PTE Listening Practice Test 14

"In this lecture I'll trace the history of chess, a game that has been played for around fifteen hundred years. Most historians believe chess began in India in about the sixth century as a game called chaturanga, whose pieces represented the four divisions of an army: infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots. From India, the game travelled to Persia, and after the Islamic conquest of Persia it spread across the Arab world and into Europe through Spain and Italy. In Europe, the rules changed significantly around the fifteenth century, when the queen and the bishop gained their modern powers, making the game much faster. Chess became associated with strategy and education, and by the nineteenth century formal tournaments and the first official world championship had appeared. In 1997, a computer called Deep Blue defeated the world champion Garry Kasparov, and today chess programs are far stronger than any human player. Rather than killing interest in the game, computers have become training tools, and online platforms have helped chess reach more players than ever before."

দাবা সম্ভবত ষষ্ঠ শতকে ভারতে "চতুরঙ্গ" নামে শুরু হয়, পরে পারস্য, আরব বিশ্ব হয়ে ইউরোপে ছড়ায়। পনেরো শতকে নিয়ম বদলে খেলা দ্রুততর হয়। ১৯৯৭ সালে কম্পিউটার বিশ্বচ্যাম্পিয়নকে হারায়, তবে আজ কম্পিউটার প্রশিক্ষণের সহায়ক এবং অনলাইনে দাবা আরও জনপ্রিয়।

"Many cities are trying to persuade more people to cycle to work, but simply painting a line on a busy road is rarely enough. Surveys consistently show that the biggest barrier is fear of traffic, so physically separated bike lanes tend to attract far more new cyclists than painted lanes. Secure parking is the second most common request, because people are reluctant to leave an expensive bicycle on the street all day. Interestingly, shops on streets with new bike lanes have often reported stable or even higher sales, despite owners' worries about losing car parking."

"Citizen science projects invite members of the public to help collect scientific data, from counting birds in their gardens to classifying galaxies in telescope images online. Because thousands of volunteers can take part, these projects gather data on a scale that professional scientists could never manage alone. Participants often learn a great deal about science and feel more connected to research. The main concern is data quality, so most projects use training, simple instructions and checks in which several volunteers examine the same item."

"In the 1990s, vulture populations in South Asia collapsed by more than ninety-five per cent in little over a decade. Scientists eventually discovered the cause: diclofenac, a painkiller given to cattle, which is harmless to cows but fatal to vultures that feed on their carcasses. After the drug was banned for veterinary use in India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the decline slowed, and breeding programmes have begun releasing birds into protected zones. The loss of vultures had serious consequences, because carcasses left uneaten attracted feral dogs and increased the risk of disease."

"Although the Great Wall of China is often said to be visible from space with the naked eye, astronauts who have orbited the Earth report that the wall is far too narrow and too similar in colour to the surrounding land, so in reality it is almost impossible to see."