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CELPIP Listening Part 4: Listening to a News Item

CELPIP Listening Part 4 Practice Test: A Letter from 1976

By Iris

A free Listening Part 4 practice test in the CELPIP format: 5 questions with the answer key. Play each recording once, as in the real test, answer, then check your answers at the bottom of the page. The transcript is under each recording.

Questions
5
Format
1 news report, questions after it
Question style
Multiple choice, 4 options
Play like the real test
Each recording plays once, then each question with 30 seconds to answer (Parts 4–6: one timer for the part). No pausing to replay, like test day.

  1. The letter was found

  2. The person who wrote the letter

  3. Nadia Fortin located Bouchard by

  4. Bouchard laughed because

  5. We can infer that, for Bouchard, the letter was

Transcript (read it after you answer)

NARRATOR: A Timmins woman received a rather unusual piece of mail this week: a letter postmarked in 1976. The envelope was discovered last month by contractors renovating a downtown building that once housed a small post office and is now being converted into a bakery. It had apparently slipped behind a sorting cabinet decades ago and remained there, untouched, ever since. The bakery's owner, Nadia Fortin, was determined to deliver it herself. The address on the envelope was a farmhouse that no longer exists, so Fortin posted a photo of the envelope online and asked for help. Within two days, a local historian recognized the family name and directed her to eighty-one-year-old Lorraine Bouchard. The letter, it turned out, was written by Bouchard's older brother, who was working at a mine in northern Quebec at the time and passed away in 1998. In it, he announced his engagement and asked his little sister to sing at the wedding. Bouchard laughed when she read it. She did sing at the wedding, she explained, because her brother eventually telephoned with the same request. Still, she says, seeing his handwriting again was an extraordinary gift. Fortin has promised Bouchard a free cake on her next birthday.

0 of 5 answered

Answer key

Show all 5 answers
  1. The letter was found B. during work on an old building.
  2. The person who wrote the letter C. was working far from where it was sent.
  3. Nadia Fortin located Bouchard by D. sharing a picture on the internet.
  4. Bouchard laughed because B. she had already done what the letter asked.
  5. We can infer that, for Bouchard, the letter was C. of great sentimental value.

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