The complaint after the 'but': listening for attitude, not content
Midway through the rozszerzona listening section, candidates hear a four-minute interview with Ania Krawczyk, who retrained as a chef at 34. Each recording is played twice. Question 4 is multiple choice:
'Everyone assumes the course cost a fortune. The fee itself was actually lower than I'd budgeted for - what I hadn't priced in was the ingredients; I must have spent twice the fee on those by the end. As for the timetable, six hours a day, five days a week sounds brutal, and I won't pretend I wasn't exhausted, but my real complaint was the balance: half of every morning went on theory, and I'd have swapped most of it for another hour at the stove.'
Later she adds: 'I'd been cooking professionally for eight years before I signed up, though I'd only been teaching cookery for two - the course asked for five, so I had to talk my way in.'
Question 4: What does Ania criticise about the course? A the cost B the timetable C the amount of practical work D the entry requirements. Question 5: How long had Ania been teaching cookery when she enrolled? One candidate wrote 'eight years'.
1. Question 4: decide the answer and explain why each of the other three options is attractive but wrong.
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C - the amount of practical work. The extract is built on concession followed by reversal, and the answer sits after the reversal.
- 'Six hours a day, five days a week sounds brutal, and I won't pretend I wasn't exhausted' is a concession: it acknowledges the timetable, which is why B tempts. But the next word is 'but', and what follows is explicitly flagged as the real view - 'my real complaint was the balance'. She then quantifies the imbalance: half of every morning on theory, and she would have traded it for time at the stove. That is C.
- A is the opposite of what she says: the fee was lower than she had budgeted for. The costly element was ingredients, which is not one of the options - a trap for anyone matching the word 'cost' rather than the meaning.
- D is mentioned with amusement ('I had to talk my way in'), not as a complaint.
Rule: after 'but', 'my real complaint', 'what actually happened', the speaker states the answer; the words before them exist to attract you.
2. Question 5: the candidate wrote 'eight years'. Explain the error and give a procedure that would have prevented it.
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Two years. The question asks about teaching, and the recording offers three numbers, each attached to a different noun:
- eight years - how long she had been cooking professionally before enrolling;
- two years - how long she had been teaching cookery when she enrolled;
- five years - what the course required.
'eight years' comes first and is the more impressive figure, which is exactly why it is the planned distractor. The procedure that prevents it is mechanical: before the second listening, underline the question word (how long) and the key noun (teaching cookery), then write only the number that sits next to that noun - not the first number in the sentence. Numbers in these recordings almost always arrive in pairs or triples, and the item is testing whether you attach the right figure to the right noun, not whether you heard a figure at all.
3. Another candidate chose A for question 4, citing 'I must have spent twice the fee on ingredients'. Diagnose the error and state the routine that would correct it.
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The candidate has confused content mentioned with attitude expressed. 'I must have spent twice the fee on ingredients' is the one sentence that supports 'the course cost more than she expected', which is why A feels right. But question 4 asks what she criticises, and the criticism is signposted: 'my real complaint was the balance'. The cost sentence is followed by the timetable sentence and then the reversal; she never complains about the money, she merely reports it. Note also that 'twice the fee' is about total outlay, not about the fee - a second reason A misreads the sentence.
The correcting routine for multiple choice: beside each option write the exact words that support or contradict it. If the only support for an option is a neutral fact, it is a distractor; a correct option will have an evaluative phrase behind it.