Listening · Academic Talk
Plate Tectonics
Listening · Academic Talk
Listening Test
Today's lecture: earth science
This task is designed to measure your ability to understand a short academic lecture on a topic taught in a university class.
In this exercise, you'll listen to a short academic talk and then answer multiple-choice questions about what you heard.
- Each question is worth 1 point. There are 4 questions about this talk.
- The talk plays only once — listen carefully.
- After the talk, you'll have 30 seconds per question. The exercise auto-advances when the timer hits zero.
- You can replay the audio and review the transcript only on the result screen.
Plate Tectonics
Listen to the talk and answer the questions
Listen to a talk in a earth science class
Show transcript
The ground beneath your feet feels perfectly solid, yet on a grand scale it is slowly moving. The Earth's outer shell is broken into enormous slabs called tectonic plates, and these plates drift on a layer of hot, soft rock below. They move only a few centimetres a year, about as fast as your fingernails grow, but over millions of years that adds up to continents crossing the globe. Where plates pull apart, molten rock rises to form new crust. Where they collide, one may dive beneath the other, or they may crumple upward into mountain ranges. And where they grind past each other, stress builds until it releases suddenly as an earthquake. So the dramatic features of our planet, the mountains, the ocean trenches, the earthquakes, are all expressions of this slow, ceaseless movement of the plates.
Question 1
What is the Earth's outer shell broken into?
Show answer
Answer: Enormous plates
Question 2
How fast do the plates move?
Show answer
Answer: A few centimetres a year
Question 3
What can happen where plates collide?
Show answer
Answer: They may crumple into mountains
Question 4
What causes earthquakes, according to the professor?
Show answer
Answer: Stress released as plates grind past each other
Practice against the clock and track your progress
Create a free account for all 20 sets in every task, timed practice with scoring, a progress dashboard and a full TOEFL mock test.