IELTS Listening Test Questions

David: Morning Lisa, how is the reading going for our presentation next week?

Lisa: Well, ok David, but it was harder than I thought to find good research on national character stereotypes.

David: I know, but I did come across a good study by McCrae and Terracciano. Did you see that?

Lisa: Yes, they showed that a lot of our ideas about our own personality traits, just aren’t based on real facts. They’re just stereotypes.

David: Right, that was interesting. I think we could begin the presentation by talking about that.

Lisa: Sure, like how for instance, (Q1)Italians think of themselves as being really outgoing and sociable, but the personality tests showed that in reality, they’re more reserved than they imagined.

David: Yeah, while (Q2)Russians see themselves in much the same way as the Italians, but they’re actually more on the introverted side. And another one was the (Q3)Spanish, who see themselves as being lazy, but the research showed them to be much more conscientious than they believe.

Lisa: You know David, I was pretty surprised by what the research showed about (Q4)Brazilians. Apparently they’re more likely to be stressed and worried about things in their lives than their stereotype suggests.They always seem pretty easy-going to me. The research showed that (Q5)Argentinians have the wrong idea about themselves too. They see themselves as bad-tempered and unfriendly, but the research found them to be among the most friendlly of all nations.

David: Well, I’ve been on holiday to Argentina, and I have to agree with the research. Everybody seemed very friendly to me. I was more surprised by the results for the (Q6)English. We see ourselves as reserved and closed, which I always agreed with to be honest, but the research suggests we’re more tolerant than we give ourselves credit for.

Lisa: So, what about countries with an accurate view of themselves? I could only find the Poles - they see themselves as being not particularly extroverted and a little neurotic, which the research confirmed.

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Lisa: What about the Heine et al research. That seemed to come to quite different conclusions, didn’t it?

David: Yes, their study found that the way people see themselves in a culture varies dramatically from one culture to another, (Q7)while if you aggregate the real personality profiles in each of those cultures, you can’t see any clear differences between them.

Lisa: Right, so in other words, every culture has a mix of different characters, and you just can’t generalise about character traits in any particular culture.

David: Yes, their research was based on the Revised NEO Personality Inventory instrument which was itself based on the Five-Factor Model of personality. That’s a pretty common tool for gauging personality types. In fact, I think a lot of businesses use the Five-Factor Model when they’re recruiting new employees.

Lisa: Didn’t they compare the results from that instrument with results from a questionnaire?

David: Right, the questionnaire was part of the National Character Survey, which asked people to describe their own national stereotype, so for example Canadians were asked things like, “how agreeable is the typical Canadian?”

David: And after comparing the real personalities with people’s stereotypes, again they found no correlation. Our stereotypes just aren’t very accurate according to this research.

Lisa: Well, when I think about all the people I know, and all of their very different characters, it’s hard to imagine that just because we’re born in the same place, we all have the same personality traits.

David: Yes, but I also think there’s a lot more research that could be done. For one, I couldn’t find any information about the size of the surveys used in the research so it could be that they’re based on small samples. And, (Q9/Q10) what’s more, there just haven’t been that many studies in this area, so it’s hard to be really confident in their conclusions.

Lisa: And it can also be really difficult to assess personality in an objective way. (Q9/Q10)I read that sometimes people who did the same personality test twice, had completely different results the second time. It really raises questions about the reliability of the tests when you can have that kind of difference.