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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Actually, I have a lot of different apps for learning. I recently downloaded a new app which is called Freedom; it is very useful because it blocks some apps which are very distracting such as Whatsapp, Messenger, etc for a period of time. I mean you can choose the apps you want to get blocked and how many hours you want the app to block other distracting apps and it will do it for you; permitting you to focus on your homeworks or whatever you need to do for a period of time. On the other hand, I have Kahoot app which is one of my favorites. It permits you to look for a topic and choose a quiz of the topic that you looked for on the app. Personally, I think it is pretty useful. However, sometimes you cannot find the quiz that you want to get. Finally, the others apps and websites that I use for improving my English skills are: British Council, Cake app, TOEFL listening and grammar quiz. They have been helping me a lot since I started to study English

Nice

I don't have a favorite app to learn, I tried duolingo, and some from learnnenglish, but I lost interest because I didn't get any additional feedback with my progress, it's difficult and now I'm dealing with tutor interaction to find these specific feedback. In my case I had problems with the skill to listen and I did not find an application with this theme, the lyricstrainning are very good, but it does not provide any specific comment for you.

I don't actually use any app to learn English. I've tried some apps for a couple of days, but without success. I rather like working at my computer.

I don't use any app but I use website such as British Council and Basic English speaking. I like this website. It help me lot since sixth month. So I very grateful to this website. It's a good for everyone to visit the website and solve and doing exercises.

Hello Suraj paliwal,

We're so glad to hear this! Thanks for letting us know and keep up the good work!

Best wishes,

Kirk

The LearnEnglish Team

This is good

I used to practice and learn English with many applications such as hellotalk, duolingo or cake but I found a best learning method that fits perfectly with my tastes and methodologies and it's by watching videos on youtube.

I watch movies with subtitles in English to listen and read at the same time, but to be honest writing is the skill I have more troubles with. I guess is for the lack of practice.

I have enthusiasm on learning to play the keyboard. Easy Piano is an app that has been very helpful with this desire of learning to play a musical instrument.