Part 4 is a single reader delivering one short report, and here the questions switch to sentences you complete. Play two clips with no timer, complete each sentence, then reveal the transcript and the reasoning behind every option. No conversation to follow, just facts in order.
Part 4 is where the listening test changes shape. For the first three parts you followed people talking to each other; now a single reader delivers one short news report, formal and factual, the way a local station opens the evening bulletin. There is no back and forth to untangle, which sounds easier and is in some ways harder, because there is no second speaker to repeat a fact or react to it. The information passes once, in order, and then it is gone.
The report runs about a minute and a half on the real 2026 test and carries five questions. The whole task is holding the frame of the story: who did the thing, what the thing was, when it happened and where. A news item is dense with proper nouns and dates precisely because that is what news is, and the questions pick at exactly those anchors, so a listener who lets one slip has usually lost a mark rather than a detail.
There is also a structural change worth knowing before you start. From Part 4 onward the questions are not spoken to you. They are sentence completions that you read, all five shown on one screen, and you may work through them in any order inside a single block of time. So on the real test these questions already appear as text, which means the way this course shows them matches the exam more closely here than it did in the earlier parts.
The two reports below are each a Part 4 news item in that mould: one voice, roughly a minute of facts, and five sentences to complete afterward. Learn to hold the who, what, when and where here, then take the full version under the clock.
How the News Item is built on the timed 2026 test, and why the question style shifts here.
A news report gives you its facts in a fixed order and never doubles back, so the winning habit is to catch names the first time they are said. When a person is introduced in full, note the name, because news drops to the surname straight after and one of your five sentences may hang on it.
The naming habit is the one that quietly wins Part 4. A report will introduce an organizer or an official in full and then refer to them three times by surname, and a candidate who did not fix the name at first mention spends the rest of the clip wondering who is being talked about. One note at the start buys you the whole rest of the report.
The role habit matters because a news item is full of bodies doing different jobs, and that is a gift to a decoy. A provincial fund, the city budget, local donations and three schools might all appear in ninety seconds, and the sentence about who paid will offer you every one of them. Track the job, not just the name, and the swap has nothing to stand on.
Each report opens in the player. Listen once or as often as you like, complete the sentences shown as text, then reveal the transcript and a reason for all four options on each question. Nothing here is timed and nothing is scored.
A local news report about a new outdoor skating oval opening in Moncton. Between the ribbon cutting, the public opening and who paid for it, several times and bodies crowd into a short read, and the sentences want you to keep them apart.
A local news report about a community event held beside a lake in Moncton. A retired teacher is named, volunteers are counted, and the last sentence asks what that named source would most likely agree with, which is an inference, not a fact you can point to.
On the real 2026 test the news report plays once, starts by itself and cannot be paused, and the five sentence completions then sit on a single screen under one shared block of time. Because those questions are already read rather than heard, the exam screen for Part 4 looks a lot like what you see in this course, and the honest difference comes down to the clock and the replay.
Here you may play the report as many times as you need while you learn to hold the frame, and when you reveal, you get the full transcript and a written reason for every option rather than a mark. That reveal is the whole point: a news item hides its distractors in plain facts, so seeing which real detail each wrong option borrowed is what teaches you to stop reaching for it.
One note on the sound. The reading voice is North American, since no Canadian text-to-speech voice is available to us, but the reports are Canadian, both set in Moncton, with a provincial recreation fund and local schools in the story. When you want the timed conditions, the timed listening tests run all six parts under the real clock.
The specific ways strong listeners still drop marks on a single-voice report.
The reader says the full name once, then uses the surname. Miss the introduction and every later mention is a stranger, and the sentence that needs that person becomes a guess.
A Friday ribbon cutting and a Saturday public opening are different events. The option that offers the ceremony time for the opening question is written for the listener who filed only one time.
A provincial fund covered the cost; someone else organized the day. News reports name several bodies, and the distractors reassign the money and the work. Track each role, not just each name.
The last sentence may ask what a named source would most likely agree with. That is not stated outright; it is drawn from the tone and the detail. Hunting for a quote that answers it wastes the time you need to reason.
These are sentence completions, so the stem chooses the fact. "Organized by" and "covered by" point at different corners of the story, and answering from the first three words picks the wrong corner.
One voice sounds gentle, but there is no second speaker to repeat a fact. The report says each thing once and moves on, so a wandering ear here loses information that never comes back.
Who, what, when, where. On test day you have paper, so set up those four slots and drop each fact into place as the reader says it. A news item is built on exactly these corners, and pre-labelling them stops you scrambling.
The moment a person is introduced in full, mark it. Every surname after that points back to your circle, and the report will lean on that name more than once, so one clear note carries you through the rest of the clip.
A fund, a school, a city, a volunteer. Note who did what beside each, because the sentence about funding or organizing will offer all of them, and only the pairing tells you which one belongs.
A one-minute local radio news read is the exact register of Part 4. Listen to one, then try to complete the sentence "this report was mainly about" from memory. That single habit rehearses the whole part.
When you reveal a report, the lesson is in the notes that trace each wrong option back to a real line: this time is the ceremony, this body only booked a visit. Seeing where the distractors come from is how you learn to hold the frame instead of collecting loose facts.
Part 4 is a single voice reading one short news report, the kind you would catch on local radio or the evening news. It runs about a minute and a half and carries five questions. There is no conversation to follow, only facts arriving in order, so the work is holding on to the who, the what, the when and the where.
Five. Unlike Parts 1 to 3, they are sentence-completion questions that you read, all shown on one screen, and you may answer them in any order within a single block of time. Each has four options and one correct answer. This course gives you two worked news reports, a skating oval and a lake cleanup, each with its questions explained.
Read. From Part 4 onward the questions are printed, not spoken, so you see all five sentence completions on the screen and work through them at your own pace inside one time budget. That is the opposite of Parts 1 to 3, where each question is spoken to you one at a time.
That is how news is written. A person is introduced by their full name the first time and referred to by the last name after that. When you hear a full name in a Part 4 report, note it, because it will very likely come back as a surname and one of the questions may hang on it.
No. There is no timer and no scoring anywhere on this page. You listen, complete the sentences in your head, then reveal the transcript and the reasoning for all four options, including the real detail each wrong one was built from. It is the timed listening tests that mark your answers and return a CLB band.
The reports are Canadian, both set in Moncton, one about an outdoor skating oval and one about a lake cleanup, with a provincial recreation fund and local schools in the mix. The reading voice is North American, because no Canadian text-to-speech voice is available to us. The format and content follow the 2026 CELPIP test.
Part 5 brings back voices, but three of them, and they disagree. Then comes the single formal talk of Part 6, the hardest part. Or take the whole section under the real clock.
Three speakers who disagree, and questions that turn on who sided with whom.
Learn Part 5 → 6One prepared talk, hard vocabulary, and a speaker whose own stance stays half-hidden.
Learn Part 6 → 3Two speakers and a clip full of prices and dates, where the wrong options are real numbers.
Learn Part 3 →All 38 questions across the six parts, played once under the real conditions.
Start a listening test →Play one news report, complete the sentences with no clock running, then reveal the transcript and the reason behind every option. Both clips are free.
