The Rescheduled Airport Shuttle
Li Wei is 18 minutes into a 30-minute listening section. Part 2 is a single recorded voicemail from a homestay coordinator, played once. The coordinator says the airport shuttle was booked for 7:15 a.m. but, because of bridge roadworks, it will now leave at 8:05 a.m. Pickup has moved from the main gate to the north car park beside the bike racks. Students must text their arrival time to the office by 6 p.m. the day before. Each student may bring two suitcases; a third costs AUD 15, payable in cash to the driver. Near the end she adds, 'Sorry - make that 8:15, not 8:05; the driver has a school run first.' Li Wei's notes read: 7:15, main gate, 6 a.m., two bags, AUD 15. He has 90 seconds to check his answers before the section closes. He cannot rewind the audio.
1. Identify the three most likely causes of Li Wei's errors and explain how he should use the 90-second check.
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The errors have different causes, which matters because they need different repairs. 7:15 is the first number he heard; he wrote it before the repair signal 'but ... it will now leave at 8:05' and never overwrote it. Main gate is the same failure: the message says pickup has moved from the main gate to the north car park, so the old location must be crossed out, not kept. 6 a.m. is not a spelling slip; he compressed 'by 6 p.m. the day before' into a time and lost both the 12-hour difference and the day. The later self-correction to 8:15 is a fourth test: 'Sorry - make that...' means replace, not add.
In the 90 seconds he should not re-read everything. Pass 1: check every time, place, number and price against the question stems, because these are the fields most often repaired. Pass 2: check word limits and spelling only where the answer must be written exactly. Pass 3: make sure no answer is blank. He should mark uncertain items with '?' and choose the best remaining option rather than leave them. The check is for record accuracy, not re-listening, so tentative notes such as '7:15 → 8:05 → 8:15' are safer than a single clean number.
2. What should a candidate do in real time when a speaker self-corrects with 'Sorry - make that...'?
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Treat the phrase as an instruction to overwrite the previous value. The correct behaviour is immediate: draw a line through the old item, write the new one beside it, and keep listening. Do not wait until the end, because working memory is fragile and later content will push the old number out.
A useful habit is to note the category as well as the value, for example 'depart 8:15' rather than just '8:15'. If the correction is missed, the surrounding language often signals it: 'actually', 'rather', 'I mean', 'change of plan', or a contrast such as 'not 8:05, 8:15'. These markers are common in listening Part 2 and should trigger a check of the last fact recorded.
Finally, do not panic or try to reconstruct a whole sentence. The test usually asks for the final fact, not the history. One clean correction is enough; adding a note such as 'old time 8:05' is acceptable only if it does not confuse the answer. The judgement call is to decide fast, write the corrected fact, and keep pace with the audio.
3. Why is writing '6 a.m.' a comprehension failure rather than a spelling slip, and what is the general rule for deadline information?
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'6 a.m.' is a different fact from 'by 6 p.m. the day before'. It changes the day and the 12-hour clock, so a student relying on the note could arrive 12 hours early or miss the deadline entirely. A spelling slip leaves the meaning intact; this error changes the action required. The cause is that he heard '6' and a time word and stopped processing the full phrase 'by 6 p.m. the day before'.
The general rule is to record three things for any deadline: the day reference, the clock time, and the action. A safe note is 'text arrival - by 6 pm, day before'. It is also worth testing the note against a consequence question: 'If I text at 7 p.m. the day before, am I late?' If the note cannot answer that, it is incomplete. In the exam, deadline questions often include a day shift, a time zone, or a 'not later than' phrase, so the candidate should listen for the whole prepositional phrase rather than the number alone.