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CELPIP Listening Part 4: Listening to a News Item

CELPIP Listening Part 4 Practice Test: An Old Canoe in Kenora

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 canoe reached the heritage society because

  2. The volunteers almost gave up because

  3. We can infer that the volunteers wanted the canoe to

  4. Donna Kowalski would most likely be disappointed if the canoe

  5. What remains uncertain about the canoe?

Transcript (read it after you answer)

NARRATOR: A wooden canoe built more than a century ago glided across Lake of the Woods on Saturday, cheered on by roughly two hundred spectators along the Kenora waterfront. Just two years ago, the cedar vessel was little more than a heap of splintered ribs, discovered beneath a collapsing boathouse on a property its new owners were clearing. Rather than haul it to the dump, the owners contacted a local heritage society, which assembled a team of volunteers, most of them retirees with no boatbuilding experience whatsoever. Project lead Donna Kowalski admits the group very nearly abandoned the effort that first winter, after discovering that about half the ribs were rotten beyond rescue. A retired boatbuilder from Thunder Bay eventually offered guidance by video call, and the volunteers steamed and bent replacement cedar in a borrowed garage, copying the original pattern by hand. Every scrap of salvageable wood was put back. Historians believe the canoe came from a workshop that once operated near the town, although no maker's mark has survived. On Saturday, Kowalski and her eldest volunteer, eighty-one-year-old Ray Lindqvist, paddled it about two kilometres to a public dock. The canoe will spend the winter on display at a local museum, but Kowalski insists it was restored to be paddled, not merely admired.

0 of 5 answered

Answer key

Show all 5 answers
  1. The canoe reached the heritage society because C. its finders chose not to throw it away.
  2. The volunteers almost gave up because A. much of the frame could not be saved.
  3. We can infer that the volunteers wanted the canoe to B. keep as much of its first form as possible.
  4. Donna Kowalski would most likely be disappointed if the canoe D. never left the museum again.
  5. What remains uncertain about the canoe? A. who exactly built it

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