A business interview

Listen to the business interview to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

Transcript

Presenter: Welcome to today's show. We're very happy to have Anna Oliveira as our guest today. Anna is the creator and founder of HomeworX – spelled with an 'x' we should note – an app which helps teenagers with their homework. Thanks for coming in, Anna.

Anna: Thanks for having me.

Presenter: So, tell us about your app. How does it work?

Anna: Well, teenagers and their parents have numerous challenges when it comes to homework these days. In many families both parents work and don't have much available time to help their kids with their homework. And even if they do have time to help, they may not be able to offer support with the content. What I mean is, they may not know, or at least remember, enough in any given subject to support.

Presenter: You mean they might not be able to remember complex maths or might have never studied certain subjects, such as biology or economics, themselves?

Anna: Exactly. So they might want to support their children with their homework, but have neither the time nor the knowledge to do so.

Presenter: I see. So the app helps solve this problem?

Anna: Yes, and more. The next issue is that tutors can be expensive, and there may be long waiting lists for specialist tutors in the town or region you live in. Our HomeworX app brings students and tutors together online. Students can search a database of pre-approved tutors and sign up for live online support. They don't need to be in the same town or city.

Presenter: That sounds really great.

Anna: It is. And this approach also enables us to offer the tutoring services at lower prices because there's no travelling time involved for the tutor to get to the student's home. And tutors who live in remote areas are happy to get access to more students, and be able to work from home, even at lower rates.

Presenter: This all sounds great. So, how did you come up with the idea?

Anna: Well, as you might guess, I was one of those parents I described earlier. I really wanted to help my son with his homework, but I was either too busy with work or I didn't actually know anything about the subjects he was having difficulty with. Also, we live in an area where there aren't many tutors and the ones that are there are either very expensive or have long waiting lists.

Presenter: Yes. I can understand your predicament. Well, it sounds like a very useful app that is clearly meeting a need. And its popularity obviously speaks for itself.

Anna: Thank you.

Presenter: So, do you have plans for the future?

Anna: We've just secured some funding and hope to expand the range of services we offer using the app.

Presenter: We wish you the best of luck. Thanks again for coming in. That was Anna Oliveira, founder of the tutoring app HomeworX (with an 'x', don't forget!), which is available for both Apple and Android devices. Join us again next week for another business interview. Have a great week, everyone.

Task 1

Exercise

Task 2

Exercise

Discussion

What's your favourite app for learning and why?

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Language level

B2 Upper intermediate

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My favourite app for learning is BBC Learning English. Trough it anyone can hear a lot of interesting contents improving his hearing's skill. I suggest anyone wants to improve his hearing's skill to use it. It is also free.

I used to use apps to learn english, when I started I used duolingo but after a long period of time it becomes a lot repetitive and I tried to find something more difficult, and I found learnenglish website, this page is really good but is a little difficult to me study grammar here, I think that the best way to improve your grammar is doing a lot exercises and in the section grammar there is two or three tasks that is few to me, to study vocabulary I'm using anki, creating my own word cards.

Frankly I have to say I didn't use any app in my Englisch learning process. I use only British Council. I don't think these apps aren't useful for the learning but most of them enlarges your wort treasure und your listening skills. When I come up with speaking, best solution is to create a contact with people who are speaking English. It is best way to contact to join different organizations which are not bored. You should attend like these organizations that you will improve your speaking talents. If we return again apps, I believe their contribution of your language skills are quite limited.

I have some resources that are my favorites. For instance I use an English app called Cake, It's a really good and useful app for learning new vocabulary. Also I use Coursera and ABA English which are perfect for improving your english skills, and learn something new about any topic.

for me, I usually use youtube for learning English specially listening section, watching movies, and practice by own self. and I think this app so supportable for who wanna learn English every where.

Actually i don't use an app to practice english, the only thing that i do it's watch series in english and that's it.

Up to now, Duolingo has been my favourite app for languange learning. It's free and easy to use, although it's not practical to read it into the smartphone.