Working at the National Gallery

Audio

While you listen

oCoder Education - English listening Audios are suitable for learners with different levels of English. Here are some ways to make them easier (if you have a lower level of English) or more difficult (if you have a higher level of English).
You can choose one or two of these suggestions – you don't have to follow all of them!

Making it easier

Read all the exercises before you listen to the audio.
Look up the words in the exercises that you don't know or don't understand in a dictionary.
Play the audio as many times as you need.
Play each part of the audio separately.
Answer all questions in the exercise.
Read the transcript after you have listened to the audio.

Making it harder

Listen to the audio before you read the exercises.
Only play the audio once before answering the questions.
Play the whole audio without a break.
Don't read the transcript.
Now, listen to the audio and do the exercises on the following tabs.
If you do not complete all the question, you can play the audio again. After that, read the dialog to make sure that you understand all word in the audio.
How does the speaker describe her work at the gallery?
Tiring
Boring
Interesting
Bizarre
What kind of people did the speaker work with in her job?
Generally novelists
Mainly tourists
Only artists
Mostly English people
Why does the speaker mention that one 'could've written a novel'?
She had tried to write a novel once.
She had free time during her job.
She learned much about the art world.
She met many interesting people.
What does speaker conclude about her work?
Although routine, her job was enjoyable.
She met many bizarre tourists at the gallery.
Despite working at a gallery, she dislikes art.
It is hard to make gallery audio guides.

I've had quite a few different casual jobs.
And one that was, quite interesting, um, was working in the National Gallery, in London which is on Trafalgar Square.
It involved basically, uh, handing out the audio guide machines.
So that people could go around, and listen to the paintings.
It was like a CD-ROM.
And... It involved standing up all day and saying the same thing, all the time.
And it was_ but it_ what was interesting was to meet, um, all the different types of people that came in.
Mainly they were tourists.
Um, but we did get some, sort of rather bizarre, English characters.
Um... You could've written a novel about the sort of people that came in.
Um, and it was obviously very interesting to work with, with art, and, just sort of, view it at any time.