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DELE C1 listening and use of language task 4: Short dialogues

Comprensión auditiva y uso de la lengua, tarea 4

Listen to ten short dialogues with idiomatic or colloquial expressions and answer one question with three options about each.

Part of the 50-minute listening and use of language test: 30 questions, 25 points, in group 2 with speaking and mediation. Every correct answer counts the same, and a wrong answer costs nothing.

Diez diálogos breves

Usted va a escuchar diez breves diálogos. Después, conteste a las preguntas (1-10). Seleccione la opción correcta (a, b o c).

1El hombre...
2La mujer cree que la entrevista...
3Según el hombre, Jorge...
4La mujer compró otra bicicleta porque...
5El hombre...
6La mujer piensa que Marta...
7El hombre...
8La mujer...
9La mujer...
10Sobre su nuevo jefe, la mujer opina que...

0 of 10 answered

What DELE C1 listening task 4 tests

The official guide sets this task on brief dialogues about everyday situations from personal, public, educational or working life. It tests whether you can identify the meaning and the communicative intention of utterances that contain idiomatic or colloquial expressions, and each dialogue is played twice.

The official model exam for this task, with its recording, is listed on the C1 model exams page.

The lesson on listening task 4 gives the full method and two worked dialogues.

Common traps

  1. Tirar la toalla is to give up, meter la pata to make a blunder and no dar pie con bola to get everything wrong, and an option can offer the literal meaning of the words instead.
  2. ¡Qué bonito, llegar a estas horas! sounds like praise and is a complaint, and a question on the speaker's intention asks you to hear it that way.
  3. The listening test includes recordings from three geographical varieties of Spanish, so approval can sound like guay, chévere or padre, and the same idea can come in more than one regional form.

Worked example

Transcript of the recording

Hombre: ¿Al final Marta corre el maratón de octubre?
Mujer: Qué va, ha tirado la toalla. Dice que entre el trabajo y los niños no le da la vida para entrenar.

Según la mujer, Marta...

  1. a) ha decidido no correr porque no tiene tiempo para prepararse.
  2. b) va a correr aunque no ha entrenado lo suficiente.
  3. c) se ha hecho daño entrenando con sus hijos.
Answer and explanation

Answer: a) ha decidido no correr porque no tiene tiempo para prepararse.

Qué va answers no, and ha tirado la toalla means she has given up. No le da la vida is a colloquial way of saying she has no time or energy left, here between work and the children, so the answer is a. Nothing in the dialogue mentions an injury.

Sources