Listening · Academic Talk
Rivers and Erosion
Listening · Academic Talk
Listening Test
Today's lecture: geography
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.
Rivers and Erosion
Listen to the talk and answer the questions
Listen to a talk in a geography class
Show transcript
A river may look gentle, but given time it is one of nature's most powerful sculptors. As water flows downhill, it carries sand, gravel, and even boulders, and these tools scrape against the riverbed and banks, slowly wearing them away in a process called erosion. In its upper course, a fast mountain stream cuts downward, carving steep, narrow valleys. Lower down, as the land flattens, the river slows and begins to swing from side to side, eroding the outer bends and dropping sediment on the inner ones, creating wide loops called meanders. Finally, near the sea, the river drops its remaining load of fine particles, building up flat, fertile plains. So a single river tells a story along its length, cutting in one place, transporting in another, and building new land where it ends.
Question 1
What does a river use to wear away its bed and banks?
Show answer
Answer: Sand, gravel, and boulders it carries
Question 2
What does a fast mountain stream tend to do?
Show answer
Answer: Cut steep, narrow valleys
Question 3
What are the wide loops formed on flatter land called?
Show answer
Answer: Meanders
Question 4
What does the river build near the sea?
Show answer
Answer: Flat, fertile plains
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