CELPIP Listening Practice Test 36

MAN: Hi there, I've got a test drive booked for eleven — the silver sedan, the one with the sunroof package. Name's Marcus Lee.

WOMAN: Let me check... Marcus, yes, I see the booking, but I'm really sorry — that particular car went in for its scheduled service this morning and hasn't come back yet.

MAN: Oh, that's frustrating. I specifically asked for that trim because of the sunroof.

WOMAN: I completely understand, and I apologize for the mix-up — it should've been flagged before your appointment. Let me see what I can sort out right now.

MAN: I appreciate that. I took time off work just to come in today.

WOMAN: Of course, that's entirely fair. Give me just a moment to check what's currently on the lot that might work as a substitute, since I don't want you to have made the trip for nothing.

MAN: Sure, I'm not in a huge rush, just curious what my options actually are.

WOMAN: Great, bear with me a second — I'll pull up the inventory now and see what's comparable.

WOMAN: Okay, so we've got two options sitting on the lot right now. There's the same model, one trim down, but no sunroof — and there's a different colour in the exact trim you wanted, just without the upgraded sound system.

MAN: Hm. The sunroof was actually the main draw for me.

WOMAN: In that case, the one-trim-down car probably isn't the right fit. What about the colour swap — it's black instead of silver, but the sunroof's there, aside from the sound system, everything matches what you booked.

MAN: Black's fine with me, honestly. I care more about the features than the colour.

WOMAN: Perfect, that narrows it down nicely. There's also a loaner arriving from another branch this afternoon, same spec as your original, if you'd rather wait for that instead.

MAN: How long of a wait are we talking about?

WOMAN: Possibly two or three hours, and there's no real guarantee it arrives before we close tonight.

MAN: I'd rather not gamble on that. Let's just go with the black one you've already got here.

WOMAN: Good call — I'll grab the keys and pull it around front for you.

WOMAN: So, how was the black one?

MAN: Really good, actually — drove smoothly, and the sunroof sold me even more on it. Still, I'd like to see the silver one too before deciding, since that's what caught my eye online.

WOMAN: Completely fair. I just checked, and the service team says your original car will be back on the lot by tomorrow morning.

MAN: Any chance I could come by and drive it then?

WOMAN: Absolutely, I can pencil you in for nine o'clock — I'll personally make sure it's pulled around and ready before you arrive, so there's no repeat of today.

MAN: I'd appreciate that. Should I bring anything, or is my license enough?

WOMAN: Just bring your wallet with your license and insurance in it, same as today — you won't need to bring a deposit or fill out any extra paperwork, that's already on file from this morning.

MAN: Sounds great, thanks for sorting all this out despite the mix-up.

WOMAN: My pleasure, Marcus — nine o'clock tomorrow, silver sedan, sunroof and all. See you then.

WOMAN: Hi Ethan, the forecast shows frost Friday night, and our shared balcony still has herbs and planters outside. We need an indoor plan before work gets busy.

MAN: Hey. Moving everything to my living room won't work; the heavy rosemary pot blocks the balcony door.

WOMAN: My kitchen gets morning sun, although the counter is narrow. The three herb boxes fit there if we remove the rarely used bread machine.

MAN: That handles the herbs. The flowering pots need more light, and your cat chews leaves.

WOMAN: The bright landing window would work, but building rules say personal items cannot narrow the stairs.

MAN: Instead, put the two flowering pots on my bedroom dresser. I can move the lamp, and the door stays closed when the cat is unsupervised.

WOMAN: Good, what about the rosemary? We have a wheeled stand from storage.

MAN: The stand has one loose wheel. I will tighten it Thursday, but until then we should not load a heavy pot and risk scratching the floor.

WOMAN: Could we carry the rosemary together Friday morning? I start late, and you are home after the school bus leaves at eight thirty.

MAN: Yes, at eight forty-five. We will place a folded towel under the pot while the stand is tested, then remove it if the wheels stay level.

WOMAN: The closet is already crowded with winter boots. Where should the sealed soil bags go instead?

MAN: Leave sealed soil outside under the bench. Frost will not hurt it. Bring in only the open bag so rain cannot turn it into a heavy, leaking mess.

WOMAN: Can the store still open before Thursday closing?

MAN: The store closes early Thursday, so I will tighten and test the wheel by nine Friday morning. Let us carry the rosemary at nine fifteen instead.

WOMAN: Friday we move the herbs, flowers, rosemary, and open soil at nine fifteen.

MAN: Perfect. Each plant gets light without blocking an exit or tempting the cat, and we avoid filling indoor space with supplies that tolerate the cold.

MAN: Hi, are you the pharmacist today?

WOMAN: That's me, I'm Erin. What can I do for you?

MAN: I'm Glen. I get my blood pressure pills here every three months, and I'm hoping to pick up the next lot a bit early this time.

WOMAN: Let me pull up your file, Glen. You were in three weeks ago, so you're not due again until early August. What's the occasion?

MAN: We're going to New Zealand! My daughter lives in Auckland, and she just had a baby girl. We fly out the first week of June, and we won't be home until the end of October.

WOMAN: Oh, congratulations! That's wonderful news!

MAN: Thanks! My wife's been knitting baby clothes since January.

WOMAN: (laughs) Well, your prescription still has refills on it, so that part's fine. The tricky part is your insurance. Most plans only pay for three months of medication at a time, but a lot of them allow one vacation supply a year for people who are leaving the country. I'll phone them this afternoon and ask. Some want a signed form with your travel dates, and a few even ask for a copy of the plane ticket.

MAN: My plane ticket? Do they really think somebody would make up a trip to the other side of the world just to get extra pills? Well, it's on my phone anyway. What happens if they say no?

WOMAN: Then you'd pay for this one fill yourself. For your pills that's around $40.

MAN: Oh, is that all? I was expecting it to cost a fortune.

WOMAN: One more thing, though. When you fly, keep the pills in our labelled bottles, not in one of those weekly pill boxes, and I'll print you a list of everything you take. That way the customs officers can see exactly what you're carrying.

MAN: Good thing you told me! I just bought a huge pill box for the trip.

WOMAN: Okay. I'll call you as soon as I hear back.

MAN: Great. Oh, before I go—my wife asked me to pick up a couple of those soft neck pillows for the plane. Do you carry them?

WOMAN: We do. Aisle six, right beside the sunscreen.

MAN: Perfect. Thanks so much for all your help, Erin!

MAN: Workers clearing a storage room at Fairview Secondary School have made a discovery that has surprised the community. While preparing the room for renovation, staff moved an old filing cabinet that had stood untouched against the wall for years, and behind it they found a framed oil painting covered in dust. Principal Rachel Doyle, who first spotted the canvas, said she almost dismissed it as forgotten decoration. "My instinct was to send it off with the rest of the old furniture," she said, "but something about the brushwork made me pause before I let it go." She instead contacted a local gallery for an opinion. That call brought in art appraiser Martin Wu, whose job was to authenticate the piece and estimate its worth. After examining the canvas closely, he confirmed it was an original work by a regional painter and placed its value at roughly forty thousand dollars. Wu noted that the piece had likely been donated decades earlier and simply forgotten once the office was rearranged. News of the painting's value spread quickly among staff, and the school board soon met to decide what should be done with the proceeds. Rather than keeping the painting in storage, the board agreed to sell it at auction and direct the funds toward the music program, which has long relied on outdated instruments. Doyle said she was thrilled the discovery would benefit students directly, adding that a forgotten piece of art was about to give something back to the classroom.

man1: So, Imani, where do you actually stand on the professional-only direction the board floated?

woman1: I'm not convinced, Theo. An exhibition curated solely by reputation contradicts what the gallery was founded to do.

man2: What we should be doing is showcasing established artists. Serious buyers won't travel here for amateur work.

man1: Felix, the gallery's draw has always been the unexpected discovery, not predictable names already represented downtown.

man2: That's a romantic view, although the reality is donations dry up when collectors stop attending openings.

woman1: Couldn't we run two distinct sections? One curated for buyers, one open to emerging local voices.

man1: I like that, provided the emerging section doesn't get tucked away in the back as an afterthought.

man2: Even with parallel sections, judging becomes impossible. Comparing trained craft against beginner enthusiasm produces awkward outcomes.

woman1: Then we don't compare them. Each section gets its own panel and its own criteria, judged independently.

man2: My hesitation is space, Imani. We don't have room for two full programs without crowding the work.

man1: We could rotate, then. Three weeks each, sharing promotion equally so neither feels like a secondary attraction.

woman1: Rotation works for visitor flow, but it does fragment the press coverage we'd otherwise concentrate.

man1: Fair point, although fragmented coverage is preferable to excluding the community we claim to serve.

man2: That's where we differ. Inclusiveness is admirable, but a gallery that loses its serious patrons loses its survival.

woman1: Why don't I sketch out both formats with rough costs, and we present them to the board jointly?

man1: Perfect. We'll need solid numbers before any of this gains traction with the trustees.

MAN: A public lecture series at the University of Victoria has revisited an old philosophical puzzle: how anyone can be certain that waking life isn't itself a kind of dream. It has drawn unusually large crowds this term, pulling in more than philosophy alone, and now turns on a specific disagreement over what one brain-activity pattern actually proves. Philosopher Helena Delacroix opens with a version of the classic skeptical argument, though a narrower one than you'd usually hear. No judgment made while a person believes they're awake, she argues, can rule out that the moment is happening inside a dream, since a sufficiently convincing dream can supply its own evidence. She's quick to say she's not talking about memories you recall later, once you're up making coffee — just judgments made in the moment itself, asleep or awake. Neuroscientist Yusuf Adeyemi, who's run overnight sleep studies for fifteen years, answers with a specific measurement rather than a general appeal to brain science. He still remembers the first volunteer who described walking through a wall in a dream without blinking — that's basically what got him into this research. During typical dreaming sleep, he reports, activity in the brain region tied to weighing evidence drops to roughly a third of waking level, which explains why dreamers rarely notice a room changing shape mid-scene. But he's upfront this is only partial: the drop explains why in-dream judgment fails, not that waking judgment — the very thing Delacroix questions — is reliable. Lucid-dreaming researcher Ingrid Solberg trains volunteers to recognize when they're dreaming. Her own data complicates Adeyemi's finding. Trained lucid dreamers, she reports, show that same brain activity climbing back to roughly seventy percent of waking level — high enough to catch dream logic but still short of full waking activity. Solberg argues this really threatens Delacroix's narrower argument: it shows the boundary between dreaming and waking judgment shifts gradually, not all at once, which is harder to dismiss as unreliable than a sharply divided boundary. The psychology department is running an overnight EEG study this term, checking whether Solberg's finding holds across a larger group. A few students have wondered whether ordinary, non-lucid dreams could be trained toward lucidity — not a question this study was designed to answer. Visiting researchers caution that a volunteer's own report of feeling lucid, made after waking, isn't the same as lucidity confirmed on the EEG record at the moment it happened. Philosophers on the panel agree Solberg's finding becomes decisive only once independent labs replicate it beyond her own sample. Until then, it's a curious spectacle: a roomful of philosophers waiting on a neuroscience result to settle an argument pure reasoning alone has never quite closed. If nothing else, it's a reminder that even skepticism about reality eventually needs data behind it.