The Word That Wasn't There
A candidate is practising multiple-choice listening. The recording is a short talk by a volunteer at a community garden. She says: 'People often think you need to be an expert to join us. You don't. We'll teach you everything. We provide the tools and the gloves; you just need to wear old clothes. The only thing we ask is that you tell us which days you can come, because we plan the work around the volunteers, not the other way round. Last year we had forty volunteers. This year we've had seventy, and we've had to start a waiting list for the summer.' The question is: 'What does the speaker say about volunteers?' The options are A: They must have gardening experience. B: They can choose which days they come. C: They should bring their own tools. The candidate chooses A and says, 'She said expert, so I knew it was A.' On the second listening the candidate hears 'we provide the tools', becomes unsure, but keeps A.
1. Give the correct answer and explain why each distractor is wrong, quoting the language that rules it out.
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Correct answer: B.
- A is wrong. The speaker raises experience only to dismiss it: 'People often think you need to be an expert … You don't.' The word 'expert' is present, but it sits inside a negation. This is the most common B1 listening trap: a word from an option appears in the recording with the opposite meaning.
- C is wrong. 'We provide the tools and the gloves.' If the garden provides them, volunteers do not bring their own. The topic matches the option; the meaning does not.
- B is supported by 'tell us which days you can come' and 'we plan the work around the volunteers, not the other way round'. That paraphrases choosing your own days, and the option uses different words from the recording, which is typical of the correct answer.
Note the pattern: the two wrong options reuse the recording's vocabulary ('expert', 'tools'), while the right option paraphrases it. A vocabulary match is a warning sign, not a shortcut.
2. The candidate says, 'She said expert, so I knew it was A.' What listening habit produced this, and how can it be trained?
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The habit is word-spotting: hearing a familiar word and treating it as the answer, without processing the grammar around it. Here the grammar is decisive, because 'you don't' after 'you need to be an expert' reverses the meaning completely.
How to train it:
- Listen for the verb phrase, not the noun. Ask 'what does she say about experts?' rather than 'did she say experts?'
- Mark negators on the page. Before the recording, underline must, should, don't need, provide, not in the options. If an option says 'must' and the recording says 'you don't', the option is out.
- Predict the paraphrase. Ask yourself how the recording might express each option in different words. For B, 'choose which days' could appear as 'tell us when you can come', and predicting this makes it audible.
- Use the second listening to confirm, not to re-hear. The candidate heard 'we provide the tools' the second time and ignored the contradiction. When new evidence conflicts with your first answer, change the answer.
3. The phrase 'we plan the work around the volunteers, not the other way round' is the key to B. Explain what it means and how a B1 candidate can handle such idiomatic phrases.
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It means the garden fits its work to the volunteers' availability, rather than expecting volunteers to fit the garden's schedule. 'Not the other way round' is a fixed phrase used to say that the second option is not true: here, that volunteers do not have to fit around the garden.
How to handle phrases like this:
- Do not panic at the idiom. You do not need to translate it. Ask which option it supports. The surrounding sentence, 'tell us which days you can come', already points to B.
- Use the two halves. The first half often makes the meaning clear even if the second half is unfamiliar. 'We plan the work around the volunteers' is enough.
- Listen to the whole answer unit. The speaker builds the point across three sentences: no experience needed, tools provided, tell us your days. B1 multiple-choice items are usually answered by two or three clues accumulating, not by one word.
- Record a symbol, not a translation. If a phrase confuses you, put a question mark beside the option and keep listening; the next sentence frequently clarifies it.