Ascolto: decidere tra Vero, Falso e Non dato quando il parlante è ambivalente
Giulia is practising the Ascolto paper. In the task she hears - once only, as in the real exam - a radio interview with the director of a small town library that runs a «biblioteca dei semi»: members borrow vegetable seeds and return seeds at harvest. The director says: «Non volevamo l'ennesima iniziativa di facciata; i numeri sono modesti - duecento prestiti il primo anno, non mille come speravamo - ma il quartiere ha risposto.» Then a neighbour says: «Io ci sono andata per curiosità, mica perché credessi nel progetto.» Item 7 of the task reads: «La biblioteca ha ottenuto un successo superiore alle attese.» The options are Vero, Falso, Non dato.
1. Which option should Giulia mark for item 7, and which words decide it?
Read the worked answer
Falso.
The decision rests on one phrase: «non mille come speravamo». The director names a target (1,000 loans), says the result was 200, and calls the numbers «modesti». That is an explicit statement that the outcome fell below expectations, which is the direct opposite of «superiore alle attese».
Two traps:
- «ma il quartiere ha risposto» is positive, and a student listening for tone rather than meaning will mark Vero. But «the neighbourhood responded» says nothing about exceeding expectations; it only says the project wasn't a failure.
- Non dato is wrong because the recording does evaluate the result. Reserve Non dato for items where the recording is genuinely silent (e.g. how much the seeds cost), not for items where you dislike the answer.
Rule of thumb: in vero/falso items, hunt for the evaluative adjective (modesti) and the comparison (non mille come speravamo), not for the general mood of the speaker.
2. The neighbour says «mica perché credessi nel progetto». Does this support the idea that the project convinced the sceptics? What can and cannot be inferred?
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No - it says the opposite about her motive, and nothing about her present opinion.
Break the line down:
- mica is a colloquial negator that reinforces the negative: «not because I believed in the project at all».
- credessi (congiuntivo imperfetto) is there because perché introduces a motive that is being denied - a useful B2 structure to recognise by ear.
So the safe inference is narrow: she went without believing in the project. Her reason was curiosity.
What you may not infer: that she is still sceptical today, that she now returns seeds, or that she changed her mind. If an item said «La vicina è stata convinta dal progetto», the answer is Falso. If an item said «La vicina conosceva già il progetto prima di andarci», the answer is Non dato - curiosity implies she had heard of it, not that she knew how it worked.
Exam habit: separate motive from outcome. A speaker can act without conviction, and the recording often stops there on purpose.
3. Giulia missed the number «duecento». What should she do during the short pause between items?
Read the worked answer
Nothing reconstructive - the number is probably not the answer anyway.
Why: the number arrives attached to an evaluation («i numeri sono modesti», «non mille come speravamo»). The item tests the evaluation. A student who panics about the digits and stops listening loses the sentence that carries the mark.
What to do in the pause:
- Jot the meaning, not the digits: «numeri = modesti / sotto le attese». That is enough to answer item 7.
- Read the next item's options during the pause. With a single listening, preparation time is the real currency.
- If a number is the answer, remember the typical construction: the speaker states a wrong-looking figure first and corrects it («duecento, non mille»). The correction phrase tells you which figure is the real one - so listen for non … come speravamo, in realtà, mi correggo.