Form, note, table, flow-chart and summary completion

Narrator: Part 1. You will hear a telephone conversation between a receptionist at a leisure centre and a woman who wants to book a swimming course for her son.

Receptionist: Good morning, Riverside Leisure Centre. How can I help you?

Woman: Oh, hello. I'd like to book some swimming lessons for my son, please. I saw in your leaflet that the new courses start next month.

Receptionist: That's right. Let me just open a booking form. Can I have your son's name?

Woman: Yes, it's Daniel. Daniel Kowalski.

Receptionist: Could you spell the surname for me?

Woman: Of course. It's K, O, W, A, L, S, K, I.

Receptionist: Thank you. And how old is Daniel?

Woman: He's nine. He'll be ten in December.

Receptionist: Lovely. Has he had lessons with us before? Sometimes we already have a child's details on the system.

Woman: No, never. We only moved to the area in the spring. Before that he had a few lessons at his old school, but they stopped when the teacher left.

Receptionist: No problem, I'll set him up as a new member, then. It doesn't cost anything extra. And what's your address?

Woman: It's 27 Harbour Road. That's in Eastfield.

Receptionist: 27 Harbour Road, Eastfield. Right. Now, which course were you thinking of? We have beginners, intermediate and advanced groups.

Woman: Well, I was going to put him down for the beginners' group, but actually he got his first certificate at school last term, so he can already swim about twenty-five metres.

Receptionist: In that case, beginners would be too easy for him. I'd suggest intermediate.

Woman: Yes, that sounds right. Let's do that.

Receptionist: The intermediate lessons run on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Woman: Tuesday would be best for us.

Receptionist: I'm afraid the Tuesday group is already full. There are still a few places on Thursday, though.

Woman: Oh, that's a shame. Well, Thursday will be fine, then.

Receptionist: Good. The lessons are from half past four to a quarter past five, and the course lasts ten weeks.

Woman: Ten weeks. And how much does it cost?

Receptionist: The standard price is sixty-five pounds, but there's a discount for people who live in the local area, so for you it would be fifty-eight pounds.

Woman: Fifty-eight. That's very reasonable.

Receptionist: Is there any medical information we should know about?

Woman: Yes, Daniel has asthma. It's quite mild, but he always carries an inhaler.

Receptionist: OK, I'll make a note of that. The instructor will keep the inhaler by the side of the pool during the lesson.

Woman: Thank you. Is there anything he needs to bring, apart from his swimming things?

Receptionist: Goggles are optional, but he'll need a padlock for the lockers. We don't provide them any more, because so many went missing.

Woman: A padlock. OK. And can I stay and watch him?

Receptionist: Parents aren't allowed on the poolside, but you're welcome to wait in the viewing gallery upstairs. The café is closed in the afternoons at the moment while it's being redecorated.

Woman: That's fine. And what time should he get there?

Receptionist: We ask children to arrive fifteen minutes before the lesson starts, so they have time to get changed. Ten minutes usually isn't quite enough.

Woman: Fifteen minutes. No problem. Oh, and one more thing, while I'm on the phone. Do you run any classes for adults? I haven't swum properly for years, and I thought I might do something while Daniel's in the pool.

Receptionist: We do. There's an aqua fitness class on Thursdays as well, but I'm afraid it doesn't start until six, so it wouldn't be on while Daniel's in the pool. On Saturday mornings there's an adult improvers' group, which might suit you better.

Woman: Saturdays are difficult for me, unfortunately. I work most weekends. Maybe I'll just use the gym while I wait.

Receptionist: That's an option, but you'd need to do a gym induction first. It's free for residents, and it takes about forty minutes. I can book you one when Daniel comes for his first lesson, if you like.

Woman: That would be great. And is there anywhere to park? The car park looked very full when I drove past last week.

Receptionist: It does get busy after school. The main car park is free for the first two hours, and if that's full, there's an overflow car park behind the tennis courts. Most parents use that one.

Woman: That's good to know. Thanks very much for your help.

Receptionist: You're welcome. I'll email you a confirmation this afternoon.

Narrator: Part 3. You will hear two students, Maya and Ben, discussing a research project on food waste in student accommodation.

Maya: OK, Ben, our tutor wants a progress report by Friday, so I thought we could go through what we've done so far and then plan the next stage.

Ben: Good idea. She'll probably ask why we chose the topic in the first place. I know everyone assumes we got the idea from that guest lecture on sustainability last term.

Maya: Which is funny, because we'd already decided by then. It was really that bin in our kitchen in halls, wasn't it? Overflowing every single Sunday night.

Ben: Exactly. And the news story about the university throwing away food from the canteens only came out after we'd started, so we can't claim that either.

Maya: Right. So, the food diaries. Overall I think they worked quite well. Nobody complained that they took too long – most people said it was about two minutes a day.

Ben: And I was worried people would exaggerate to make themselves look good, but there's no real sign of that. The problem was the weekends. From Monday to Friday the diaries were full, and then on Saturday and Sunday they're almost blank.

Maya: Which is a shame, because that's probably when most food gets thrown away. We'll have to mention that as a limitation.

Ben: Definitely. What about the results? Did anything surprise you?

Maya: Well, I expected bread to be the thing that was wasted most, and it was, so no surprise there. What I really didn't expect was the difference between the halls. The ones with the smallest kitchens actually wasted less food.

Ben: I think it's because there's less fridge space, so people can't buy as much at once. They shop more often and buy what they need.

Maya: That's my theory too. Someone suggested that cooked meals are wasted more than raw ingredients, but we didn't collect data on that, so we can't say anything about it.

Ben: Now, the food-swap shelves. Did you look at them?

Maya: I did. The idea's great – you leave food you're not going to eat and someone else takes it. But they're in the basement, next to the bike store. Half the students I asked didn't even know they existed.

Ben: Some people say the rules are confusing, but I read them and they seemed perfectly clear to me.

Maya: I agree, the rules are fine. I'd rather they just moved the shelves up to the main entrance, where everyone walks past.

Ben: Yes, that's what we should recommend. OK, so who does what before Friday? I was going to start writing the introduction.

Maya: And I was planning to analyse the photos of the bins, but the software's on your laptop, isn't it?

Ben: It is. Look, I'll do the photos, then. The introduction can wait till next week.

Maya: Fine. In that case I'll email the catering manager. We said we'd ask her about the canteen figures, and she takes ages to reply, so the sooner the better.

Ben: Good. Now, the next stage. The interviews. We can't start those without approval from the ethics committee, can we?

Maya: No, that has to come first. I'll fill in the form tomorrow. Then we need to find people to interview. We tried posters last time, but they kept being torn down.

Ben: The halls have a weekly newsletter that goes to every student. Let's put an advert in that instead.

Maya: Good idea. And where should we do the interviews? The rooms in the library are always booked up.

Ben: What about the laundry room? People sit there for an hour waiting for their washing anyway, and they're usually bored.

Maya: Ha – that's actually perfect. Then there's the bins. I think we should weigh them once a week for four weeks.

Ben: Which day, though? If we do it on Friday, we miss the whole weekend.

Maya: Monday morning, then, before the bins are collected. That way we catch the weekend waste, which the diaries missed.

Ben: Great. And at the end, who do we present it to? I thought the university had a whole sustainability team.

Maya: Apparently not – there's just one sustainability officer for the whole university. But she's very keen to see what we find, so we'll present it to her.

Ben: Perfect. I think that's a plan.

Narrator: Part 4. You will hear part of a lecture on urban heat islands.

Lecturer: Good afternoon. Today I'm going to talk about a phenomenon that affects almost every large city in the world: the urban heat island. The term was first used several decades ago, but the effect itself had been noticed long before that, when early weather observers found that their city thermometers consistently gave higher readings than those placed in nearby farms and villages. In short, the urban heat island describes the way in which a city is noticeably warmer than the surrounding countryside. The difference can be several degrees. Now, you might expect the gap to be widest in the afternoon, when the sun is at its strongest. In fact, the opposite is true. During the day, both the city and the rural areas heat up. It's at night that the difference really shows, because the countryside cools quickly while the city slowly releases the heat it has stored.

Lecturer: So what causes it? Researchers generally identify four main factors, and I'll take them in turn. The first is the materials we build with. Brick, concrete and stone all hold heat, but the worst offender is the dark surface that covers most of our roads and many flat roofs – I mean asphalt. It absorbs a great deal of the sun's energy during the day and, rather like a storage heater, keeps it for hours afterwards.

Lecturer: The second factor is the lack of vegetation. In rural areas, a great deal of the sun's energy is used not to heat the ground but to turn water into vapour. As water evaporates from leaves and from damp soil, it draws heat out of the surrounding air. Evaporation, in other words, works as a kind of natural air conditioner. In a city covered in concrete, rainwater runs straight into the drains, there's very little moisture left at the surface, and so that natural cooling is largely lost.

Lecturer: Third, there's the shape of the city itself. Planners sometimes talk about 'urban canyons' – narrow streets lined by tall buildings. These are very good at trapping heat. The sun's energy bounces from one wall to another instead of escaping to the sky, and, just as importantly, tall buildings standing close together block the wind, so the warm air simply sits there instead of being carried away.

Lecturer: And finally, cities produce a lot of heat of their own. In the past the main sources were vehicles and factories, and they still contribute. But increasingly, a large share comes from air conditioning, which, ironically, cools the inside of buildings by pumping heat out into the streets – making the outdoor problem worse and, of course, increasing the demand for more air conditioning.

Lecturer: Why does all this matter? Well, higher temperatures increase the demand for energy, and they also speed up the chemical reactions that create certain air pollutants, such as ground-level ozone. But the most serious effect is on health. During heatwaves, the risk of illness rises sharply. Young children are often mentioned in this context, and they do need protection, but the research shows that the group at greatest risk is elderly people, who are less able to regulate their body temperature and who often live alone.

Lecturer: Fortunately, there's a good deal that cities can do. One of the simplest measures is the so-called cool roof. Instead of absorbing the sun's energy, a roof painted in a light colour can reflect much of it back into the sky. The cost is low, and studies have found that the temperature inside the top floor of a building can fall noticeably as a result.

Lecturer: Trees are another powerful tool. Most people think of them simply in terms of shade, and shade is certainly valuable. But trees also cool the air directly, by releasing moisture through their leaves – the same process I described earlier. Parks, green roofs and even small street gardens can all help in the same way, though a single large tree generally does more than a lawn of the same area.

Lecturer: However, a city can't do everything at once, so it needs to decide where to act first. For that, planners need detailed maps of temperature across the whole city. Ground-level measurements are expensive to collect, so these are now usually produced using data from satellites. And what they reveal is often uncomfortable: the hottest neighbourhoods tend to be the poorest ones, with the fewest trees and the most closely packed housing. In the second half of today's session, we'll look at how two cities have used this information to decide their priorities.