IELTS Listening Exercise #1
Listening Tip
In the IELTS Listening exam, before you listen, try and predict what the answer will be. This will help you focus your mind as you read the questions before you hear the recording and enable you to make better guesses.
Ask yourself the following questions:
You will hear one speaker talk about Museum of the History of Science. First you have some time to look at Questions 1-6.
Now Listen carefully and answer Questions 1 to 6:
Questions 1-6
Complete the sentences below.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
Museum of the History of Science
1The building of the museum of the History of Science was built in .
2The building originally contained a in the basement, and lecture space for , what we today might call ‘Science’.
3The on either side of the exit contain the kind of things that we used in this room in .
4The museum of the History of Science opened in .
5The museum is particularly famous for its collection of .
6In the four corners of the entrance gallery, are four of the museum’s important .
The building occupied by the museum of the history of science was built as the Ashmolean museum in 1683.
It was erected by the university to house the famous Tradescant and Ashmolean collections, as well as to accommodate a chemical laboratory in the basement, and space for teaching the new experimental natural philosophy, what we today might call ‘Science’. This space, originally called the School of Natural History, is now the entrance gallery.
This was the first museum building in the world in the sense of a building specifically designed to be a museum. But it also housed activities that we do not often associate with early museums, such as experiment and teaching.
When you leave the entrance gallery, look back at the title painted over the door, “Schola Naturalis Historiae”, the School of Natural History. The showcases on either side of the exit contain the kind of things that we used in this room in the 18th century.
The museum of the History of Science opened in this building in 1925. It’s particularly famous for its very early scientific instruments, and central area of the entrance gallery illustrates the breadth of the collection. From Western Europe through the Islamic lands to the Far East, and from science to what we today would think of as magic. Then, in the four corners of the entrance gallery are four of the museum’s important individual collections.