A business interview

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

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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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I don’t really have a favorite app for learning, but I love using kahoot. Because is a learning platform where we can create questionary for learning or improving our knowledge in the that subject. Where the student are participant.

My favorite app for learning is Elevate. Elevate is an app that helps me expand my vocabulary, my grammar skills, my reading comprehension, and my mental math by giving me daily activities, in the format of games, to train daily my english and brain. I really enjoy this app because it´s not only teaching me but the games and points make me very competitive and encourage me to improve myself.

My favourite app to learn any other language is Duolingo although I don't necessarily use it to learn english. I'm actually using it to learn Italian since we are in quarantine. It's actually very easy to use it while others are kind of hard. The app its very dynamic which helps you learn. I really like the app I would definitely recommend it unless you want to stick to other one.

well...I don't really use an app..but I communicate with others, see videos, and learn by myself...

What's my favourite app for learning and why? Hello, My favourite app for learning is duolingo, it is a very complete app that contains the required information to learn a new language. One of the things I like the most about the app is that it gives you as many practices as possible to be able to understand everything correctly. Besides it's an app that I highly recommend.

Hi, my favorite app for learning is google classroom. It is a nice app for the interaction student-student, student- teacher and teacher-student. Teachers are able to post assignments, homeworks and reinforcing material with the extra of having a personal space for the turn in of the assignments.

What's your favourite app for learning and why? As for learning app options, there's a huge variety. Apps which go from podcasts and audio books, to videos, to reading based apps. As a favorite option i would pick the Khan Academy App. Free courses of a variety of topics. Mostly used for mathematics based topics.

Hi, my favorite app for learning is google classroom. It is a nice app for the interaction student-student, student- teacher and teacher-student. Teachers are able to post assignemnts, homeworks and reinforcing material with the extra of having a personal space for the turn in of the assignmients.

My favorite app for learning is Youtube. Because is an app where you can find any methods of learning, since audiobooks to very detailed diagrams. In Youtube there are many channels that create content of people explaining a topic or a problem with all its procedure. Also its vert easy to access and to use.

Although learning may seem complicated through an app, I believe my favorite, for educational purposes, is Quizlet. Here, I’ve found flashcards that have helped me study for all the subjects. Not only have I been able to shed light on topics I didn’t understand, but also, I’ve practiced for exams. It has helped me with memorizing, understanding and homework itself. Quizlet has given me access to thousands of study plans so that I could have everything I need to know before a test.