In many academic English tests like IELTS and TOEFL, you will often do listening tasks by listening to an audio recording without being presented with the questions.
As such, in this activity, you will first hear the conversation. In the first part of this exercise, you will take notes about what you hear in the conversation. In the second part of the activity, you will have to answers comprehension questions based on your notes and memory of the audio recording.
You will listen to a conversation between two men: Jeff and Tim.
Listen to the recording at ELLLO of Jeff and Tim discussing types of jobs they wouldn't enjoy doing.
Transcript
Person 1: So Jeff you asked me about what kind of job I'd like but what about a job you definitely wouldn't want to do?
Person 1: There's lots of jobs out there and some of them aren't so good so what would you not want to do?
Jeff: That's a difficult question. I don't like working period really.
Person 1: Yeah but who does?
Jeff: Yes that's right but I think the type of job that I wouldn't like to do would be an office job, a straight desk job where it's just task work where you get paper. Maybe sort of like an accountant where you're doing nothing but sitting at your desk sort of by yourself all day crunching numbers or putting things into the computer.
Jeff: I think it's very anti-social, a little bit boring, not so healthy and even if the pay was good I still wouldn't want to do it because you're compromising your life which is short to do something that that's not so fun.
Jeff: So maybe a desk job, something at a desk I wouldn't like to do.
Jeff: How about you? What job would you not like to do?
Person 1: Well to be honest with you I don't think I would make a very good police officer. I really wouldn't want to be police officer.
Person 1: I know it's exciting and it's always different but I kind of feel like I'd be judging people and I'm not anti-police.
Person 1: I think they're needed but sometimes I don't agree with everything that a government believes in and I think it would be difficult for me to be busting people for some things that I don't agree with and I think that you know it's a hard job.
Person 1: It's a hard job and you've got to deal with people that maybe need help in different ways than some police officers just coming and put them in jail.
Person 1: Another thing sort of related to police officer is I wouldn't want to be a nurse or a doctor.
Person 1: I think it's a great job and it would be rewarding to save people's lives or to make them better if they're sick, to make them healthy again but I hate blood.
Person 1: I can't stand blood. I can't even stand someone with a bloody nose. So I think in a situation where there's any blood around I wouldn't be your man.
Person 1: I think another job that I wouldn't want to be is a garbage man to be honest with you.
Jeff: A garbage man would be great.
Person 1: I understand. I like the idea of driving from house to house.
Person 1: I think I would be a great post office worker and I don't mind the manual labor of just lifting stuff up.
Jeff: It's smelly though.
Person 1: Yeah that's the biggest thing. I think the smell would really get to me and like when you were with blood I think eventually that smell sometimes would make me sick and you'd be surprised what people throw away.
Person 1: Needles, all kinds of things, dirty diapers, things like that. I don't think I could deal with that very well.
Jeff: Okay so you'll never be a garbage man and I'll never be a nurse.
Person 1: Fair enough I suppose.
Exercise
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