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B1–C2 · IELTS General Training

IELTS General Training Practice Test 38

AI-generated practice paper in the style of IELTS General Training — original material, not a reproduction of any real exam paper, following the official four-module structure (Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking). Listening audio is read aloud by your browser's voice, Writing tasks can be scored by AI, and for Speaking you can record yourself and compare with a model answer.

Listening

Part 1

Listen and answer questions 1–10.

Complete the enrolment form below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

1. Surname: ______

2. Contact number: ______

3. Early-bird fee: ______ dollars

4. Venue: annexe at ______ Harbour Street

5. Class starts at: ______ pm

6. Tutor: Maria ______

Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.

7. For the first week, the caller can use

8. Most students travel to the annexe by

9. The first four weeks of the course cover

10. For the final field trip students should bring

Part 2

Listen and answer questions 11–20.

Complete the notes below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

11. Full membership fee: ______ dollars a month

12. Off-peak membership fee: ______ dollars a month

13. Number of lanes in the pool: ______

What does the guide say about each of the following areas? Choose the correct letter, A-F, for questions 4 to 7.

14. The Pool

15. The Fitness Suite

16. The Climbing Wall

17. The Crèche

Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.

18. Studio One classes cost, for off-peak members,

19. What is being waived this month?

20. New members get, within their first month,

Part 3

Listen and answer questions 21–30.

21. What do Emma and Frank agree about their method?

22. How many responses should they aim for?

23. How should commute time be recorded in the survey?

24. Which statistical test should they run first?

25. Which students should the survey include?

26. How many people should test the pilot survey?

27. What should be done with responses that skip the stress scale?

What does Dr. Adams decide about each of these? Choose your answers from the list, A-E: A Check the test choice by Friday; B Include all years, not just one; C Five or six people; D Exclude those responses; E Use exact minutes.

28. Pilot testers

29. The survey sample

30. Draft methodology deadline

Part 4

Listen and answer questions 31–40.

Complete the notes below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer.

31. A power nap generally lasts between ten and ______ minutes.

32. Longer, deeper sleep can leave people feeling groggy, a state called sleep ______.

33. The performance benefit of a short nap typically lasts a few ______.

34. Simply lying down with closed eyes produces a smaller but still noticeable ______.

35. Naps lasting closer to ______ minutes frequently backfire.

36. Some workplaces have installed dedicated nap ______ or quiet rooms.

37. Research shows improved afternoon productivity and fewer minor ______.

38. Caffeine typically takes around ______ minutes to take effect.

39. The technique combining coffee with a short nap is called a ______ nap.

40. Napping still carries a stigma of ______ in many northern European workplaces.

Reading

Section 1: Notices

You should spend about 20 minutes on Section 1.

NOTICE A — Prestige Dry Cleaners: Collection Point Changes Our collection point previously located inside Hartley's Newsagents on the High Street will close at the end of this month, as the newsagent is closing down. From next month, customers can instead collect and drop off dry cleaning at our new partner location, Riverside Pharmacy, just two doors along, which will keep the same collection hours as before. Customers with items currently awaiting collection at Hartley's should collect these before the changeover date, as items not collected will be transferred to our main branch on Mill Street instead, requiring an extra journey. Our standard 48-hour turnaround service remains unchanged, and the loyalty stamp card scheme, offering a free clean after ten visits, will continue to be honoured at the new location without any need to restart your card. Customers are welcome to call the main branch with any questions about the transition. NOTICE B — Oakhurst Apartments: Basement Storage Locker Allocation Basement storage lockers, previously allocated on a first-come, first-served basis with no formal waiting list, will now be allocated through a fair lottery system to address long-standing complaints about the informal process favouring long-term residents. Residents wishing to be considered for a locker should register their interest with the building manager by the end of this month, and a lottery draw will determine allocation order for the limited number of available lockers. Residents currently holding a locker will keep it under existing arrangements and are not affected by this change unless they choose to give up their locker voluntarily. Lockers measure approximately one metre square and are intended for seasonal items such as suitcases or sports equipment, not for storing hazardous materials or perishable food. A modest annual locker fee of £30 will continue to apply, payable alongside the regular service charge.

Questions 1–3. Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

1. Why is the collection point at Hartley's Newsagents closing?

2. How will basement storage lockers now be allocated?

3. Approximately what size are the storage lockers?

Questions 4–6. Do the following statements agree with the information in Notice A? Write TRUE if the statement agrees, FALSE if it contradicts, or NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.

4. The new collection point will keep the same collection hours as before.

5. Customers must restart their loyalty stamp card at the new location.

6. The standard 48-hour turnaround service remains unchanged.

Questions 7–8. Complete the sentence below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Notice A for each answer.

7. Items not collected before the changeover will be transferred to the main branch on __________.

8. Customers are welcome to call the __________ with any questions about the transition.

Question 9. Answer the question below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Notice A.

9. How many visits are needed for a free clean under the loyalty scheme?

Questions 10–11. Do the following statements agree with the information in Notice B? Write TRUE if the statement agrees, FALSE if it contradicts, or NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.

10. Residents currently holding a locker will keep it under existing arrangements.

11. Lockers can be used to store perishable food.

Question 12. Complete the sentence below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Notice B for each answer.

12. A modest annual locker fee of __________ will continue to apply.

Questions 13–14. Answer the question below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Notice B.

13. Who should residents register their interest with to be considered for a locker?

14. Name one type of item lockers are intended for, besides sports equipment.

Section 2: Workplace

You should spend about 20 minutes on Section 2.

TEXT A — Human Resources: Staff Loyalty Awards Announcement A new annual staff loyalty awards scheme will recognise employees reaching five, ten, fifteen, and twenty years of continuous service with a certificate, a choice of gift from a curated catalogue, and an additional day of paid leave to be taken within the following twelve months. Awards will be presented at a small informal gathering held quarterly, grouping together everyone reaching a milestone during that period rather than holding an individual ceremony for each person. Length of service will be calculated based on continuous employment with the company, meaning any break in employment, even if the employee later rejoined, will reset the count from the date of rejoining. Employees approaching a milestone will be notified automatically by HR approximately one month in advance so they can indicate their gift preference from the catalogue in good time. The scheme applies retrospectively, meaning staff who have already passed a milestone anniversary this year will still receive recognition at the next scheduled quarterly gathering. TEXT B — IT Security: New Remote Access VPN Requirement All staff accessing company systems remotely, including from home or while travelling, must now connect through the company's VPN client rather than accessing systems directly over an unsecured internet connection, following an increase in attempted unauthorised access from unrecognised locations. The VPN client should be installed on any device used for remote work, including personal devices approved for limited work use under the bring-your-own-device policy. Connection speeds may be marginally slower than a direct connection due to the additional security layer, though this should not meaningfully affect most day-to-day tasks for the majority of users. Staff experiencing persistent connectivity issues after installing the VPN client should contact IT support, providing details of their specific device and internet connection type to help with diagnosis. The VPN client will prompt for reauthentication every eight hours as an additional security measure, requiring staff to log in again during particularly long working sessions.

Questions 15–17. Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

15. At what service milestones will employees be recognised under the new scheme?

16. What must staff now use to access company systems remotely?

17. Which devices should have the VPN client installed?

Questions 18–19. Do the following statements agree with the information in Text A? Write TRUE if the statement agrees, FALSE if it contradicts, or NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.

18. Awards will be presented at an individual ceremony for each person.

19. A break in employment resets the length of service count from the date of rejoining.

Questions 20–21. Complete the sentence below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Text A for each answer.

20. Employees approaching a milestone will be notified automatically by HR approximately __________ in advance.

21. Awards will be presented at a small informal gathering held __________.

Question 22. Answer the question below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Text A.

22. What additional benefit, besides a certificate and gift, do employees receive at a milestone?

Questions 23–25. Do the following statements agree with the information in Text B? Write TRUE if the statement agrees, FALSE if it contradicts, or NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.

23. The VPN requirement follows an increase in attempted unauthorised access.

24. The VPN client significantly slows down all tasks for every user.

25. Connection speeds through the VPN may be marginally slower than a direct connection.

Question 26. Complete the sentence below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Text B for each answer.

26. The VPN client will prompt for reauthentication every __________.

Question 27. Answer the question below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Text B.

27. What should staff provide to IT support when experiencing connectivity issues?

Section 3: The Surprising Benefits of Boredom

You should spend about 20 minutes on Section 3.

Boredom, an emotional state most people actively and instinctively avoid whenever possible, and one increasingly rare in an era of constantly available smartphone-delivered entertainment and instant digital distraction, has recently attracted growing serious research interest into whether the pervasive modern elimination of unstructured, boring downtime carries genuine unrecognised psychological costs that outweigh boredom's obvious immediate unpleasantness. Cognitive scientists studying boredom have proposed that the specific unpleasant subjective experience serves an important underlying evolutionary and motivational function, prompting a bored individual to actively seek novel stimulation, information, or engagement, rather than remaining passively and unproductively idle indefinitely. Understood this way, boredom functions similarly to physical hunger, an uncomfortable but ultimately adaptive and useful internal signal driving generally beneficial exploratory behaviour, rather than a wholly negative state to be relentlessly eliminated through constant passive external stimulation at every possible opportunity throughout the day. A particularly influential and widely cited study asked participants to sit alone in an empty room for a period of time with genuinely nothing to do except think, with the notable option to self-administer a mild electric shock if they wished. A striking majority of participants, remarkably including a substantial number who had previously stated they would pay money specifically to avoid experiencing such a shock under different circumstances, chose to shock themselves at least once rather than sit undistracted with only their own unstructured thoughts for company, a finding widely interpreted by researchers as demonstrating quite how strongly and instinctively most people are averse to sustained boredom without any external stimulation whatsoever. Paradoxically, however, a separate and growing body of research suggests that boredom, precisely because of its inherent unpleasantness, can reliably and measurably boost subsequent creativity. Several controlled experiments have found that participants who first completed a deliberately tedious, monotonous task, such as copying numbers from a telephone directory for an extended period, subsequently generated a greater number of, and more genuinely original, creative ideas on a following task than participants who had not first experienced boredom, a finding researchers attribute to boredom prompting the mind to spontaneously wander freely and make novel, unexpected associative connections that a more continuously occupied, externally stimulated mind rarely has genuine opportunity to make. This body of emerging research has prompted some psychologists and educators to argue that childhood, in particular, may benefit meaningfully from a certain deliberately unstructured, tolerated amount of boredom, rather than the heavily scheduled, constantly supervised, and continuously stimulating activities that increasingly characterise many contemporary children's daily lives, on the theory that children permitted to experience and productively work through genuine boredom develop stronger independent self-directed play skills, richer imagination, and greater long-term tolerance for the kind of unstimulating everyday moments that adult life, despite ubiquitous digital distraction, inevitably and unavoidably continues to contain.

Questions 28–30. Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

28. What function do cognitive scientists propose boredom serves?

29. Why do researchers think boredom boosts creativity?

30. What does the passage say is increasingly rare in the era of smartphones?

Questions 31–34. Do the following statements agree with the information given in the passage? Write TRUE if the statement agrees, FALSE if it contradicts, or NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.

31. Boredom is compared in the passage to physical hunger as an adaptive signal.

32. In the shock study, most participants preferred to sit quietly with their thoughts rather than shock themselves.

33. Some psychologists argue childhood may benefit from a certain amount of unstructured boredom.

34. The passage presents boredom as a wholly negative state with no redeeming psychological value whatsoever.

Question 35. Complete the sentence below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

35. In the shock study, participants had the option to self-administer a mild __________.

Questions 36–38. Answer the question below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage.

36. What tedious task did participants complete in the creativity experiments mentioned?

37. What skill do children permitted to experience boredom reportedly develop, according to the passage?

38. What had some shock-study participants previously stated they would pay to avoid?

Questions 39–40. Do the following statements agree with the writer's claims? Write YES if the statement agrees with the writer's claims, NO if it contradicts, or NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks.

39. Boredom can reliably boost subsequent creativity, according to a growing body of research.

40. The writer believes modern children's lives are generally less scheduled than in the past.

Speaking

Part 1: Introduction and interview

The examiner asks you questions about yourself and familiar topics (4–5 minutes).

Part 1 (Handmade things / Crafts) — the examiner asks about two familiar topics. Topic 1: Handmade things Q1. Do you own anything that was made by hand? Q2. Do you prefer handmade goods to factory-made ones? Topic 2: Crafts Q3. Have you ever made something yourself? Q4. Are traditional crafts still practised in your country?
Recorded on your device only — play it back and compare with the model answer.
Show sample answer
Model answer: 1. Yes, a woollen blanket that my grandmother knitted for me when I left home. It's a bit uneven in places, but that's why I love it. 2. Usually, yes, as long as the price is fair. A handmade item feels unique, and you know that somebody has put time and care into it, unlike something from a factory. 3. I built a small bookshelf last year from some pine boards. It took me three weekends, and it isn't perfectly straight, but it holds my books just fine. 4. To a certain degree. Pottery and carpet weaving are still done in villages, mainly for tourists, but fewer young people are learning the skills because the work is slow and doesn't pay very well.

Part 2: Individual long turn

You have one minute to prepare, then speak for one to two minutes.

Describe a plant or a garden that you have taken care of. You should say: - what it is - where it is - how you looked after it and explain how you feel about it. You'll have a minute to prepare, then talk about it for one to two minutes.
Recorded on your device only — play it back and compare with the model answer.
Show sample answer
Model answer: For the past three years I've been looking after a small vegetable garden on the roof terrace of my apartment block. When I moved in, the terrace was practically empty, apart from some cracked pots, so I asked the other residents if they'd mind me growing a few things there. To my surprise, they were all in favour, and two neighbours even lent me tools. I built four raised beds from old wooden pallets and filled them with soil, then I planted tomatoes, peppers, beans and a range of herbs, including basil and mint. Every morning before work I water the plants for ten minutes, and on Sundays I pull out the weeds and add compost from a bin in the courtyard. In the summer I check for insects, and in winter I cover the beds with plastic to protect them from frost. I feel a great deal of pride in this little garden. Watching something grow from a tiny seed is very satisfying, and the food tastes far better than what I'd buy in a shop. It's also become a social space, as neighbours come up in the evenings for a chat and a bunch of fresh herbs.

Part 3: Two-way discussion

The examiner asks more abstract questions linked to the Part 2 topic.

Part 3 (art and creativity) — the examiner asks four related questions. Q1. Why do you think art is important in society? Q2. Should governments fund art and museums using public money? Q3. Do you think creativity can be taught, or is it something people are born with? Q4. How might technology change the way art is created in the future?
Recorded on your device only — play it back and compare with the model answer.
Show sample answer
Model answer: 1. Art helps people express and understand emotions and ideas that are difficult to put into plain words, and it also records a culture's history and values for future generations to look back on. 2. I think so, at least partly, since art often struggles to survive on ticket sales alone, and public funding helps keep museums accessible to everyone, not just those who can already afford to visit. 3. I lean towards thinking creativity can be developed through practice and encouragement, even if some people show a natural talent earlier, so proper teaching can still unlock ability that might otherwise stay hidden. 4. Digital tools and artificial intelligence will probably play a much bigger role, letting people create complex work without traditional technical skills, though this also raises questions about originality and authorship.

Writing Task 1

You believe the street lighting in your neighbourhood is inadequate and this has raised safety concerns among residents. Write a letter to your local council. In your letter: describe the problem, explain why it is a concern, and suggest what action should be taken. Write at least 150 words. You do NOT need to write your own address. Begin your letter 'Dear Sir or Madam,'

Writing Task 2

Some people believe that governments should tax unhealthy food, such as sugary drinks and fast food, to reduce obesity, while others think this is not the government's responsibility. Discuss both views and give your own opinion. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.
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