This is the new Cambridge First Certificate in English Listening test, 2016.
Practicing on these Cambridge FCE Listening tests helps raise your score in the Cambridge English First exams. These tests are also very good to exercise English listening skills.
Correct answers & audio transcript are posted below.
This video is in the series of NEW Cambridge First Certificate in English exam preparation:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp39kaAVtLBSDL3HMhv1aTXV4SCOc9_8s
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TRANSCRIPTS
Presenter: Even if you have never watched the sky at night, you
probably know what you would see if you did. The view is best on a
night with no moon. You stare upwards into the inky blackness over which are scattered millions of tiny points of light. These, of course, are the stars. Then just as you're beginning to get bored with this unchanging scene, a tiny white streak of light shoots across the sky. It's going too fast to be a plane. Then two seconds later you see another one. What you are witnessing is the beginning of a shower of meteors or shooting stars.
To understand what is happening, it helps us to imagine a car driving fast along the road. In a way, our planet Earth is like that car. As it is racing along, it comes towards a large group of insects all flying together just above the road.
Now, not all the insects are hit by the car, but several of them crash
into the car's windscreen with an unpleasant noise. In many ways, the meteors are similar to the swarm of insects, although they aren't really animals. In fact, meteors are mostly tiny pieces of iron that look like little stones.
In a similar way, the Earth is not really moving along a road. But it
does follow the same circular route around the sun once every year. This enormous circular path is called the Earth's ‘orbit'. All the other planets are in orbits like this as well. Now, there are small groups of those stones waiting in certain places along the Earth's route around the sun. Some of them are fixed in one orbit while others are moving around the sun in their own orbits. Once every year, the Earth's circular path around the sun takes us through some of these groups of little rocks.
Now, when the earth approaches one of these stones, it is pulled
downwards towards our planet by a strong force called gravity. And when the meteor starts to rush towards the ground, a shooting star is born. Normally, as shooting stars fall, they are travelling at speeds of 10 kilometres every second. This is about a hundred times faster than a jet plane. However, before the meteor can reach the Earth, it must go through the air around it - the atmosphere. Now, because it is going through the air so fast, the shooting star starts to become hotter and hotter and the air around it gets very hot too. This is a bit like the head of a match rubbing along the side of a matchbox. Now, very soon the outside of this piece of iron gets very hot indeed and, as a result, it gets soft and melts and then starts to burn. So, as this hot little rock rushes through the atmosphere, it leaves a tail of hot burning metal and flames behind it. This is the bright streak we can see
from the ground - 100 kilometres below. Yes, you see, fortunately for us, most meteors are so small that they have completely burned up long before they could ever reach the ground - which is just as well because, otherwise, we would need to carry rather stronger umbrellas!
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CORRECT ANSWERS
9. shooting stars
10. car
11. insects
12. iron
13. orbit
14. downwards
15. a jet plane
16. hotter and hotter
17. melts
18. reach the ground
