did you go to school?

F:   Yes, I did. Education was very important to my parents.

I:   When did you decide to work with poor children?

F:   When I was in school, one of my friends lost his parents. He had no family, no living grandparents, so he moved to a house for orphans. I visited him, and when I saw his life there, I decided to work with orphans, children with no parents or children who lost their parents.

I:   When did you open your orphanage?

F:   We opened it in 2006.

I:   We?

F:   Yes, my husband and I. We got married in the year 2000.

I:   And who’s your hero?

F:   I’m glad you asked that – it’s Mother Teresa. I often think about her words: “I can do no great things, only small things with great love.”

I:   That’s very true. So how many kids are there at the orphanage?

F:   At the moment, we have about two hundred and ­fifty. We usually have between two and three hundred.

I:   You’re very busy, then!

F:   Yes, I am.

I:   Do you ever have time to relax?

F:   Not much, but when I have time, I like to read.

I:   Ah, so what’s your favorite book?

F:   Let me think about that. I like many books, but Long Walk to Freedom is one of my favorites. It’s the story of Nelson Mandela’s life in his own words.

I:   That sounds interesting, thank you. OK… now, it’s time to ask the audience for questions. Are there any questions for Fernanda?

A

1 T   2 ?   3 T   4 ?

B

1 two   2 unhappy   3 Zsilan’s photo   4 the same

5 didn’t live   6 one year

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P = Philip   D = Denise

P:   Well, we didn’t have any children, so we adopted Zsilan seven years ago. We went to China and we met Zsilan there – and we brought her home with us to Sydney. She was about two years old, but at first there was a problem.

D:   Yes, she was a very intelligent little girl, but at first she was also really quiet. She ate a lot, but she didn’t talk much, so we didn’t know what to do.

P:   Yes, she was very unhappy.

D:   So we went on the internet, and we looked for other families with adopted Chinese children. And we found a website, and … well, we had a big surprise!

P:   Yes, we wrote about Zsilan on the website. We wrote about her birthday – that it was on May eighth …

D:   And a woman in Melbourne wrote back to say that her daughter, also a Chinese girl, named Lin, had the same birthday!

P:   So we put a picture of Zsilan on the website, and this other woman put up a picture of Lin, and …

D: Here are the pictures. Look at them! The girls look exactly the same!

P:   Yes, so we started to think, “Yes, maybe they are sisters; maybe they’re twins”. So we went to Melbourne with Zsilan, and the two little girls met.

D:   It was amazing, from the first moment! They looked at each other with such love, and then they laughed and played together all day.

P:   For the first time, I felt that Zsilan was really happy.

D:   We were sorry to leave. Zsilan and Lin never lived together, but they visit each other a lot, and they like the same things: Dancing and swimming …

P:   A year ago, we had tests. And it was true – they are sisters! And with the same birthday, of course – they’re twins.

D:   When we told Zsilan that Lin really was her sister, she smiled and said, “I know she’s my sister”.